On 16 August 1819, a local yeomanry cavalry supported by British Army regulars sliced through a 60,000-strong crowd at a pro-democracy meeting in Manchester, then a major textile town in England’s north-west. This amateur citizen regiment – by all accounts incompetent, some visibly drunk – killed at least 15 people, including an infant, and injured more than 650 others.
The event itself lasted less than half an hour, but its infamy continues to echo down through the centuries. For this was the British state, only four years after the defeat of the “tyrant” Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo, turning its forces against the people – artisans, tradesmen, women, children – as they peaceably exercised their time-honoured rights and liberties.
The French Revolution, with the so-called ‘Reign of Terror’ and mob-rule horrors…
