ABSTRACT
Occasion, Composition, Texts. The Mask of Anarchy (MA), as the subtitle makes clear, is a direct response to a specific event, the notorious and bloody confrontation between mounted troops and demonstrators for reform which took place on 16 August 1819 and which rapidly became known as ‘Peterloo’. By about noon on that day a crowd estimated by modern historians at between 60,000 and 80,000 men, women and children had gathered on St Peter's Field, an open space near the centre of Manchester, to protest against the distress of the agricultural and manufacturing poor as a result of low wages, high prices and widespread unemployment. The demonstrators also aimed to make a mass show of support for reform of parliamentary representation and the extension of the electoral franchise. Their leading demands of annual parliaments and adult male suffrage they regarded not only as just in themselves but as the necessary first step towards altering permanently the political and economic conditions that fostered the current hardship and the social inequality that guaranteed its continuance. The meeting in Manchester was the last in a series of such gatherings held that summer; the previous three were in Birmingham, Leeds and London. Manchester had been the scene of both social protest and civil disorder for several years previously, and the first six months of 1819 had witnessed much organised activity in the region for both relief of destitution and political reform. A meeting planned for 9 August on St Peter's Field, at which the disenfranchised protesters intended to defy the law by ‘electing’ a Member of Parliament as a measure of protest, was declared illegal and those planning to attend warned off by public notice. The replacement meeting set for 16 August, although its organisers advertised its purpose as only to adopt ‘the most legal and effectual means’ of achieving parliamentary reform, was viewed with keen apprehension by the local authorities as a potential occasion for disturbance; but the Manchester magistrates, having decided on Home Office advice several days earlier that they could not legally prevent such a gathering, had no choice but to allow it to go forward.
