Peterloo

On 16 August 1819 armed cavalrymen and soldiers attacked a peaceful crowd in Manchester.

Local radicals had called the meeting as part of a campaign for the political reform of parliament, a campaign given renewed vigour by the distressed economic conditions since the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

The meeting had scarcely begun before the town authorities - fearful of an uprising - ordered the arrest of the main speaker, Henry Hunt, and sent in the Manchester Yeomanry  and regular army.

At least 18 people were killed whilst many hundreds were wounded.  This unprecedented massacre was dubbed Peterloo by the radical press, contrasting this shameful episode with the Allied victory at Waterloo four years earlier.

The Library holds a wealth of material relating to Peterloo - reports of the trial of Henry Hunt and other participants in the events, eye-witness accounts, political cartoons, contemporary pamphlets, a map drawn for one of the official enquiries into what went wrong, a commemorative head-scarf sold to raise money for those injured and the families of those killed, and much more. Click here to arrange a visit to the Working Class Movement Library

Explore 200 years of working class movement activism

• 1791

  Thomas Paine publishes 'Rights of man'

• 1798

  Irish Rebellion

• 1819

  Peterloo

• 1834

  Tolpuddle

• 1844

  Rochdale Pioneers

• 1848

  Kennington Common Chartist meeting

• 1867

  'Manchester Martyrs' executed

• 1868

  
  First meeting of TUC

• 1871

  Fall of the Paris Commune

• 1893

  Foundation of the Independent Labour Party

• 1913

  
  Cat and Mouse Act

• 1924

  
  First Labour government

• 1926

  General Strike

• 1931

  
  Red Megaphones first performance

• 1932

  Kinder Scout mass trespass

• 1936

  Spanish Civil War

• 1945

  Nationalisation of the coal industry

• 1948

  Birth of the NHS

• 1956

  Hungarian uprising

• 1958

  Aldermaston marches and birth of CND

• 1971

  

  Upper Clyde Shipbuilders

• 1976

  Grunwick dispute

• 1982

  

  Falklands War

• 1984

  Miners' strike

• 1990

  Nelson Mandela's  release from prison

• 1998

  

    Good Friday agreement

• 1999

  Introduction of national minimum wage

• 2001

  
  Stop the War campaign