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Blaming the protesters from Peterloo 1819 to the MetPolice 2020

In Uncategorized on January 18, 2020 by kmflett

The publication of a list of potential terrorist organisations from Extinction Rebellion to CND and Stand Up to Racism has of course been explained away by police. Nothing to see here etc.

It is rather evidence of attempts to criminalise protest and dissent and it is not new.

After the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in August 1819 when soldiers attacked a peaceful crowd protesting for the vote, those prosecuted were not the soldiers but the protesters. E P Thompson made the point  in the Making of the English Working Class:

If the Government was unprepared for the news of Peterloo, no authorities have ever acted so vigorously to make themselves accomplices after the fact. Within a fortnight the congratulations of Sidmouth (Home Secretary KF) and the thanks of the Prince Regent were communicated to the magistrates and the military ‘for their prompt, decisive and efficient measures for the preservation of the public peace’. Demands for a parliamentary enquiry were resolutely rejected. Attorney and Solicitor-Generals were ‘fully satisfied’ as to the legality of the magistrates’ actions. The Lord Chancellor (Eldon) was of the ‘clear opinion’ that the meeting was an ‘overt act of treason’.. State prosecutions were commenced, not against the perpetrators, but against the victims of the day- Hunt, Saxton, Bamford and others- and the first intention of charging them with high treason was only abandoned with reluctance. If the Manchester magistrates initiated the policy of repression, the Government endorsed it with every resource at its disposal.. Hay, the clerical magistrate prominent on the Peterloo bench, was rewarded with the £2,000 living of Rochdale.

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