The New Peterloo imminent?

The recent riots and protests have reminded me very much of the Peterloo Massacre. Not the massacre itself, but the tensions that brought about the massacre.

The Wikipedia entry is here if you want to read more: Peterloo Massacre - Wikipedia

After the Napoleonic Wars, there was a slump in textile manufacture, so people were laid off and those still employed had their wages cut. Additionally the Corn laws kept the cost of bread artificially high. Two pressures that forced the workers and the non-workers into abject poverty. 

Peterloo is actually an area of Manchester city centre originally called St. Peter's Field, now modern day St. Peter's Square.

The boroughs around Manchester had no political representation. Remember, this is the time of the rotten boroughs and when "one-man-one-vote" had yet to come into being. 

The boroughs of Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Blackburn, Rochdale, Oldham, Ashton-Under-Lyne (my home town) and Stockport had no political representation at all.

So rightly the people of those boroughs and others felt they had no way of bringing about political change.

So they organised and activated. They started printing flyers and started mass demonstrations. The demonstrations would it was hoped, put political pressure on those that did have a vote (wealthy landowners) to bring about change in the law and some relief for the working class. 

Two years earlier, the "blanketeers" a group of workers carrying blankets for comfort marched on London in an attempt to highlight their plight. But to no avail. The demonstrations gathered pace and became larger.

The elites didn't like the working classes organising (much like today they realise the power of the working class and especially fear the numbers - the working class far outweigh any other).

So the decision was made that the demonstrations had to be suppressed.

Hence why the Cavalry charged the crowd of 60,000 in St. Peter's Field with their Sabres drawn, killing 18 and injuring many hundreds more.

The fallout of the massacre was many-fold. It was a pivotal moment in UK political history.

The first being the formation of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, which then went on to become the Guardian. Sad to say they have last their roots in the support of the working class, because they are the one calling the marginalised people of the North "Far-right" and "fascists". 

The other thing that happened was the creation of the six acts. (See the Wiki).

Proving that history repeats itself, one of the acts was the Misdemeanours Act, which sought to increase the speed at which people could be prosecuted by removing bail and increasing the speed of court proceedings. 

Sound familiar to the haste in which yesterday's batches of protesters were convicted and sentenced?

The Seizure of Arms Act was just that: it allowed the authorities to enter a property and seize any arms found therein and additionally arrest the owner.

The Seditious Meetings Act sought to regulate meeting over 50 people by requiring the permission of a magistrate or Sherriff.

The other parallel with today is the attempt back in 1819 to regulate the flow of information and the suppression of the production of flyers and information provided in opinion pieces by newspapers.. 

The Newspaper and Stamp Duties Act put a stamp duty on newspapers, increasing the cost so that the workers may not afford them. Publishers were also required to post a bond, for if they ever transgressed the act.

Back then the printing press was the information medium, today we have the government talking about internet suppression laws, misinformation and disinformation laws.

So much changes over the years, but so much stays the same. 

It's all about supressing the working class. 

The Labour party directly descended from the Manchester slums described by Engels some 25 years after the Peterloo massacre. Those ides promoted by Engels and Marx, the Socialist doctrine, is the cornerstone of the Labour party. A party now playing the part of the rotten politicians of the Peterloo era, supressing and arresting the working class that have a legitimate grievance against the government.

I can't begin to express the fear that the establishment have regarding these protests. The scale and the number puts the fear into them just like it did back in 1819. 

Are we back to 1819? It's very similar.

We have a government artificially raising prices through government policy, that they could, if they had the will change and reduce prices. We're back to the era of the corn laws and inflated prices thanks to direct government intervention to raise, not lower prices.

The poor are suffering thanks to direct government intervention. If the net zero policy and all the associated taxes and tariffs associated with that policy were removed, the pressure on the poor would be reduced. Energy would be cheaper, fuel would be cheaper, cars would be cheaper (and less complex), the list goes on. If po9licy on housing and the pressures on house prices were changed, the poor would have a better chance of buying a house.

But it seems an influential minority outside of the democratic sphere, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum amongst others seem to be driving economic policy to the detriment of the people in this country.

So the poor are angry. They are angry because they see successive governments deliberately making their lives harder. They also see successive governments making the lives of those coming from outside easier. 

So, they will protest. And protest. And Protest. They have protested for years with no change in the political will of successive governments. They are now resorting to the only thing government really responds to.

And the government, the Socialist I will remind you, the Socialist government of this country has acted in the thuggish way of the Whigs and Tories of 1819 and started to fast-track people through the courts. Exactly like 1819. The government have also started to talk about limiting or censoring the internet. Just like the government of 1819 when they put a duty on newspapers, to put them out of the reach of the poor.

We have come full circle. The Peterloo massacre heralded in the Socialist movement, what movement would be heralded in by this uprising of the poor?