Peterloo, Preston & Potato Pies

On Wednesday night we went to the cinema, here in Nottingham, see a preview of the soon to be released film “Peterloo” which tells the story of the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester on August 16th 1819. The film is on general cinema release from next week. For those not familiar with the historical background and context of Peterloo (shame on you!) what became known as the Peterloo Massacre came some four years after the Duke of Wellington’s victory over Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. The turmoil in Europe caused by the Napoleonic Wars had impacted upon trade and this was exacerbated by a series of bad harvests. One result of all this was that the British government introduced the notorious and hated Corn Laws to keep the price of grain high in the face of cheaper foreign imports. Consequently, while this made the great landowners – the aristocracy – wealthy it had a huge impact upon food prices – especially bread – driving many ordinary people close  to starvation. Added to this the Napoleonic Wars had impacted, too, upon wider industries and one of the worst effected was the Lancashire cotton industry; the industrial revolution had changed the industry forever – mechanisation had brought the building of the great Lancashire cotton mills but this in turn gave rise to cheap labour, starvation level wages, dreadful working conditions, unemployment and grinding poverty as machines increasingly took over the roles traditionally done by man and womankind. 

As I write these words I am reminded that maybe there are parallels with today - as stupidly, via Brexit, we seek to walk away from the opportunities, friendships and shared values that Europe provides. At the same time we are being constantly reminded that Artificial Intelligence and advanced technology is threatening the jobs of thousands, perhaps millions. History, it seems, is starting to repeat itself!

It was against this background that there grew up the desire to change things and one of the most important of these desires was to reform the voting system so that everyone (or at least every man) had a vote. Once ordinary people had a say in the government it was argued then things could be changed for the better. There was, however, a problem. Many areas of the country – especially in the industrial north where conditions were the worst - had no members of Parliament.  Manchester, for example, was one such place. Despite being one of the major urban and most densely populated areas of the country it had no representative in Parliament and the movement developed in Manchester and similarly affected places to change this state of affairs.

A contemporary depiction of Peterloo

In a sense this was closely linked to the American War of Independence that had occurred forty or so years previously when America broke off from British domination and became a country in its own right. At that time (1773) in the American port of Boston, for example, local Bostonians in an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party, poured chests of tea (which were taxable – the money going to far off London) into the harbour at the same time announcing that there would be “No taxation without representation” – in other words they would not pay the tax demanded by Britain unless they had some representatives in the British Parliament.

And another

Hard on the heels of the American War of Independence came the French Revolution which sent shock waves through the capitals, palaces and aristocratic salons of Europe and brought fear to the ruling classes of the continent that similar events might occur in their countries. In Britain, as soldiers returned home from the war against Napoleon and against a backdrop of unemployment, food shortages and famine there was a real fear that insurrection and revolution might break out as it had done in France in 1789. In this context the demand for political reform became louder.

The story of Peterloo that grew out of this is short and violent. Its effects, however, became long lasting and of crucial important to the freedoms and rights that we in the UK enjoy today. A few years ago a report suggested – rightly I think - that Peterloo is, together with the signing of the Maga Carta and the Putney Debates of 1647, one of the three most important events to influence political reform in our island’s history. Magna Carta, signed by King John in 1216, gave very basic rights to all freemen – the right to a fair trial etc. and was, perhaps the first step towards some kind of democratic government and relationship between the individual and the state. The Putney Debates  were set up during the Civil War by Oliver  Cromwell to discuss a constitution once the King had been removed. During those debates there were, for me, spoken some of the greatest, most important – if not the greatest and most important - words ever spoken in the English language and which defined the relationship between the individual and the state. They were spoken by Thomas Rainsborough, a Parliamentary soldier and a Leveller. He believed in universal suffrage, an end to the monarchy, religious tolerance, universal ownership of common land and equality of justice for all men. One of the greatest speakers of his day, Rainsborough  argued with Cromwell about the nature of democracy and the right to a vote. This is a transcript of some of the words spoken between the two men in the debate:

Oliver Cromwell: “If they that have no goods and chattels make the laws equally with them that hath, then they will make laws to take away the property of them that hath.”

