Why don’t the Tories want to remember Peterloo?
On 3rd August 2019 the Murdoch owned Times newspaper published an Editorial on Peterloo.
It was complained about how much coverage the BBC was giving to the 200th anniversary of the event on 16th August. According to the Times Peterloo was indeed a dreadful event but that was that and it has no wider significance.
Attempts to remember it on the 200th anniversary were just part of left-wing mythologizing in which it seems the late socialist historian E P Thompson, Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn were all implicated.
It was a quite extraordinary Editorial. If it is the case that Peterloo is not worth recalling then why spend an entire Editorial doing just that?
The reality is of course that the Tories have a strong sense of guilt still about Peterloo and with good reason.
The 200th anniversary saw a memorial to the Massacre of 16th August designed by Jeremy Dellar unveiled on the site of what was once St Petersfield. However it is the first such memorial. The only commemoration that currently exists is a small red plaque high up on the wall of what was once the Free Trade Hall (now a Radisson hotel).
The Free Trade Hall was constructed by Liberals in the 1850s in an attempt to claim the heritage of Peterloo for themselves- at least they did not attempt to deny it, although one couldn’t be sure about the current leadership of the Liberal Democrats.
On the 150th anniversary of Peterloo in 1969 Manchester Council was, unusually, run by the Tories. The unpopularity of Harold Wilson’s Labour Government had led to a Tory landslide in 1968 local elections.
The Secretary of Manchester Labour Party had inquired, according to a Guardian report of March 28th 1969, of the Town Clerk whether anything was planned for the anniversary.
The report notes that Alderman Mrs Nellie Beer, the Tory chairwoman of the Town Hall Committee had opined ‘I don’t think a lot will be done. I have no very strong feelings about it. There is always somebody who wants to commemorate something’.
Ms Beer apparently wanted to celebrate something constructive, in particular the 50th anniversary In 1969 of the first Atlantic air crossing which she described as ‘a fine achievement of two very young people’.
By contrast Deputy Leader of Manchester Labour Group Norman Morris countered that Peterloo underlined that ‘the working-class would have to fight for any amelioration of their conditions’.
The Guardian report noted that ‘any celebrations are likely to be a minor key’. This included the Central Library compiling a bibliography on the subject and mounting an exhibition’.
In the event a commemoration was held in the Free Trade Hall in August 1969 with folk singers including Leon Rosselson and speakers such as Michael Foot.
There was a reason of course why Manchester Tories preferred to forget about Peterloo.
The magistrate who gave to order to send in the Yeomanry at Peterloo on 16th August two hundred years ago, William Hulton, was a Tory. His mother owned a race horse named Church and King.
Hulton’s political affiliation was not just a notional one either as E P Thompson noted in reviewing a book by Robert Walmsley on Peterloo published to coincide with the 150th anniversary. Walmsley’s purpose was to rescue and promote the honourable purposes, as he saw it, of Hulton.
Thompson noted that after the ‘blue’ party lost South Lancashire in the 1832 Reform Election, Hulton was a key figure in forming the local Conservative Association which proclaimed itself a friend to the monarchy and to the church.
One wonders if, 205 years on, the Tories are yet ready to apologise for Peterloo?
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