Hundreds attend Peterloo commemoration and monument unveiling
HUNDREDS gathered in Manchester on Friday for the unveiling of the Peterloo monument to mark the 200th anniversary of the massacre.
More than 500 people assembled to commemorate the events of August 16, 1819, when 18 protesters demanding the vote were killed by the yeomanry.
At 1.30pm — the exact time that Manchester’s magistrates ordered the yeomanry to attack — the names of the Peterloo dead were read out, and eighteen plumes of red smoke were released, one for each victim.
More from this author
Similar stories

KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet

The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT

The mobilisation in 1936 of 30,000 anti-fascists to drive Sir Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts out of Leeds has been commemorated in the city, reports PETER LAZENBY