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
Thomas Paine publishes 'Rights of man'
Irish Rebellion
Peterloo
Tolpuddle
Rochdale Pioneers
Kennington Common Chartist meeting
'Manchester Martyrs' executed
Fall of the Paris Commune
Foundation of the Independent Labour Party
General Strike
Kinder Scout mass trespass
Spanish Civil War
Nationalisation of the coal industry
Birth of the NHS
Hungarian uprising
Aldermaston marches and birth of CND
Prague Spring
Grunwick dispute
Miners' strike
Nelson Mandela's release from prison
Introduction of national minimum wage
