Could Peterloo in 1819 happen again?
On Monday 16th August 1819 in central Manchester around 60,000 people gathered to protest for the vote which few if any of them had.
The Yeomanry, local businessmen on horseback, rode into the protesters, on the order of Tory Magistrate William Hulton and cut them down with sabres. Tens were killed and thousands injured.
The reason for the attack remains unclear. It may be that the Government had ordered it. It might be that the Magistrates acted on their own- they were certainly supported by the Government afterwards.
The demonstration posed a new threat to the ruling order as the start of the age of mass democracy. The authorities were unsure how to deal with such a gathering- having only a shoestring police force- and feared violence.
In fact the protesters were peaceful and the violence came from the authorities.
An issue is whether such an event could happen again
The socialist historian E P Thompson argued that such was the reaction to Peterloo that the authorities determined not to violently attack peaceful democratic protest again. Industrial disputes were another matter.
In fact during the Chartist period there were some attacks with deaths and injuries on protests, but nothing on the scale of Peterloo.
More recently however in Derry in 1972 at a protest for democracy, known as Bloody Sunday, the army did shoot and kill and injure protesters. Again the claim was the violence was planned.
50 years on with an increasingly authoritarian State could Peterloo happen again?
Most protest in 2024 in Britain whether on climate or against racism or for better conditions at work relies on mass peaceful mobilisation. Civil disobedience is also a strategy used for example by Just Stop Oil but again peacefully.
Where violence does occur at protests it is often provoked by police tactics.
However if the State perceives a protest threatens the interests of capital the use of the army certainly can’t be ruled out. The 1984/5 miners strike gave a glimpse of that. It was an industrial dispute but also a political one.
That said if demonstrations are large enough the capacity of the State to stop them in any way can be limited- see the 2003 protest against the Iraq War and the mass demonstrations on Gaza from October 2023.
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