PETERLOO - a place, a time and a film. By Penny Dolan

Some time ago, visiting Manchester for the first time, I “discovered” what seemed an impressive square. An enormous Victorian gothic building dominated the site but, even so, I did wonder why such a large expanse of rain-puddled pavement was – well, there.

 

My A-Z map book gave the name as St Peter’s Square; a small plaque on the wall informed me the area was once an open space known as St Peter’s Field where gatherings and public meetings had traditionally been held.

For a moment, I thought of similar places in London that I knew: Speaker’s Corner at Hyde Park, and a green space out at Hampstead and, opposite Wood Green Tube Station, Spouters Corner, a patch of tarmac where, at weekends,  speakers stood with their placards, promoting vegetarianism, the rights of workers or eastern philosophy, often accompanied by the Salvation Army band, preacher and rattling tins. Occasionally, if one was lucky, there might be a man with novelties in a suitcase, or a three-cup trickster or a half-naked escapologist . . .

However, I was now standing in Manchester, staring at a rather jokey-sounding word for the first time: Peterloo. Remembering, I feel ashamed of my  ignorance then because the incident was not amusing at all. Peterloo was a vicious attack on a public gathering of our own people on that very site. 

             

 

The year was 1819.  The date was the 16^th August. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and a large crowd of Manchester’s working people, dressed in their respectable Sunday best, had gathered in St Peter’s Field.  

It was an uncertain time, Although Napoleon was now defeated, the early nineteenth century so far had been a period of worrying unrest. In 1813, a few years before, the British Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, had been assassinated. The new manufactories had problems with machine-breakers, and the restrictive Corn Laws had brought widespread poverty, hardship and famine across the land.

The people wanted their grievances heard and they wanted representation, but for many the question was “How?” Parliament no longer reflected the distribution of the increased population and was mired in the scandal of the “Rotten Boroughs”, a situation where even men wealthy enough to have a vote had no Member of Parliament to represent their wishes.

The North suffered badly under this system. For example, the whole county of Lancashire, with its growing industrial towns and increased number of inhabitants, had only two MPs. At the other extreme, the one, single enfranchised voter living in the small, now-decayed borough of Old Sarum could elect two whole MPS’s to represent his views. Many felt this as a growing injustice.

All of this was why, on that sunny day in August, a mix of grievances and curiosity brought people from all around Manchester to St Peter’s Field. They wanted to hear the words of a well-known Radical orator, Henry Hunt, who the members of the Manchester Patriotic Union Society had invited to speak on the topic of parliamentary reform.

The local magistrates, wary of Hunt and what might become an unruly mob,, had arranged for soldiers to be in town. Clearly they wanted to be very sure there would be no civil unrest:  they had called up 4 squadrons (600 men) of the 15^th Hussars; several hundred Infantry; the Cheshire Yeoman Cavalry; a detachment of the Royal Horse Artillery, two six-pounder guns, the Manchester Yeoman and six hundred special constables.

William Hulton, the Chief Magistrate and others watched St Peters Field from the window of a nearby house. Although there was no trouble at all, the crowd kept growing. Finally, when Hulton estimated there were 50,000 attending, he sent his local officials and 400 special constables into the moving crowd to clear a wide path through to where Hunt would be speaking and then sent in soldiers to arrest Hunt. The inevitable happened: faced by a hostile, uncertain, milling crowd, the cavalry galloped in with raised sabres, attacking people as they tried to escape the onslaught. By the end of the day, eleven people were killed, including a baby-in-arms, around five hundred men and women were injured and maybe more who would not seek public aid for injuries for fear of further trouble.

As reports of the St Peter’s Field’s massacre spread, many radical thinkers wrote letters and articles condemning the slaughter and questioning the actions of the Magistrates and the military. It was during this furore that the name “Peterloo” was given to this incident: a mocking, bitterly satirical reference to the victorious cavalry charges during the Battle of Waterloo three years before.

However, constantly afraid of real civic revolution, the Government backed the actions of the Magistrates and cracked down on anyone involved in such groups. Soon, under Lord Liverpool, Parliament imposed what became known as the Six Acts.

As a result of these new laws:

-         training in arms and drilling was forbidden

-         the seizure of any arms was authorised

-         prosecutions were simplified

-         seditious assemblies were forbidden

-         blasphemous libels were punished

-         presses were restricted in what they could publish.

And so the battle for representation and suffrage continued, well into the twentieth century.

Peterloo, it seems to me, was an act of hope but it was not the victory that the people hoped for, not then. Yet it was not an insignificant event and, as I write this post, there are aspects of this story that feel far too relevant. (Even at a simple level, was one of those acts why the British people do not normally carry guns?)

