PETERLOO
To what extent did Peterloo change the political voice in the short-term?
The disenfranchised working class took to the streets on the 16 August 1819 to protest over their lack of suffrage in the hard economic times. Historian Robert Poole has gone as far as to say that Peterloo was one of the defining moments of it’s age1. For what came to be known as The Peterloo Massacre became a clear indication of the lack of ways in which the working class and peasantry could voice their political beliefs: They did not have the vote, the protest was violently suppressed- and following The Peterloo Massacre newspapers and other publications were censored or shut down if they were deemed to contain any seditious messages. It seems by looking at the sources that one of the most notable shifts in political voice is the censorship and suppression the government issues with the massacre and following it. However, Peterloo did embody a shift towards universal suffrage and a broader political voice, with women veering into the political spectrum for the first time, taking part in the protests and rallies.
Sources 4 and 5 suggest that Peterloo was significant in easing women out of the home sphere and into the political spectrum, thus, edging towards the gender-neutral politics we know of today. Source 4 brutally depicts the women that were cut down alongside the men who were fighting - which would insinuate that the women were not there solely to support their husbands, but that they also posed a threat to the system too. Source 5 adds depth to this by depicting women campaigning and giving speeches on politics in the same way in which men did. Samuel Bamford in Passage in the Life of a Radical2 claims that women first became involved in the summer of 1818 and that by Peterloo the following year Mary Fildes, a passionate radical and the leader of the Manchester Female Reform Group, actually gave a speech at St Peter’s Field on the 16th. This would indicate that women had an even
The disenfranchised working class took to the streets on the 16 August 1819 to protest over their lack of suffrage in the hard economic times. Historian Robert Poole has gone as far as to say that Peterloo was one of the defining moments of it’s age1. For what came to be known as The Peterloo Massacre became a clear indication of the lack of ways in which the working class and peasantry could voice their political beliefs: They did not have the vote, the protest was violently suppressed- and following The Peterloo Massacre newspapers and other publications were censored or shut down if they were deemed to contain any seditious messages. It seems by looking at the sources that one of the most notable shifts in political voice is the censorship and suppression the government issues with the massacre and following it. However, Peterloo did embody a shift towards universal suffrage and a broader political voice, with women veering into the political spectrum for the first time, taking part in the protests and rallies.
Sources 4 and 5 suggest that Peterloo was significant in easing women out of the home sphere and into the political spectrum, thus, edging towards the gender-neutral politics we know of today. Source 4 brutally depicts the women that were cut down alongside the men who were fighting - which would insinuate that the women were not there solely to support their husbands, but that they also posed a threat to the system too. Source 5 adds depth to this by depicting women campaigning and giving speeches on politics in the same way in which men did. Samuel Bamford in Passage in the Life of a Radical2 claims that women first became involved in the summer of 1818 and that by Peterloo the following year Mary Fildes, a passionate radical and the leader of the Manchester Female Reform Group, actually gave a speech at St Peter’s Field on the 16th. This would indicate that women had an even