Eliza Carthy on the Peterloo Massacre

On August 16, 1819, a great assembly was called at St Peter’s Field in Manchester, to witness the call of ordinary working people to Parliament in order to better represent the North West. The lead speaker was a man called Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt, known for messages of equality and honour and for ostentatiously waving a white hat to signify liberty.

Up to 60,000 walked to Manchester on the appointed day from surrounding towns, villages and cities. Newly established female reform societies, co-ordinated and dressed all in white, carried flags and handkerchiefs. The Manchester Female Reform Society, led by the inspirational Mary Fildes, accompanied Hunt to the stage, with Fildes taking a place in Hunt’s carriage.

To provide context: Mad King George was still alive, but useless and raving. His son, often referred to as ‘Prinny’, was corpulent and lazy and uninterested in the many troops that came back broken from his unpopular victory at Waterloo. To deal with veterans returning from France unable to work, he and his government would eventually introduce the Vagrancy Laws, in 1824, to stop them from begging. The Napoleonic Wars had concluded just five years earlier, but prosperity had not returned and the people of the North West had only two MPs in the Commons, an inequality that saw them question the very structure of Parliament and push the need for working families to have the vote.

The ensuing Peterloo Massacre is well documented. Men, women and children dressed in their ‘Sunday best’ were mowed down at a peaceful gathering by cavalry men with sabres, many of whom were drunk. It’s documented that the moment at which Henry Hunt spoke to the crowd, who responded with applause and cheer, was the very moment the magistrate in charge decided that the crowd should be dispersed and the mounted Manchester Yeomanry were ordered to intervene.

Within ten minutes of the order being given, the field was cleared of everyone that could escape, leaving behind the dead and injured. Toddler William Fildes was the first casualty as his mother was knocked down in the street by a charging horseman and he was flung from her arms. The other victims were both male and female, some trampled by the horses, many dead from sabre wounds. John Lees, a young man who had fought at Waterloo, had been slashed twice in the head and arm, was refused care at hospital and walked home, where he died after remarking that “Waterloo there was man to man, but at Manchester it was downright murder.”

Sean Cooney of English harmony group The Young ’Uns has written a new musical play, Peter’s Field, about the events of August 16 with guitarist and singer-songwriter Sam Carter, and they have enlisted me. While I was familiar with the story, I was unaware of the impact the tragedy had, and watching the recent riots over the past few weeks while we debuted the show in Rochdale and at the FolkEast festival, I was keen to discover if there was any music that represented that time, written by people who were there.

The most fulsome collection I could find, aside from broadside ballads that mention Peterloo that I had noted when making a radio show for the BBC at Chetham’s Library, is a book called Ballads and Songs of Peterloo by Alison Morgan. The voices of the people who had been there ring out clearly, the injustice undeniable. The Reformers saw themselves as great patriots and loyal to government and King, only asking for what they felt was their due. The Industrial Revolution had swelled the population by hundreds of thousands, including immigrants from Ireland into the rapidly growing Manchester slums, but at no point did anyone blame anyone other than their rulers, pleading with them to help the poor and listen to their complaints without fear of rioting or punishment. Some of the songs beg the Prince Regent to listen, stating that their loyalty remained but was stretched to breaking point. Some hinted at riots, but many simply drew parallels with the great reformers of the past: Winstanley, Tom Paine, John Ball, and even Jesus.

As English people who like to think of ourselves as decent, the embarrassment of the ‘Let’s rob Greggs!’ riots is real for my family. The contrast of young women dressed in white and singing while holding their children’s hands, with photographs of smirking young women clutching four pairs of Crocs and a basket of looted Lush bath bombs is stark. It’s hard to get behind people who, claiming they want to memorialise murdered children and protect their culture, destroy the new Cultural Quarter in Sunderland to make their feelings known.

Will anyone sing for these people? Will they recall in music a glorious day in Trafalgar Square warbling about God with the polemicist Tommy Robinson? As for two-tier policing, just take a look at the jail time being dished out to climate change activists to know its fallacy. Current members of the Reform party wanting to feel less hard done by should look at the fate of history’s reformers – poor John Ball, the leader of the peasant’s revolt, was hung, drawn and quartered! No-one will write a lament for former GB News presenter Friar Calvin Robinson as he jets off to America claiming that ‘London is no longer safe.’ Nelson Mandela he is not.

What am I getting at? You can declare yourself ‘of the people’ when the people sing, and not until then. We’re waiting.

This article originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today