This brings another question into my head. As my Manchester introduction demonstrated, “Peterloo” was not an event I had ever been taught about. My own, long-ago Social and Economic History course swept over this specific people’s gathering, losing it among tales of come-by-night Luddites, the machinery of Industrial Revolution and the various Factory Acts.

Puzzled, I asked friends with children at secondary school right now about this matter – thank you! -  but I am still not sure of the result.

Peterloo is not, I think,  specifically included within National Curriculum Key Stage Three History topics (ie in lower secondary school classes, when history is compulsory). And then, post-Options, Peterloo may well depend on exam boards & teachers including the incident within their own particular syllabus. Is it ever raised in schools in a significant way now? If so do let me know.

It surely should and will, because Peterloo is about to be better known. Next year - 2019 - is the two hundredth anniversary of the massacre, so there should be plenty of commemorative events and media attention, particularly from the Guardian newspaper whose roots lie in that same radical Manchester ground. And, before that, on 3^rd November 2018, something else is happening too. 

The film-maker Mike Leigh will be releasing his long-awaited project:

 “PETERLOO”

Although the History Girls blog is about historical fiction, especially novels, I really needed to mention the film here. Why? Just so people will know it is out there.

The great big Christmas circus of films about to descend on multiplexes everywhere with Winter season blockbusters filling every screen from Fireworks Night through to New Year, so you may need to look very hard to find the far-less-festive bread of "Peterloo".

I suspect it is the kind of film that may well appear fleetingly, at “selected screens only” and am not sure how the general distribution will work out. There’s no evidence – yet - of Mike Leigh's film appearing at my local Odeon, but I have spotted that "Peterloo" is scheduled for a single noonday showing on Saturday 3^rd November at City Screen York. 

So, if you want to see Peterloo, and the interpretation that Mike Leigh brings to his film, start studying your arts cinema venues now. Here's the trailer:

After the event, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had been in Italy at the time, wrote his famous poem The Masque of Anarchy, which includes these lines, and unknowingly, a by-line for the film:

Rise like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number.

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you -

Ye are many – they are few.

Penny Dolan

A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E

twitter@pennydolan1.

A new step forward in France, by Carol Drinkwater

We have a new President.
The whole world has learned by now that France has voted for Emmanuel Macron, the youngest man to step into this role since Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon III.
Born in Paris on 20th April 1808,  Louis-Napoléon became President on 20th December 1848.

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew and heir of Napoléon I, was the first head of State to take the title of President and he was the only President of the Second Republic. Barred from running for a second term, he organised a coup d'etat and took the throne as Emperor of France on 2nd December 1852.  He remains the longest serving Head of State in France since the French Revolution, and died in exile in England in 1873 after the fall of his Empire in 1870.

Emmanuel Macron steps into the role of President at the age of thirty-nine and six months so just a tad younger than France's last Emperor, making Macron the youngest President in French history.  Does his age matter? Yes and no. His youth and energy are seen here as a breath of fresh air. His beautiful wife Brigitte Macron is over twenty years his senior making him, I believe, a man with an individual spirit who follows his own path, his own destiny. I watched a clip of their wedding recently and was charmed by the way he spoke so openly about embracing their age difference. I find it quite remarkable when one considers the chauvinism so often shown in politics.

I, we, hope that this mindset will bring courage and a new way of thinking to French politics. Most here are saying that the country is in dire need of reform. Yes, there is much that needs to be addressed - our very high unemployment figures (around ten per cent), the weight of bureaucracy in the public sectors - both are two concerns regularly cited.
Another urgent issue is national security. We are a country that has been living in a state of alerte rouge since January 2015. Over the last two years, France has been the victim of several monstrous terrorist attacks. In these last two and a half years, close to 300 people have been murdered during or as a result of these attacks. Macron's opponent, the far right candidate, Marine Le Pen, has been suggesting measures which would alienate the large Maghrebian (north African) population here in France, would close down our borders, take us out of Europe and do away with the euro. Fortunately, Macron has opposed all these proposed policies. During the televised debate between Macron and Le Pen just days before the second and final round of voting, Macron stood firm against her accusations when she shockingly threw the word 'traitor' at him because he had visited Algeria and stated that France did not behave well during its years as an imperialist power there and that some of the acts perpetrated against French colonial citizens were crimes against humanity. It took great courage and integrity to stand firm on national television, peak viewing, to repeat his position. I agree with Macron. Like him I also believe that until France takes responsibility for its past, healing and social meshing cannot take place.

