Two pictures separated by 139 years ...... popular protest on the streets and squares of Manchester

Now I could have chosen images from the food riots at New Cross in the early 19th century, the massacre at Peterloo in 1819 or the public meetings in Stevenson Square, Albert Square and Whitworth Park at the start of the last century. 

But instead I have settled on this image of the huge demonstration at Piccadilly in 1874 for the locked out agricultural workers alongside one of the recent day of action staged by teachers in the same place.*

There has never been a quiet time in British political history and despite what we are often told by the media the people of this country have used street protest and pamphlets as a legitimate way of expressing their opinion.

It appears in folk songs across the centuries is there in the revolutionary literature of the 17th century and crops up from the French Revolution onwards.

Here in Manchester there was the attack by a Church and King mob on the home of the radical Thomas Walker in December 1792, which goes to show that the Establishment has long been willing to call out people onto the streets in defence of the status quo as have those who wished for change.

Thomas Walker who lived in Barlow Hall in the summer months and wintered at South Parade which faces what is now Parsonage Gardens was forced to fire at the crowd to deter an attack on his home and family.

So perhaps this alternative view of political action over the centuries needs to come out of the shadows which I suppose will be the trailer for a series of stories over the next few months on Manchester’s opposition to the Slave Trade, the industrial and political disputes of much of the 19th century from Chartism to strikes and the campaign by the suffragettes and trade unions for the right of universal suffrage.

Pictures; from the Graphic Newspaper 1874, and the collection of Andrew Simpson, June 2013


*When Manchester turned out to support locked out farm labourers
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/when-manchester-turned-out-to-support.html