Kmflett's Blog

I was at a Chartist Convention on 2nd November 2019 to mark the 180th anniversary of the Chartist Rising in Newport.

I was pleased to be able acquire a bonnet rouge,the cap of liberty.

As James Epstein noted in his article Understanding the Cap of Liberty (Past and Present 122,1989) it was the great symbol of 1819 and was particularly the source of a struggle between protesters wearing it and the Yeomanry at Peterloo on 16th August 1819.

He notes ‘the ability to display the cap of liberty or to prevent its display became the measure of the shifting balance of power between the forces of authority and those of working class radicalism’.

The Cap of Liberty or Bonnet Rouge had its origins in the French Revolution and as Epstein notes after an absence it had first appeared again in Manchester in January 1819 when Henry Hunt marked his arrival on the scene of Manchester radical politics by addressing a smallish reform meeting at St Petersfield.

The Government financed paper New Times reported that Hunt was surrounded by an immense mob and preceded by the Jacobin red cap.

The paper went on to demand that Parliament pass a law to proscribe for ever.. those ensigns of massacre and rebellion the Bonnet Rouge..’

The Cap of Liberty was a symbol of freedom, democracy and change to a better society in 1819, why not 207 years on as well?