Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the GuardianWhat happened to the crowd that day has marked British politics ever since. Other demonstrations had been put down ruthlessly before, but none in Britain had been marked with such brutality or as many deaths as Peterloo. I made up my mind not to desert them.”Hunt loftily despised Joseph Johnson, one of the organisers of the Manchester meeting, for being a brush-maker. The Manchester meeting was going to be the biggest of the summer so far, and the authorities were jittery. “Had the Manchester meeting demonstrated, to the amazement of high Tories, that large numbers of working people could rally peacefully for a political purpose, what would the reformers’ next step have been?

Source: The Guardian January 04, 2018 06:00 UTC