An inhuman outrage

Weather forecasters, from Michael Fish, way back to Robert Fitzroy may get a bit of a hard time when they're thought to be getting it wrong, but they get off lightly compared to FitzRoy's uncle, Viscount Castlereagh. If he's remembered at all, it's mainly for the broadsides loosed at him by two of the big guns of Romantic Poetry. Shelley thundered:

I met Murder on the way –
He had a face like Castlereagh –
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven bloodhounds followed him

All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew

On hearing of his death, Byron dismissed his memory with the unflattering lines:

Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss

Castlereagh attracted such hostility because, as Leader of the House of Commons, he defended the repressive policies of the then Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth whose tenure saw the ruthless suppression of campaigns for greater democratic representation and smearing of reformers with the accusations of treason and sedition. Sidmouth's repressive measures ultimately included the suspension of habeas corpus and requiring the permission of a magistrate before any public meeting of more than 50 people pertaining to "matters of Church and state" could be held (the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 isn't as shiny, new and paradigm-shifty as the Home Office apparatchiks would have you think). Although Castlereagh was, by some accounts an accomplished diplomat, his reputation couldn't survive association with such bullies and sleazeballs as Lord Sidmouth's crew.

Little wonder that radicals such as Shelley and Byron despised Castlereagh; it's entertaining to imagine what they might made of the defenders of some more recent Home Secretaries, popping up to defend the indefensible, whether in the guise of extended detention without charge, restrictions on the right to peacefully protest, or ID cards. Mincemeat, hopefully.

Perhaps the most flagrant outrage committed on Sidmouth's watch, certainly the most visible was what later became known as the "Peterloo Massacre". At St Peter's Fields, Manchester, on August 16th, 1819, a crowd of over 60,000 gathered to attend a demonstration for Parliamentary reform, and especially for an end to such corrupt institutions as Rotten Boroughs. The local magistrates, fearing the size of the gathering, panicked and called in the military, in the form of the Manchester Yeomanry, who charged into the crowd, hacking away at peaceful protesters with their sabres. It is thought that eleven people were killed and some four hundred wounded.

A millowner, Thomas Chadwick, who was there, described the massacre as: "An inhuman outrage committed on an unarmed, peaceful assembly."

The deaths were only the beginning - the Government's response to the threat of radical unrest, which is how they saw such lawful demonstrations, was to crack down on the civil liberties of the population with the draconian "Six Acts" which introduced such innovations as "speeding up" the legal process by reducing opportunities for bail, cracked down on free speech, extended powers to search private property for arms.

The Peterloo Massacre has been compared to the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre in China. Although the numbers differ - the People's Liberation Army and their tanks may have killed anywhere from from several hundred to seven thousand people, as opposed to the eleven or so fatalities chalked up by the Manchester Yeomanry - there are compelling similarities; two groups of peaceful protesters, demonstrating for democratic reforms, crushed by military force because of the authorities' fear of subversion, followed by an aftermath of suppression and reprisal. History repeating itself? You decide.