Night Music: Keeping It To Myself

Remembering Peterloo

On this day in 1819, about 60,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Field in Manchester to demand parliamentary reform. They were met by the 15th Hussars, who charged into the crowd with swinging sabres. At least 18 protesters were killed and several hundred received awful injuries.

The immediate effect was to cause the Government to pass the Six Acts, repressing further demonstrations. But the massacre and the repression eventually gave way to the Reform Act of 1832.

It is to martyrs such as those that suffered at Peterloo that we owe our freedoms, such as they are, today.

Poem: Unwinding The Thread

 

Memory is

the first traitor

 

It is such a waste

to undo the syntax,

to untie the tender meanings,

to try to catch the logic

that meant little then

and nothing now;

to wonder what

was meant.

Was there a

design back then,

that leaves no traces?

 

Memory is

the first traitor