The writing style is easy to digest and holds the reader’s attention for the duration. At least it only took thirty years for the true events of Hillsborough to come to light, unlike Peterloo, whose aftermath looks like one huge exercise in victim blaming.

The whole event has the same stench about it as Hillsborough, working class men and women going out for the day, killed by negligent and criminal police activity and then subjected to a cover up. Politicians, fearing another French Revolution, sent The Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry who, unprovoked, committed “downright murder”. It was peaceful, with a fete like atmosphere, men and women even brought their children and picnics to St. A precursor to the Great Reform Bill and the Chartist Movement, the Peterloo Massacre started simply as a protest and a campaign for reform. The government would be happy to keep it that way, and keep the power in the hands of the land owners but people were becoming more politically aware and wanted change. The Industrial Revolution had created whole areas of a newly dispossessed class who were lacking in any sort of parliamentary representation. The nineteenth century was a turbulent time for the working classes. It tells the story of John Lees, a cotton spinner and survivor of Waterloo, who died after the protest, of Henry Hunt, a social reformer and the political heavyweights of the day. Marlow writes concisely yet in depth of the events leading up to the massacre and the aftermath as well as the day itself, covering everything in less than three hundred pages. It is a very thorough account, it almost reads as a story, covering the major characters, both political and the ordinary people attending the gathering on 16th August. Joyce Marlow’s book, first published in 1969, is being republished as the two hundredth anniversary of the massacre approaches. The whole event lasted less than twenty minutes but the repercussions reverberating a lot longer, with even Percy Shelley being outraged enough to write a poem about it. Peter’s Field where the massacre occurred, was and still is a highly controversial topic, a peaceful gathering in Manchester campaigning for parliamentary reform was turned into a murder scene with no provocation, leaving fifteen dead and hundreds injured.

Peterloo, a portmanteau of Waterloo, the battle which occurred four years earlier, and St. It is however, when you look at it, it is a highly important event in the history of the working class suffrage movement and it is completely understandable why there is now a film being made of it. The nineteenth century working class movement is something that has been researched numerous times over the years but The Peterloo Massacre is not a historical event which is discussed much. This book was provided through Netgalley for review purpose.

Suffragettes by Joyce Marlow