Thomas Rainsborough: “If it be that all Englishmen cannot be free and some Englishmen have property and other have nought, then you have said it, my Lord General, not me...For really, I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he and therefore truly, Sir, I think it clear, that every man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own consent put himself under that Government; but I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound to that Government if he hath not had a voice to put himself under.”

From the film "Peterloo"

Wonderful words, no matter how many times I read them I cannot help but get a lump in my throat; they say in a nutshell and in the most compelling and uplifting way, how we are all, no matter what our social or economic standing, entitled to certain basic rights: “.....I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he.....” and “every man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own consent put himself under that Government; but I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound to that Government if he hath not had a voice to put himself under.” Those who met in St Peter's Fields in Manchester two centuries ago would have understood perfectly what Rainsborough was saying: we all have an obligation to support and live within the laws of our elected government - but equally we all have an equal right to a say, a vote, in choosing that government no matter how rich or poor we are; everyone has a vote and everyone's vote is equal. But, if we do not have a vote, a say in who shall govern us, then we have no obligation to that government. Rainsborough’s words go straight to the very heart of all the rights and privileges that we all enjoy today; they should, in my view be learned by heart by every child, man and woman in the country, be displayed on every classroom and public building wall, and be printed upon all government letterheads and documents so important are they in defining what our democracy is about and what our country should be about - and why we should protect it at whatever cost.

But the third of these three great events, Peterloo, left a different, but none the less important heritage. Against the background described above on August 16th 1819 about 70,000 ordinary people from the area gathered on St Peter’s Field in Manchester to listen to one of the great political orators of the day, Henry Hunt, talk about reforming the electoral system and extending some form of democracy. Hunt, in later years, became the MP for my home town - Preston, so I had long known that the story of Peterloo had a local connection to my own life. There were men women and children in the crowd, it was a peaceful gathering but local magistrates and cotton mill owners, under pressure from the government in London, called on the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry to arrest Hunt and several others. The Yeomanry charged into the crowd, knocking down a woman and killing a child, and finally apprehending Hunt. However in the midst of the throng they became fragmented and lost control, acting with violence on unarmed people. The 15th Hussars were then summoned by the magistrates to disperse the crowd. They charged with sabres drawn, and in the ensuing confusion, 15 people were killed and nearly 700 injured. There were reporters there from several newspapers and in the days that followed the event was widely reported together with illustrations of what took place. One of the most famous reports was that of the London Times which gave the event the name the Peterloo Massacre, an ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo, which had taken place just four years earlier.

Maxine Peake as she appears in the film

Peterloo's immediate effect was to cause the government to crack down on political reform but in the longer term it created the atmosphere for change – it caused the first cracks in the dam. As newspapers became more common, as literacy slowly improved and with the coming of the railways communications improved so the demand for political reform grew and became more organised. In 1832 the Great Reform Act was passed outlawing parliamentary seats being “bought” and towns such as Manchester were given the right to elect MPs. Importantly, men were given the right to vote. However, it was only men who owned property worth at least £10 could vote, which cut out most of the working classes, and only men who could afford to pay to stand for election could be MPs. This 1832 Reform Act did not go far enough to silence all protest and another 30 or so years until the passing of the Reform Act of 1867 would pass before more change came and all men would be enfranchised. As we all know, it was not until 1918 that some women (property owners older than 30) could vote. At that election, the first woman MP was elected but women would have to wait until 1928 to receive the same voting rights as men. It had been a long struggle – some may say it is still not complete – but the events two centuries ago at St Peter’s Field in Manchester was a crucial staging point in that struggle and the event that perhaps eventually opened up the flood gates to reform as the dam burst.