I have written about France and its Algerian history in other History Girls posts: http://the-history-girls.blogspot.fr/2015/01/je-suis-charlie-carol-drinkwater_26.html  and  http://the-history-girls.blogspot.fr/2015/02/a-potted-history-of-french-algeria.html

The terrorists who perpetrated the appalling attacks here, from Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 onwards, are, or were, members of and trained by ISIS/Daech. They are not necessarily directly related to France's colonial past except that many of the disenfranchised north Africans living, in most cases, in very difficult conditions on the outskirts of French cities have been easy pickings for the terrorist organisations. These second and third generation French citizen youths are without work, living on the fringes of our society, despised and looked down upon by a percentage of the population and their rights and needs are not always being met. How easy then to lure them into acts against the establishment, to stoke up within them the hatred and anger necessary to commit such atrocities. The solid impenetrable establishment does not want to hear that France owes a great debt and more than an apology to the citizens of its colonial past. Macron's words were not easy to hear for many and were outrightly denied by others, such as Marine Le Pen.
It is a breath of fresh air to hear a politician say that his nation must take responsibility for its crimes before any future can be built. I applaud Macron for not buckling at the possibility of losing votes because of the position he had taken.

My new novel, THE LOST GIR, to be published in just over a month on 29th June in the UK is set in two locations and several time zones. At its heart it is a contemporary story which begins the night of Friday 13th November 2015 in Paris. That night there were six terrorist attacks all within the eastern quarters of Paris. Over 200 people were murdered many of them youngsters attending a rock concert at the Bataclan concert hall near Bastille.

How did this book come about? The evening of the terrorism in Jan 2015 really affected me and set the tone for my response to the 13 November attacks. My husband was in Paris when the Charlie Hebdo attacks took place. He was working at his office which in those days was one street away from the CH offices. Naturally, I was terrified when I heard the news before I knew the precise location. Once all was revealed, I learned from Michel, my husband, that he had worked with one of the illustrators who was murdered that late afternoon.
The fact that it was a colleague, someone just one step away, a man working in the arts, not a close friend of Michel's but a respected colleague, this really shook me up.
Freedom of speech, freedom to believe whatever one chooses as long as it does not cause harm to others, freedom to love whomsoever one chooses, as long as we are not talking about minors or unwilling partners. These are at the heart of French values, a cornerstone of this society. 2015 was a turning point for me in that I recognised how living in France has transformed me. I also realised that speaking out and mourning publicly for the victims was essential. I felt that I had to stand up and be counted.
THE LOST GIRL was in gestation, I see now, even before the night of 13th November.
That evening I switched on the television to see the news which is not something I am in the habit of doing. I was standing with my mother in the living room and together we watched the events unfolding. I was weeping. Mummy said to me, talking particularly about the young who were trapped as hostages within the Bataclan where two gunmen were shooting, picking off audience members one after another in cold blood 'Everyone of them is someone's daughter or son. Mothers are waiting everywhere to hear the news.'
My story was seeded, although I did not know it that evening. Several days later, I put aside the novel I was at work on and began to write ...

Kurtiz is an Englishwoman, a renowned photographer who has become estranged from her actor husband. Their marriage fell apart when their sixteen-year-old daughter, Lizzie, went missing from their London home four years earlier. Out of the blue, there is a sighting of Lizzie in Paris. Kurtiz's husband, Oliver, firmly believes his daughter will be at the Bataclan rock concert and he goes there in search of her. Kurtiz is waiting in a nearby bar for news, for a meeting, for a craved-for reconciliation.

THE LOST GIRL is a love story with plenty of drama. At its heart it is a tale of new beginnings, of second chances, of learning to forgive and to seize the moment and live.

France has voted, not for extremism and fascist knee-jerk reactions, not for closing down its borders, but for new beginnings, for building upon the knowledge that within its recent past, the nation, the ruling powers, have committed crimes. With an open heart, the long slow journey towards healing and creating opportunities for those who have been left out in the cold, can begin.
I am feeling optimistic.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

I wrote this blog and posted it at the beginning of this week. A day later, Manchester in the United Kingdom was hit. A suicide bomber waited to explode his foul ammunition on young people preparing to make their way home from a rock concert. First,  my sincere condolences to those who have lost members of their families. R.I.P to those who lost their lives. I pray that those who were injured may recover speedily. Lastly, huge respect to the citizens of Manchester who handled the abomination with such compassion. During my time researching The Lost Girl I spent a month watching filmed material of the events of that night in Paris and the long harrowing days that succeeded it. One of the most remarkable things I took away from all that I watched was the generosity of the Parisians, the French. Blood was given, doors left open. Everyone was on hand to help do their bit to counter the ugliness of such an atrocity. In all the war zones I have visited for my work and travels, for the research for The Lost Girl and for all that I have read over these last few days from Manchester, I have been deeply moved time and time again by our ability to express compassion and generosity to others who are suffering. Man's indomitable spirit. Our kindness, our desire to reach out and offer a hand to another in need. I hope these qualities come across in my novel and I sincerely pray that these are the energies that will overcome these appalling waves of terrorism.

