Sheffield April 11th 1820: 200 armed men shout ‘the Revolution, the Revolution’
The 11th April 1820 was the conclusion to a series of armed protests and General Strikes that took place in Yorkshire after the Cato St Conspiracy was broken by police and soldiers on February 23rd 1820.
That day and night 200 armed Sheffield men had gathered at pre-agreed meeting points led by John Blackwell an agitator with a track record of militant activity. They marched in ranks like soldiers. Gathering in the Haymarket shouts were heard including “Hunt and Liberty,” “the Revolution, the Revolution,” and “All in a mind for the Barracks.”
However they did not attack the barracks on that day, possibly having a further rising in mind on 14th April 1820. Blackwell was arrested on 12th April and later tried at York and sentenced to 30 months in jail.
It was a conclusion to an episode of revolutionary possibility in Yorkshire two hundred years ago this month although certainly not the end of the armed tradition in British radical politics.
More details can be found in Fred Donnelly and John Baxter, Sheffield and the English Revolutionary Tradition 1791-1820. International Review of Social History Vol 20/3 1975.
2020 Update from John Baxter
Jacky Blacker was a radical journeyman tailor who started his career as a street radical ‘King of the Gallery’ leading the anti authoritarian antics of the people sitting in the ‘Gods’..cheap seats in theatre some time before he organised a political riot that started with clog owearing unemployed marching into town to take part in a food riot which mutated into an attack on the militia arms depot in 1812,he organised a’ bread or blood’ riot in 1816 synchronised with the Speancean attempts to peel off numbers from the SpaFields meeting in December 1816. This was his third political intervention .In my newest interpretation of the Sheffield 1820 events as part of the radical movement and the ‘road to insurrection in the West Riding 1819-20(the post war second wave)..Borthwick Paper 131(my guess is as good as yours when this will be out but at printers..written with Joe Stanley) looks like Blackwell was probably involved in post Peterloo street protest in August 1819..his timing in April1820..makes it look like a distraction or dummy run to deceive up the authorities in Sheffield on the evening the Barnsley weavers were preparing to match to Grange moor..the rendezvous for the second attack on Huddersfield following the failures in Scotland.
Jacky Blacker died in the poorhouse in 1839 as Holberry was coming to the fore as a street smart leader of the local Chartist revolutionary underground.
Leave a Reply