Film Director Mike Leigh at Wednesday's Premier of his film

The film “Peterloo” directed by Mike Leigh is magnificent and tells the tale of the events of that far off day. The acting is superb and as I sat in the cinema I was suddenly back in my home town of Preston (which is about 30 miles north of Manchester) where I was born, grew up and lived until I was about twenty. As I mentioned above, I had already felt a connection with the events on that far off day because Henry Hunt, the great west country orator subsequently became MP for my home town, Preston and his is a name still revered there, but there were other, more personal "connections".  Many of the cast were, I knew, Lancashire born and bred and their soft Lancashire accents suddenly made me feel at home. I was back in my childhood and youth, too, when I heard some of the Lancastrian sayings and colloquialisms that I grew up with and haven’t heard for years – for example when actress Maxine Peake chides one of her family and tells him to “think on”; how many thousand times did my mother say those two words to me as a child when I had misbehaved......”Don’t do that again” she would say “Think on”! Or when one of the characters goes off in a huff and his angry wife says “Oh, he’s got a cob on” – pure Lancashire from my childhood! So, too, the man who declared that he was going home to enjoy the potato pie his wife had promised to bake for him that night -  I could almost taste the delicious Lancashire potato  pies from Billy Southworth’s pie bakery on the corner of Rigby Street and Maitland Street in 1950s Preston that I enjoyed so much as a child. The taste and smell of them now are overwhelming me as I write this and making my mouth water! And then, crashing into my consciousness as I sat in the dark cinema a scene where the inside of a cotton mill is portrayed took me back in time. Line after line of looms, with the women weavers tending them. The noise excruciatingly loud and I was suddenly back in Emerson Road Mill or Horrockses where my mother and auntie worked as weavers. I can still hear that noise today, I can still feel the vibration of the pavement in New Hall Lane as you walked passed Horrockses on a working day – like some mechanical earthquake.  I can also remember vividly how different it was during Preston Holiday Weeks at the end of July each year when the mills closed for their annual holiday and the streets seemed strangely silent. My mother was not deaf but could lip read almost perfectly, the result of years spent in the unremitting noise of the mill. As this mill scene filled the screen my wife turned and smiled at me – she knew exactly what was going through my mind.

As always, director Mike Leigh gets it just right, capturing the very essence of people, places and situations but there was one other thing that took me back – not about the film but about the story of Peterloo – something else that is very much part of me and has been for the past sixty odd years.

Henry Hunt addresses the gathering in Leigh's film

One of the most important “spin offs” from Peterloo came three years after the event. At the time of the massacre a local Manchester newspaper, the Manchester Observer had been instrumental in the organising of the reform movement in Manchester. In the aftermath of the event this newspaper was closed down by the magistrates as it was alleged to be seditious.  As a result, and to take the Observer's place, in 1821 the Manchester Guardian was founded by a reformist cotton merchant John Edward Taylor with backing from the “Little Circle”, a group of like minded, non-conformist businessmen. It was from these humble beginnings that my newspaper of the past 60 plus years grew – first as the Manchester Guardian and now today as the Guardian one of the great crusading newspapers of the world. The Guardian, a left of centre, liberal, reforming newspaper is often at the forefront of campaigns to improve the lot of individuals and groups within  British society and further afield. I can’t begin to contemplate beginning  a day without my Guardian, it has been my lifelong companion, mentor, and looking glass on the world for nearly the whole of my life. Without Peterloo it is a matter of conjecture as to whether this internationally acclaimed newspaper would be here today. The Guardian was born out of the events at St Peter’s Field.

When I was about twelve years old, in the mid 1950s, I began to work as a newspaper delivery boy walking round the narrow Preston streets reading the papers as I delivered them. The majority of papers I delivered to the rows of tiny two up two down terraced houses were everyday tabloids – the Mirror, Express, Herald, Pictorial, Mail etc. I even delivered the Daily Mirror to my own house!  My mother always read the paper and I suppose that from an early age, I got used to the fact that reading a daily paper was what people did. My mother, a cotton weaver, always read the Mirror editorial and the daily item by William Connor a man who wrote for the Mirror for many years under the pen name Cassandra. She always had some disparaging comment about what she read – usually about politicians - and so again, I suppose that a healthy criticism and cynicism about what was in the papers was part of my inheritance.

