Now it has taken me a while to get around to watching Mike Leigh’s film on Peterloo and I am a tad puzzled.
The film I enjoyed, if you can enjoy watching innocent people cut down by a group of men on horses armed with sabres against a backdrop of poverty and unemployment.
The story of Peterloo is one I grew up with, having got the “O” level version from history text books, listened to the songs which praised Henry Hunt, and spent my share of time reading accounts of the massacre.
All of which I thought meant I could pass muster with most people when it came to the story and the results of that day in St Peter’s Fields.
But not so, because I seem to have got Henry Hunt very wrong.
For those who don’t know he was the main speaker on that August day, and understandably so given that he had a record of campaigning for the reform of Parliament, universal suffrage, and an end to child labour, and was imprisoned for two years for being at Peterloo.
He had earned the nickname Orator for his powerful speeches advancing the cause of reform and continued to do so until his death in 1835.
So, I am puzzled that in the film, he is portrayed as overbearing, single minded and more than a bit dismissive of Samuel Bamford, Joseph Johnson and the other Manchester Radicals, who were also at Peterloo and were arrested and imprisoned after the event.
I wondered if it was because he was a wealthy farmer which marked him out as very different from the working-class people who are at the core of the film, or that he opposed those who advocated carrying weapons to the demonstration.
Or that in conversations he had with other radicals, he was insistent that the focus should be primarily on the issue of Parliamentary reform, and nothing else.
Today there might be those who have no time for him because he was wealthy, while others, knowing the violence which was unleashed at the meeting condemn the way he seems to have surrendered the means by which there could have been a fight back.
I suppose I will have to go back to basics, read his autobiography, and his speeches, along with what he did after Peterloo, which included standing successfully for election to Parliament in 1830 as the radical candidate for Preston, which was one of the few towns in England that had given the vote to all males who paid taxes.
During the course of which he had addressed not only Parliamentary reform but the need for a ten hour day and an end to child labour, commenting that "I have personally visited the factories, and witnessed the sufferings of the overworked children. but, my friends, you never heard of this.
No, no, my speeches on the subject were all suppressed by the press."
After his victory, he and an estimated crowd of 16,000 people, marched to Manchester and held a meeting at the site of the Peterloo Massacre.
While in Parliament he opposed the 1832 Reform Act as it did not grant the vote to working class males. Instead he proposed what he called the Preston-type of universal suffrage, "a franchise which excluded all paupers and criminals but otherwise recognized the principle of an equality of political rights that all who paid taxes should have the vote." *
All of which makes me even more puzzled at just how he came across in the film.
Location; Manchester& Preston
Pictures; Henry Hunt, (c. 1810), watercolour, by Adam Buck, 1759–1833, Peterloo, 1819 by Richard Carlile, m01563, Peterloo, 1819, m07589, and Veterans of Peterloo from a photograph taken in 1884, m07594, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
*At which point I have admit the last bit was a straight crib from that excellent site called Spartacus Educational, ........ sometimes you just have to be lazy. Henry Hunt, Spartacus Educational, https://spartacus-educational.com/PRhunt.htm
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| Henry Hunt circa 1820 |
The story of Peterloo is one I grew up with, having got the “O” level version from history text books, listened to the songs which praised Henry Hunt, and spent my share of time reading accounts of the massacre.
All of which I thought meant I could pass muster with most people when it came to the story and the results of that day in St Peter’s Fields.
But not so, because I seem to have got Henry Hunt very wrong.
For those who don’t know he was the main speaker on that August day, and understandably so given that he had a record of campaigning for the reform of Parliament, universal suffrage, and an end to child labour, and was imprisoned for two years for being at Peterloo.
He had earned the nickname Orator for his powerful speeches advancing the cause of reform and continued to do so until his death in 1835.
So, I am puzzled that in the film, he is portrayed as overbearing, single minded and more than a bit dismissive of Samuel Bamford, Joseph Johnson and the other Manchester Radicals, who were also at Peterloo and were arrested and imprisoned after the event.
 |
| Scenes from Peteroo, 1819 |
Or that in conversations he had with other radicals, he was insistent that the focus should be primarily on the issue of Parliamentary reform, and nothing else.
Today there might be those who have no time for him because he was wealthy, while others, knowing the violence which was unleashed at the meeting condemn the way he seems to have surrendered the means by which there could have been a fight back.
I suppose I will have to go back to basics, read his autobiography, and his speeches, along with what he did after Peterloo, which included standing successfully for election to Parliament in 1830 as the radical candidate for Preston, which was one of the few towns in England that had given the vote to all males who paid taxes.
 |
| Peterloo, 1819 |
No, no, my speeches on the subject were all suppressed by the press."
After his victory, he and an estimated crowd of 16,000 people, marched to Manchester and held a meeting at the site of the Peterloo Massacre.
While in Parliament he opposed the 1832 Reform Act as it did not grant the vote to working class males. Instead he proposed what he called the Preston-type of universal suffrage, "a franchise which excluded all paupers and criminals but otherwise recognized the principle of an equality of political rights that all who paid taxes should have the vote." *
All of which makes me even more puzzled at just how he came across in the film.
Location; Manchester& Preston
Pictures; Henry Hunt, (c. 1810), watercolour, by Adam Buck, 1759–1833, Peterloo, 1819 by Richard Carlile, m01563, Peterloo, 1819, m07589, and Veterans of Peterloo from a photograph taken in 1884, m07594, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
*At which point I have admit the last bit was a straight crib from that excellent site called Spartacus Educational, ........ sometimes you just have to be lazy. Henry Hunt, Spartacus Educational, https://spartacus-educational.com/PRhunt.htm
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