Last updated 14:55, Saturday, 22 November 2008

In July this year was the launch of the Peterloo Memorial Campaign which featured on the BBC News At Ten.

Bloodshed: The massacre at St Peter's Feld, Manchester, 1819. Troops with drawn swords ploughed into the crowd, whose only crime was to march in support of universal suffrage and other democratic reforms

People appeared on screen with pencils and paper sketching possible designs for the monument in an initiative by Greater Manchester Council to involve the public in the scheme.

The preferred site was in front of Manchester’s G-Mex exhibition hall, the spot on St Peter’s Field where ‘Orator’ Hunt mounted the hustings to address the crowd of 50,000 – the largest ever seen in Manchester – on August 16, 1819.

As a peaceful protest by ordinary working people, to express support for universal suffarage and other democratic reforms, this was seen by the authorities as a step towards a radical revolution and they sent in troops to disperse them.

In the panic that followed 18 men and women were killed or fatally wounded by sabre-wielding cavalry. Others fled and about 650 people were crushed and injured, many of them children.

Leading the memorial campaign are members of the Manchester branch of the Historical Association who hosted a meeting in Manchester Town Hall on October 18, 2008 when Dr Robert Poole of the University of Cumbria, an expert on Peterloo, spoke on the subject of the massacre.

All was reported in the autumn issue of The Historian, the Historical Association magazine.

Fearing a similar outcome to Peterloo, organisers of a Radical Reform meeting in Carlisle, to be held on Coalfell Hill at Belle Vue on October 12 1819, first approached the mayor.

The Carlisle Patriot reported: “The mayor told them he should not give a direct sanction to any such proceedings but he would promise them that, if they conducted themselves in an orderly and peaceable manner, they should not be molested.”

All went off well: “A procession of about 600 men and boys, walking three-abreast in slow time, passed through English Street, Castle Street, over Caldew Bridge, through Caldcoats and Newtown, to the place of meeting” – carrying numerous suitably-inscribed flags and banners. Temporary hustings had been erected and Alexander McKenzie mounted the platform to address the crowd. The Patriot stated that JW Parkins had been invited to take the chair, but in his absence McKenzie read a letter from him, offering support and expressing his “feelings of indignation and abhorrence at the Manchester massacre”.

A fortnight earlier the newspaper had reported on steps being taken against any popular uprising with “measures to train yeomanry cavalry in Westmorland... one troop was nearly complete and another two in a forward state, several gentlemen in Carlisle having enrolled their names”.

In the aftermath of Peterloo the Board of Ordnance was told to build cavalry barracks in manufacturing districts of Glasgow, Paisley, Stockport, Manchester, Burnley and Leeds.

Writing in 1825 Henry Hardinge of the Ordnance Department wrote to Sir Philip Musgrave giving a resumé of what had happened in Carlisle: “In the year 1820, during the disturbances, a piece of ground was purchased with an intention to erect a barrack upon it for 100 men and the barracks in the Castle were also increased from 62 to 160 men in 1820.”

A site for cavalry barracks was chosen in Caldewgate but, said Mr Hardinge: “Before the conveyance could be completed the disturbances had ceased and the intention of erecting the barracks was abandoned, or at any rate suspended.”

At the time, fears of revolution were real and Peterloo was not easily forgotten.

In The Citizen for February 1831 an account was given of someone from Carlisle on a coach journey to London, who, “on stopping in Manchester sauntered forth to have a peep at the field of Peterloo and other places and buildings of celebrity”.

Attempts were also made in 1835 at elections held in Carlisle to smear the Tory candidate, William Garnet, from Lark Hill near Manchester.

It was alleged he had ordered the cavalry to charge at Peterloo. Handbills were quickly issued denying this.

It was George Dixon, of the firm of Peter Dixon and Sons of this city,” stated the handbill, referring to the Liberal candidate, “who was there and who acted as a constable with the yeomanry.”

The Journal then entered the fray to condemn the Peterloo massacre and defend Mr Dixon’s reputation.

It said he “received a severe cut on the back of his hand by the sabre of one of the cavalry while he was remonstrating with the special constables against their brutal treatment of some defenceless women”.