London Socialist Historians
Media Release
29th September
Contact Dr Keith Flett 07803 167266
As Tories meet on the site of Peterloo will Johnson at last acknowledge the 200th anniversary?
The London Socialist Historians Group, which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in central London has called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to acknowledge the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre and the important role it played in promoting the rise of Parliamentary Democracy in Britain.
The Conservative Party Conference meets at Manchester Central for its 2019 Conference which stands on an area that was part of where the Peterloo Massacre took place. The new monument to the Massacre by Jeremy Deller is immediately adjacent.
The Massacre in which 18 died and hundreds were injured in a protest to demand the vote took place two hundred years ago this year on 16th August 1819. Boris Johnson was silent on the anniversary itself.
There is no question that the Conservatives have baggage when it comes to Peterloo as the man who sent the Yeomanry in on horseback to disperse the crowd, William Hulton (1787-1864) was a lifelong Tory and after the 1832 Reform Act a founder of the South Lancashire Conservative Association.
However the historians say that after 200 years a Conservative Prime Minister should at least be able to state that the Massacre was wrong and should not have happened.
London Socialist Historians Convenor Dr Keith Flett said, it would be odd indeed if the leader of a democratic political party meeting on the site of Peterloo in the 200th anniversary year did not acknowledge both the dreadful events of that day and the important role they played in the history of British Parliamentary Democracy
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