THE first week of February saw a couple of labour movement occasions centred on Shropshire and north Wales.

It was the 200th anniversary of the event known as “Cinderloo,” where miners protesting about wage cuts were attacked by the Shropshire yeomanry. Several were killed and others put on trial at Shrewsbury.

Over two days in the same week was the long overdue appeal by building workers convicted as part of the 1972 national building workers’ strike, in which the matters at issue also took place in the Shrewsbury area.

The events of February 1821, whose anniversary was marked with a range of virtual activities, took place at Cinderhill near Telford. 

Local ironmasters had been engaged in an attempt to cut the wages of workers. 

Fearing that the same would happen to them, miners called a protest which took place over two days on February 1-2 1821. 

The occasion was known as Cinderloo as a conscious echo of Peterloo in 1819. 

On both occasions local yeomanry, armed men on horseback, were deployed and attacked protesters.

Several of the key figures in the Shropshire yeomanry were ironmasters. 

A 2017 article by local historian Neil Clarke underlined this. The yeomanry had been formed at a meeting in a Shrewsbury pub in 1785 by the then Mayor William Cludde. 

His son Edward Cludde was in charge at Cinderloo in 1821. They were landowners, as were numbers of other members. 

Local ironmasters Henry Williams and Joseph Reynolds were also part of the armed troop, as was wine merchant Thomas Jukes Collier. In short, the yeomanry were the armed force of the local ruling class. 

They were last used in the 1842 general strike before the policing framework we know today developed.

If we fast forward to the Shrewsbury pickets’ arrests in 1972, which occurred in the same area of the country, we find some interesting parallels. 

Of course the local ruling class was no longer required to ride around armed on horseback cutting down any working-class protests they found. 

However, they still maintained a key interest in defending their wealth and using the law and its agents to do it.

In 1972 it was the well-known construction family, the McAlpines, who exercised great influence in the area, as the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign website underlines.

It notes that McAlpines were the main contractor at the Brookside building site in Shrewsbury, which was a focus of charges against pickets. 

The McAlpine family were a cornerstone of ruling-class politics in north Wales. 

Prior to the events of 1972, the post of the most senior law officer in the area, the high sheriff, had been held by members of the McAlpine family on nine consecutive occasions. 

Even when the succession was broken in 1974, the occupant, Peter Bell, was in fact a director of McAlpines and the son-in-law of Sir Alfred McAlpine.

As the Shrewsbury pickets appeal underlined, there was probably more at play in the case than the McAlpines, with the direct influence of the security service and Ted Heath’s Tory government suspected.

Political influence also existed at Cinderloo, with the home secretary who had found nothing problematic about the Peterloo Massacre, Lord Sidmouth, writing to the Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire, praising the “exemplary forbearance” of the yeomanry.

EP Thompson noted in the Making of the Working Class that the state learnt from Peterloo that it could never use armed force against protesters again, but that the same did not apply to industrial disputes. 

Cinderloo underlined that and Orgreave in 1984 reminds us that it remains true.