From Peterloo to Gaza: the authorities wish to point out that protesting is bad for you
The author Michael Rosen commented on social media in 2018 that when it comes to protests where the authorities injure or kill protesters they invariably claim that the protesters are to blame. Certainly that is likely to be the official reaction to the latest deaths and injuries of Palestinians in Gaza.
According to Israeli PM Netanyahu the Israel Defence Force is dealing with ‘rioters’ numbers of them children it appears.
We should be cautious about historical comparisons because we can’t be sure we are really comparing like with like. Each situation has its own specificity
Even so the general point that when the authorities injure or kill protesters they invariably find way to blame them for it is valid. At Peterloo for example the claim was that those who gathered to demand the vote were armed in some way. They were not.
The problem the Government in 1819 had was that although Britain was nominally a democracy, in reality it was not, and the only way they could deal with protests was through official violence. It took many years starting with the 1832 Reform Act for the Government to come terms with the need to deal with matters by democratic dialogue. The point has to be continually renewed.
When the Manchester Yeomanry cut down and killed and injured protesters for the vote at Peterloo in central Manchester on 16th August 1819, the authorities did blame this on fleeing protesters.
Still that was a long time ago.
Interestingly on the 150th anniversary of Peterloo in 1969 the Sunday Telegraph repeated the point. Even at that distance the reality of the massacre had to be denied.
The Mandrake column (20th July 1969) was headed ‘the massacre that never was’. Reviewing a new book Robert Walmsley’s Peterloo: the case reopened (MUP) it noted ‘most of the day’s comparatively few casualties were caused were caused by a trampling panic amongst the crowd’.
That is a reassuring explanation, and even if not a factual one, a reminder about how to spin unfortunate events in the present day perhaps….
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