Peterloo and its place in the Chartist memory

Hunt Memorial - from the Northern Star (20 August 1842)

So much is being written about Peterloo in this bicentenary year that I am reluctant to pitch in. But I think it is worth commenting on the ways in which memories of the 1819 massacre were co-opted by the Chartists a generation later, and the lessons that they held for radicals 20 or 30 years on.

Peterloo was, of course, not just within living memory. Despite the massive political upheavals that took place in the intervening years, it remained fresh in the minds of those who had been there and those who had heard about it with a sense of horror, even at second or third hand in radical broadsheets and newspapers.

Down the years, Peterloo veterans and their supporters continued to commemorate both the anniversary of Peterloo – 16 August – and the birthday in November of “Orator” Henry Hunt, whose arrest had served as the pretext for the yeomanry cavalry charge that left as many as 18 dead and 650 badly injured.

Abel Heywood - the Chartist who built Manchester's town hall

Manchester's Radical Mayor: Abel Heywood, The Man who Built the Town Hall
By Joanna M. Williams (The History Press, 2017)

Abel Heywood’s memory deserves better. Search on Google for the man who almost personified Liberal Manchester in the middle decades of the 19th century and you will find page after page about a boutique hotel bearing his name.

Finally, eventually, an entry in the DNB appears before we go back to more hotel guest reviews. And that is about it.

Fortunately, a new biography by Joanna Williams sets out to recover the life story of this important figure from Manchester’s radical past – from the campaign for a free press in the 1830s, via Chartism and the Liberal Party to the office of mayor.

Chartism Day 2017: from biscuits and salt pork for the troops to surrealist Chartist images and a lost letter

Some 20 years on from the first ever Chartism Day, each year’s event still brings word of archive discoveries, exciting new images and innovative ways of “doing history” that shed light on the people who made up the Chartist movement and how they thought and acted.

Chartism Day 2017 was no exception. Organised by Dr Katrina Navickas and colleagues from the University of Hertfordshire history department, this year’s conference visited Heronsgate – better known to those with an interest in Chartism as O’Connorville.