Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Could Peterloo happen again?
After the massacre of peaceful protesters two centuries ago, the state has been wary of provoking a reaction by using deadly force on dissident assemblies – but this is not a guarantee, explains KEITH FLETT
A contemporary cartoon depiction of the Peterloo Massacre

ON Monday August 16 1819 in central Manchester, around 60,000 people gathered to protest for the right to vote, which few, if any of them, had. Most of the men or their descendants wouldn’t get the vote until 1918 and many of the women until 1928.

The yeomanry, local businessmen on horseback, rode into the protesters, on the order of Tory magistrate William Hulton, and cut them down with sabres. Tens were killed and thousands injured.

The reason for the attack remains unclear. It may be that the government had ordered it. It might be that the magistrates acted on their own — they were certainly supported by the government afterwards.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Jeremy Corbyn (second left) and Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South (second right) on the picket line outside London Euston train station, August 18, 2022
Features / 26 August 2025
26 August 2025

KEITH FLETT revisits debates about the name and structure of proposed working-class parties in the past

Ramsgate beach 1899
History / 14 August 2025
14 August 2025

The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT

GUILTY OF POVERTY: Dinner time in St Pancras Workhouse, London, October 2011 / Pic: Unknown/CC
Features / 26 July 2025
26 July 2025

KEITH FLETT looks at the long history of coercion in British employment laws

Police officers watch as people take part in a national march for Palestine on Whitehall in central London, January 18, 2025
Features / 10 July 2025
10 July 2025

The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT

Similar stories
Police officers watch as people take part in a national march for Palestine on Whitehall in central London, January 18, 2025
Features / 10 July 2025
10 July 2025

The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT

A cartoon depiction of the arrest of the Cato Street Conspir
Features / 4 February 2025
4 February 2025
The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT
TRULY MASSIVE: The great
Chartist meeting on Kennington
Comm
Features / 4 December 2024
4 December 2024
Forget Farage and the recent daft demands for a new election against Labour: the greatest petition Britain has ever known gathered millions of names demanding the right to vote — and it didn’t work either, writes KEITH FLETT

A statue of former British prime minister Sir Robert Peel i
Features / 17 September 2024
17 September 2024
KEITH FLETT draws parallels with the 1834 Tory crisis, noting the absence of modern-day Robert Peel among the leadership contenders capable of reinventing the party for a new era