There is a beautiful irony to this part of history - the small and simple fact that brave protestors were killed at Peterloo, and today, we all complain, to some level, about the requirement to vote. Add to this the non-compulsory vote in the UK that leads to the Conservatives keeping the balance of power. I think if people understood history, and knew how important their voices are in their contribution to political progress, things would be different. I don't want to say better because there's no way of knowing but we would all share equal blame.

am currently purchasing books for our secondary school library for our senior students. I am trying to provide a balance of genres and periods and really try and introduce them to a wide range of modern fiction and non-fiction. This book would definitely go down well with a hypercritical teenage audience as it has a bit of everything - great insights and a narrative style that draws you in and keeps you reading whilst also making you think about a wide range of issues at the same time. I think that school libraries are definitely changing and that the book we purchase should provide for all tastes and reflect the types of books that the students and staff go on to enjoy after leaving school. TPM is the kind of book that you can curl up with and totally immerse yourself in and I think it will definitely go down well at my school. I think that it was the perfect blend of A page-turning read with a strong narrative voice too! I think it would be a big hit with our seniors and will definitely recommend that we buy a copy as soon as we can.

Highly recommended, especially for those who want to find out more about the event before seeing the film.

I studied briefly The Peterloo Massacre when I was at school and was intrigued to learn more about it. I found this book fascinating and easy to read. It is a through account of the event and the lead up to it and I found the level of depth concerning the leading figures most helpful and interesting. It certainly sheds some light on the men who previously were just names and their motives for their actions, which I discovered were a lot more complex and on occasion self-serving than I’d previously realised. Highly recommended, especially for those who want to find out more about the event before seeing the film.

The Peterloo Massacre by Joyce Marlow
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK, Ebury Publishing, Ebury Press
Genre: History
Publication date: 31 May 2018
Pages: 262
3 out of 5
Description: Unity of the oppressed can make a difference in politically uncertain times
A peaceful protest turned tragedy; this is the true story of the working class fight for the vote.
On August 16 1819, in St Peter’s Field, Manchester, a large non-violent gathering demanding parliamentary reform turned into a massacre, leaving many dead and hundreds more injured.
This catastrophic event was one of the key moments of the age, a political awakening of the working class, and eventually led to ordinary people gaining suffrage. In this definitive account Joyce Marlow tells the stories of the real people involved and brings to life the atrocity the government attempted to cover up.
The Peterloo Massacre is soon to be the subject of a major film directed by Mike Leigh.

This book was provided through Netgalley for review purpose.

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. 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. Peterloo, a portmanteau of Waterloo, the battle which occurred four years earlier, and St. 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. 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.

Joyce Marlow’s book, first published in 1969, is being republished as the two hundredth anniversary of the massacre approaches. 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. 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 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. The nineteenth century was a turbulent time for the working classes. The Industrial Revolution had created whole areas of a newly dispossessed class who were lacking in any sort of parliamentary representation. 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. A precursor to the Great Reform Bill and the Chartist Movement, the Peterloo Massacre started simply as a protest and a campaign for reform. It was peaceful, with a fete like atmosphere, men and women even brought their children and picnics to St. Peter’s Field. Politicians, fearing another French Revolution, sent The Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry who, unprovoked, committed “downright murder”.
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. 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 Peterloo Massacre is well written. The writing style is easy to digest and holds the reader’s attention for the duration. It is informative without being condescending and does not assume that the reader already knows everything about the event in question which is a very good thing for a history text. It is decently researched, the primary documents especially but I think the bibliography of secondary documents could have been a little bigger, maybe more on the huge background of nineteenth century class politics. In short, it is a very interesting read and a good contribution to the history of the working class suffrage movement.
Although The Peterloo Massacre is a very good book for a person who is just looking for a quick read or an introduction to the topic, and for that I would highly recommend it, as someone who reads a lot of history I found some aspects to be either lacking or just a little bit strange. The book is a largely narrative account of the Peterloo Massacre and there is very little analysis of the events. That is fine if you are just looking for a narrative account but, after years of reading numerous history texts, the lack of analysis was a little disappointing. There is no real introduction to speak of, no real conclusion and no historiographical debate included at all. As I said before, Marlow did a lot of research but never mentions another historian at any point. The primary materials are better utilised but only mainly serves to further the narration rather than to further any historical discussion. The referencing is odd as well. It might seem a little nitpicky but the bibliography is set out exactly how one would expect a bibliography to look but the notes seem a little informal for a history text and there are no page numbers referenced when books are quoted. The newspapers and archive sources are correctly referenced, however.

On the whole, The Peterloo Massacre is an interesting read. It gives an informative and detailed account of the event as well as the events before and after. It is sympathetic to the working class men and women who suffered through this travesty of an event. For anyone who knows little or nothing about the event, and the nineteenth century suffrage movement I would highly recommend it, it just wasn’t the right book for me. I look for more historical analysis and debate in historical texts and that just wasn’t there for me. It is a good starting point though and very accessible.