Panic sets in as the soldiers charge into the crowd

Each morning before school I would tread the streets delivering my round. I can still remember the newsagent Joe Unsworth’s scrawling pencil addressing the edge of each paper: 156 New Hall Lane, 18 Caroline St, 72 Wilbraham Street, 16 Owtram Street......... . I knew what everybody read and what to expect as I pulled each newspaper or magazine from my bag. I knew where those who enjoyed a flutter on the horses lived because they took the Racing Post, I knew where the Catholic or Jewish people lived because there was always a healthy number of Catholic Times or Jewish Chronicle  to deliver and I knew where the elderly ladies sat with their knitting needles whenever I popped a My Weekly or Woman’s Weekly through their letter box.

One house, however, was special – the house that was at the furthest point of my round  - 220  Brockholes View. It was this house that largely and unbeknown to me at the time, would change my life and largely make me what I am today.  All those years ago as I delivered its newspapers I never saw the house itself - it had a high wall in front of it - and so I posted the daily newspaper (and each Thursday the Radio Times) through a letter box in a small door in the wall. The only time I saw the owner was each Christmas, when the wall door would open as I pushed the newspaper through, and an elderly gentleman would press a small Christmas tip into my hand. This elderly man took the Manchester Guardian (as the Guardian then was) each day; it was the only Guardian I delivered on my round. As a young teenager I quickly learned that this was the only paper worth reading. By 13 or 14 I was an avid reader.

As I walked the streets all those years ago, reading the closely printed paper – I read sports’ reports first. But then, as I became a little older, political and news reports which seemed, so far as my young mind could judge, to be far more factual and unbiased than those I read in other papers in my bag. Political parties and people of all persuasions seemed to be praised or chastised in equal measure - but always with an argument based on fact rather than prejudice, inference or emotive language.  There seemed no sensationalist headlines, no obvious bias, and, something I loved, a rich, challenging vocabulary and ideas – words that I had never read and in all honesty didn’t know how to say or which spoke of ideas that I little understood but about which I wanted to find out. I instinctively knew that this was the real thing rather than the shallow, easy to read tub thumping of Cassandra in the Daily Mirror.

The very first edition in 1821 of the Manchester Guardian

Much of the stuff I read was, at that stage, beyond me, but I soaked it up. Often at the end of the round and before making my way to school I would go home and look in my mother’s old battered dictionary for words that I didn’t understand. I leafed through my second hand set of Arthur Mee’s Encyclopaedias to find out about places, events and names that were mentioned in the Guardian. The Guardian headlines seemed to my young eyes and mind to be calm factual and not emotive clarion calls of the other papers that I delivered and as I walked the streets, with my bag of newspapers around my neck, I knew it was quite different from every other paper and it increasingly satisfied my inner desire for clarity and detail with news that had some worth, not sensationalist tabloid dross or scurrilous tittle-tattle.  Each day, as I left Joe Unsworth’s paper shop with my bag full, I took the Guardian out and read it all the way round the streets.  It was usually very crumpled and often wet by the time I delivered it to 220  Brockholes View! I devoured it and dragged my feet as I approached the doorway in the wall and knew that I would have to push it through the letter box. I recently Googled 220 Brockholes View and was pleased to see that the door in the wall is still there; the door has changed and the wall has been painted, but it's still the place where, each morning, I would post a rather crumpled and often damp Manchester Guardian through the letter box!

