Page 51 - All About History - Issue 180-19

Remembering Peterloo
ai , i a e i e a e i e
Peterloo story. It was a famous centre of radicalism
and it was a really well-known story in our family
because we’ve got ancestors tracing back there to
at least the 1790s.
How did a copy of the ‘Peterloo
Photograph’ come into your family?
These were 11 veterans who were youngsters at
the time and they were all part of the Failsworth
story. Our families were linked to a pool of people,
including a few of the veterans, who went to
Peterloo who were all neighbours, friends and
related by marriage.
I should say that I’m no expert and these are
simply family stories. As I was clearing out my
mum’s house after she died three years ago, I
found a box of books belonging to my dad that
included photos and other odd and ends. We
wondered why there were these old, obscure local
history books of Failsworth among them and they
all carried the photograph of the Peterloo veterans.
My dad had kept three or four books that contained
the picture because it was taken in Failsworth at a
prominent event.
What do we know about the photograph?
The account of the meeting from 1884 says
that they carried a banner that they’d carried
with Samuel Bamford’s detachment to Peterloo.
However, the two banners that you can read were
from a demonstration for the vote that they had
attended in 1884. There they are in their 80s and
they are still fighting! They were still activists and
that night they went round to a local house for tea
where they told stories and sang songs.
The growth of Manchester as the world’s
first city of the Industrial Revolution
influenced many radical thinkers and
movements including Karl Marx, the
Chartists and the Suffragettes where people
“There They are in Their 80s
and They are sTill fighTing!”
How important are photographs like this
as historical records?
Photographs sometimes open an amazing
window. There is quite a famous photograph in
the British Library of a Chartist meeting in 1848 in
Kennington and when you have photos like that
it’s staggering. They are beyond price as a record of
what people were actually like at that time during
the early development of photography.
Photos can therefore be absolutely stunning and
it’s why I called my talk ‘The Peterloo Photograph’.
This is because you may think, “Peterloo? 1819?
Photography wasn’t invented then!” But there they
are and we know who they were and what they
did. They’re no longer anonymous weavers who
don’t have any background or can’t be placed.
How important are the bicentenary
events for Manchester?
I think they are important and Manchester has
always had a unique place in history. When you
travel in on the train from Stockport it doesn’t
have the vibe of a great city of history or a place
of destiny.
However, because of what happened from the
Industrial Revolution onwards, it was no mistake
that so many movements began there. This
included the suffragettes and Chartism was really
big in Manchester. It was a great centre of radical
The original
Failsworth Pole,
gathered, has
since been
replaced by a
clock tower
2x © Alamy
and liberal politics and Friedrich Engels lived there,
which is why Karl Marx came up.
It was really the experience of Manchester that
led Engels and Marx to construe the nature of
capitalism in the way that they did. If Engels had
lived in Birmingham, Marx would have seen a
completely different kind of industrial society. It
was made out of thousands of small workshops
and it was a different kind of industrial economy
altogether. Their interpretation of history was really
influenced by Manchester.
Peterloo is ultimately a symbol: an electric
moment after which nothing can be quite the same
again. Mancunians still feel that and I think that’s
reflective of the pride they have in their city as a
crucible of history where things are hammered out.
Michael Wood was speaking as part of
Peterloo 2019: Manchester Histories’ series of
events and activities that culminates with the
bicentenary on 16 August 2019. For more info
visit www.manchesterhistories.co.uk
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