Kmflett's Blog

The Cato St conspiracy at 204: An outcrop of Peterloo & the armed tradition in working-class politics

Cato St, Marylebone

It is 204 years since the Cato St conspiracy was ‘uncovered’ on 23^rd February 1820 and the leaders duly despatched at the scaffold or to Australia

It warrants a section in E P Thompson’s classic account of the Making of the English Working Class (1963). It probably remains the best assessment of what the actual significance of the Cato St conspiracy actually was.

The conspirators, who like others before them, had been infiltrated by Government spies, planned to attack a ‘Cabinet Dinner’, murder the Prime Minister, Home Secretary etc and display their heads on poles.

The dinner of course did not exist except with the purpose of entrapping the conspirators led by veteran Conspirator Arthur Thistlewood.

The plan was to spark a series of uprisings around the country in revenge for the Peterloo Massacre. It hinted at the existence of a revolutionary underground network, which has been historically controversial.

Thompson doesn’t dismiss the idea but there remains remarkably little work into the armed tradition in British working class politics. Many in 2024 might be surprised that it existed at all.

Certainly the conspirators had the support of some sections of the London working class, notably the shoemakers, who might well have risen had the conspiracy to murder the Cabinet worked. Thompson argues that the likely result then would have been a bloody few days in London while the army restored order.

The Cato St conspirators Thompson points out were amongst the last outcrop of those in a Jacobin political tradition who preferred to plot secretly rather than agitate and organise openly. That of course was the path taken by the British working class.

The immediate impact of the ‘discovery’ of the conspiracy was to ease the passage of the Six Acts proposed after Peterloo in 1819 that severely restricted democratic political activity.

Thompson however argues that it was not Cato St or the Six Acts that had the lasting influence on events but Peterloo itself. He notes ‘it served notice on the middle class reformers and Whigs as to the consequences that would flow from their loss of influence over the unrepresented masses… Second the experience of the post-war agitation shook the confidence of the ancient regime in itself ; and some of the loyalists of 1819 became, in the 1820s, willing to admit the need for limited concessions.

It was the road of mass organisation not conspiracy that was the way forward

Thompson’s point remains valid although more recent research has suggested a much wider context to and impact of Cato St than he allowed for