The rest as they say is history! Once I began to buy my own newspaper there was only one for me! When I left Fishwick Secondary Modern in 1961 and took a job as a trainee draughtsman at Thermic Engineering in Salmon Street, just off London Road in Preston, each morning as I walked to work I would pick up my Manchester Guardian. It would sit on the edge of my drawing board until lunchtime when it would be devoured with my sandwiches! When, a few years later I enrolled on an A Level course at Blackpool Technical College with a view to becoming a teacher I would sit on the Ribble bus from Preston to engrossed in my Guardian oblivious to the passing Fylde countryside. And finally, when I left home and found myself at teacher training college here in Nottingham my Guardian was still my daily companion. My wife, a fellow student, always said that she first noticed me because I was always the person sitting in the empty lecture theatre prior the lecture engrossed in his Guardian! It  has started my day ever since those far off times!  

So, as we sat in the darkened cinema on Tuesday evening enjoying Mike Leigh’s retelling of this terrible yet great and important event in Lancashire and wider British history it brought me, on a variety of levels, back to my on Lancashire roots. As we left the cinema to take the tram back home the Nottingham streets, the wine bars and the clubs were, as always, full of youngsters enjoying the night. I wondered to myself how many of them know (or even care) that the rights and the privileges that they now take so much for granted were hard won by the ghosts of the past – in this case in my home county, on St Peter’s Field almost two centuries ago. 

Like all things, familiarity breeds contempt and it is a sad paradox of modern civic life that we have all had it so good for so many years – a largely peaceful world, a steadily improving quality of life, better health, better diet, greater opportunities to fulfil our ambitions and dreams, and all the other things that we just accept now and take for granted as the everyday expectations of life – that we sadly often no longer appreciate why these hard won “rights" and opportunities were so important and needed in the first place. Institutions like the EU, the Human Rights Act, the United Nations, our legal and electoral systems, the NHS, our free education system, our various welfare policies and departments......and so many other institutions, rights and privileges that are necessary to ensure our present way of life were all brought about because life was so uncertain, precarious or fraught with danger before they existed. The 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes commented about life in his times, saying that it was "poor, nasty, brutish and short" - and I'm sure that those who found themselves at St Peter's Field in  August 1819 would have agreed with Hobbes; but what they, and others, indirectly won that was the security, care, full stomachs, generally good health, and a peaceful world that we today enjoy. As I look at today's world - Brexit, populist extremists taking control across the world (even in what we all think of as a citadel of democracy,  America)  and a disaffection and uncaring attitude towards democracy, civic pride and involvement by many I fear for the future;  we are forgetting our past and just how terrible life was in days gone by. As the ex- Lord Chief Justice Lord Bingham famously said upon his retirement as the most senior judge in the land a few years ago: “ Which of these rights, privileges, institutions and laws would you discard? Would you prefer to live in a country where they did not exist? There are, indeed, countries in the world where these rights,  privileges, institutions and the rule of law are not available to their populations, but they are probably not  places where any of us would wish to live”.  Amen to that.

So it is right that we remember that fateful day two centuries ago when a few thousand humble Lancashire folk went for a day out to listen to a public speaker in the hope that their difficult and dreadfully hard lives, and the futures of their children, might be improved. In the event, a happy day in the August sunshine became a massacre but in being so it also created in the longer term the chain reaction of circumstances, people and events that made today’s world, and indeed my own world, what it now is.

If you haven’t seen “Peterloo” then go and see it – I promise that you’ll not only enjoy it as a good film, but you will learn about one of the great events in British history.  Perhaps, too, it will make you proud of the precious gifts that our ancestors gave to us and it just might  encourage you to take an active part in using, cherishing and defending the rights and privileges  that are now so much taken for granted in our democracy and that our forefathers and mothers won.  In this day and age it has never been more important stand up for democracy as we face threats of extremism of all kinds: globalisation, fake news, tyranny, populism and attempts by people and organisations who would, if given the chance, control us and take away those hard won freedoms and rights  which were gained at such a cost. Mike Leigh's "Peterloo" reminded me of the importance of all of that – but, as I walked back through Nottingham’s streets on Wednesday evening it also, in a small way, connected me, now in my eighth decade, with my home county of Lancashire and with my own long ago history and how it made me what and who I am.