There’s a posh hotel in the middle of Manchester called the Radisson Edwardian – it’s a regular haunt for politicians when party conferences head to the city. If you look carefully, you’ll see a plaque commemorating the fact that one of the most disgraceful, and totemic, moments in British history happened on the site of the hotel.
The Peterloo Massacre, in which fifteen people were killed and hundreds injured when the cavalry charged a peaceful demonstration for parliamentary reform, happened on this day in 1819. Lord Liverpool’s already reactionary government grew even more repressive. The massacre inspired generations of radicals to keep up the fight for reform and inspired Shelley to write one of the greatest political/ protest poems ever written, ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, with words that still resonate to this day:
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