The surprising songs protesters sang at Peterloo.
One of the great things about the 200th anniversary of Peterloo marked in 2019 was the range of exhibitions and events that were scheduled to mark the occasion. For historians amongst the most interesting are digitisation projects which are putting original documents related to the massacre in St Peters Fields Manchester on Monday 16th August 1819 on-line.
The unique collections of the Working Class Movement Library in Salford (near the train station should you want to visit) have a record of the trial in York in March 1820 of ten people charged with sedition as a result of Peterloo including Henry Hunt and Samuel Bamford.
It also contains William Hulton’s hand written notes on the record of the trial. Hulton was the Tory Chair of Magistrates who sent the Yeomanry in at Peterloo.
An interesting footnote is that Hulton records part of the evidence of John Tyas the Times reporter at Peterloo in respect of the songs the crowd sang. These were:
Rule Britannia
God Save the King
See the Conquering Hero Comes (Tyas was only possible on this, it relates to the arrival of Henry Hunt)
It all sounds somewhat patriotic until one recalls William Cobbett’s Freeborn Englishman, noted by EP Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class. According to Cobbett he was a robust opponent of foreign domination and authoritarianism and very keen on trial by jury and liberty. He was less bothered about democracy.
But the working class protesters on the Manchester Monday 205 years ago were bothered about democracy and the Tory Magistrate Hulton gave the orders to cut them down.
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