Peterloo, Church & King, the Archbishop of Canterbury & the Tories
After the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby had performed a staring role at the Coronation he appeared in the Lords to criticise the Government’s Immigration Bill and did so on Christian grounds.
This was too much both for senior Tories- step forward of course Suella Braverman but also the Tory media (Times Editorial 11th May)
Yet in making the attack the Tories are disowning their own history
The Magistrate who gave the order to send the Yeomanry in was William Hulton (1787-1864).
In a review of books published to mark the 150th anniversary of Peterloo in 1969 EP Thompson noted that Hutton’s mother had a prize horse called ‘Church and King’ providing a flavour of what the family was like. He noted that when it came to events like Peterloo it was not so much that Hulton would lie about what took place (he did) but that he was simply not interested in what the ‘plebs’, those fighting for the vote, said or did.
Hulton left another legacy aside from Peterloo. As EP Thompson notes in 1832 the Reform Act, a result of Peterloo in 1819, saw the Tories lose South Lancashire. Hulton was one of those who met in a beer house to form the South Lancashire Conservative Association dedicated to defending, like the family horse, Church and King.
That organisation was one of the forerunners of the modern Tory Party.
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