MANCHESTER JUNE 15th, 1996 by Adèle Geras

  Twenty years ago....a long time ago...once upon a time...back in the day, terrorists had much better manners.  On the morning of June 15th (a most beautiful, sunny day in Manchester) the IRA rang up the police and gave them notice that there would be a bomb in the city centre.  Remember that: the police had notice of the bomb. They sent in robots to find it, and they had time to evacuate the 80, 000 people working in shops and office in the area.

       Meanwhile, four  miles down the road, in leafy West Didsbury, I was getting ready to go to town. I was in search of a wedding present and I intended to go to Debenham's to look around their rather good cookery store. 

I took the 42 bus and as this was long, long ago in the days when most people still didn't have mobile phones, I gazed out of the window at Manchester looking rather lovely. As I say, the sun was shining. There was a some exciting sporting event going on...was it the Olympics? European Cup? In any case, there was something happening that was lifting this normally vibrant city to even more vibrant heights.

I didn't think anything of it when I got off the bus at Piccadilly Gardens and saw crowds filling the space. I was pondering jugs, possibly lovely glasses, or maybe even some kind of coffee pot for my friends who were getting married. I crossed the square to get to Debenham's, making my way through lots of (now I'm remembering) very quiet people. On the pavement in front of Debenham's stood a policeman. Behind him, the street was cordoned off. There was no traffic, I noticed,  on Market Street. I said to the policeman: "Can I go into Debenham's, please?"
 "No, sorry," said the policeman. "The whole area's cordoned off. We've just had a bomb threat."

In that instant, the bomb went off.  A huge, loud, fiery explosion which shook the ground and hurt the ears and which I could see, rising above the buildings. I saw it. I was standing about three minute's walk from where it detonated. Smoke, and alarms going off and everyone in the square still not saying a thing, and not moving. I will never forget it. The policeman didn't bat an eyelid. Cool doesn't begin to cover it.
 "You'd better go and stand over there with the others," he said. And so I did.

I went to stand with everyone else. There were suddenly lots of police everywhere. People from Debenham's and other shops nearby, still in their shop uniforms, were standing in tight groups. Buses appeared: lots and lots of buses, and someone from the police guided  thousands and thousands of us towards them as they left  Piccadilly Gardens going south. They didn't charge anyone for the ride.  People lined up at the bus stops. There wasn't one person I saw who pushed, or shoved or made any fuss of any kind. They simply lined up and got on the buses. There were long, long queues at the phone boxes. One at a time, everyone stood there, waiting to phone someone to tell them they were okay and not to worry. I didn't see a mobile phone that day, though I guess there must have been some early ones around. 80,000 people were behaving as well as any group of people I've ever seen has ever behaved. Calm police persons, calm bus drivers, silent passengers looking over their shoulders, back at the centre of town, which was now changed forever. Every pane of glass within a very wide radius was shattered. The hundred or so injured people were hurt by broken glass.  Not one single person was killed. That's worth saying again: NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON WAS KILLED. And that's because terrorists in those days behaved differently  from today's killers. A phone call made the difference.

When I got home, my husband, who'd heard the noise of the explosion from four miles away, dismissed it as a lorry backfiring or something. He'd been reading. There was no Twitter, nor  any internet  connection to tell him the news. We turned on the tv and watched the reports. We listened to the radio. We read the newspapers.  And that was it.

A short while later, we went into town to see the damage for ourselves. I remember a pub with a big chalkboard in front of it and on it in big letters was the legend: F*** YOU, IRA! We're open!" That was the attitude of the whole city. The centre was rebuilt to be even better than it was before, and there were jokers who persisted in saying that the IRA had done us a favour.  Nevertheless, I can still remember how I felt that night as we walked around in streets full of broken windows and twisted traffic lights: bereft. Sadder than I thought it was  possible to be about the physical fabric of the city. To see the buildings destroyed hurt me in a way I'd never have thought possible. "No one was killed," I kept telling myself. "This can be rebuilt." As indeed it was, and in record time, but the wounds to bricks and mortar were very sore that night and I can recall how it felt whenever I see pictures of war zones, so much, much worse than anything Manchester suffered.

There are many clips on Youtube which show film of what I've been describing. Just put in Manchester IRA Bomb on the site and that'll get you there.  But what these clips of film can't describe is the people, who were amazing and brave and in every way admirable.  And that's one thing that hasn't changed in the twenty intervening years. For the most part, people behave admirably when things get tough.