Editing Peterloo Massacre (section)

===Political===
The immediate effect of Peterloo was a crackdown on reform. The government instructed the police and courts to go after the journalists, presses and publication of the ''Manchester Observer.''<ref name=Harrison/> Wroe was arrested and charged with producing a seditious publication. Found guilty he was sentenced to 12 months in prison and fined £100.<ref name=Harrison/> Outstanding court cases against the ''Manchester Observer'' were rushed through the courts and a continual change of sub-editors was not sufficient defence against a series of police raids, often on the suspicion that someone was writing a radical article. The ''Manchester Observer'' closed in February 1820.<ref name=Harrison>{{cite book |last=Harrison |first=Stanley |title=Poor Men's Guardians: Survey of the Democratic and Working-class Press |edition=|publisher=Lawrence & W |year=1974 |isbn=978-0-85315-308-5}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Poole |first=Robert |date=2019 |title=The Manchester Observer: Biography of a Radical Newspaper |journal=Bulletin of the John Rylands Library |volume=95 |issue=1 |pages=31–123 |doi=10.7227/BJRL.95.1.3 |doi-access=free |ref=none}}</ref>

Hunt and eight others were tried at York Assizes on 16 March 1820, charged with [[sedition]]. After a two-week trial, five defendants were found guilty, on a single one of the seven charges. Hunt was sentenced to 30&nbsp;months in [[Ilchester]] Gaol; Bamford, Johnson, and Healey were given one year each, and Knight was jailed for two years on a subsequent charge. A civil case on behalf of a weaver wounded at Peterloo was brought against four members of the Manchester Yeomanry, Captain Birley, Captain Withington, Trumpeter Meagher, and Private Oliver, at Lancaster Assizes, on 4 April 1822. All were acquitted, as the court ruled their actions had been justified to disperse an illegal gathering and that the murders were nothing more than self-defence.<ref name=Civilaction1822>{{cite book |title=Manchester Meeting, sixteenth of August, 1819. A Report of the Trial, Redford against Birley and others for an assault, etc |date=1822 |publisher=James Harrop |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kddhAAAAcAAJ |access-date=4 May 2020 |archive-date=29 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200729224312/https://books.google.com/books?id=kddhAAAAcAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref>
[[File:Peterloo poster.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Ban on military exercises|Notice "to the inhabitants of the [[Salford (hundred)|Hundred of Salford]]", published by the magistrates the day after the massacre]]
The government declared its support for the actions taken by the magistrates and the army. The Manchester magistrates held a supposedly public meeting on 19 August, so that resolutions supporting the action they had taken three days before could be published. Cotton merchants [[Archibald Prentice]] (later editor of ''[[The Manchester Times]]'') and [[Absalom Watkin]] (a later corn-law reformer), both members of the ''Little Circle'', organised a petition of protest against the violence at St Peter's Field and the validity of the magistrates' meeting. Within a few days it had collected 4,800&nbsp;signatures.{{sfnp|Reid|1989|p=195|ps=none}} Nevertheless, the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, on 27 August conveyed to the magistrates the thanks of the Prince Regent for their action in the "preservation of the public peace."<ref name="County of Lancs: Manchester"/> That public exoneration was met with fierce anger and criticism. During a debate at Hopkins Street [[Robert Wedderburn (radical)|Robert Wedderburn]] declared "The Prince is a fool with his Wonderful letters of thanks&nbsp;... What is the Prince Regent or King to us, we want no King&nbsp;– he is no use to us."{{sfnp|Poole|2000|p=154|ps=none}} In an open letter, Richard Carlile said:
{{blockquote|Unless the Prince calls his ministers to account and relieved his people, he would surely be deposed and make them all REPUBLICANS, despite all adherence to ancient and established institutions.{{sfnp|Poole|2000|p=154|ps=none}}}}

For a few months following Peterloo it seemed to the authorities that the country was heading towards an armed rebellion. Encouraging them in that belief were two abortive uprisings, in [[Huddersfield]] and [[Burnley]], the [[Yorkshire West Riding Revolt]], during the autumn of 1820, and the discovery and foiling of the [[Cato Street conspiracy]] to blow up the cabinet that winter.{{sfnp|Poole|2006|p=272|ps=none}} By the end of the year, the government had introduced legislation, later known as the [[Six Acts]], to suppress [[radicalism (historical)|radical]] meetings and publications, and by the end of 1820 every significant working-class radical reformer was in jail; civil liberties had declined to an even lower level than they were before Peterloo. Historian Robert Reid has written that "it is not fanciful to compare the restricted freedoms of the British worker in the post-Peterloo period in the early nineteenth century with those of the black South African in the post-[[Sharpeville massacre|Sharpeville]] period of the late twentieth century."{{sfnp|Reid|1989|p=211|ps=none}} Peterloo is also partially credited for pushing the British government to pass the [[Vagrancy Act 1824]], and for the creation of the [[Metropolitan Police|London Metropolitan Police]] (sometimes described as the first [[Police|police department]]).<ref>Vitale, Alex S. ''The end of policing''. Verso Books, 2021.</ref>

The Peterloo Massacre also influenced the naming of the 1821 [[Cinderloo Uprising]] in the [[Coalbrookdale Coalfield]] of east [[Shropshire]]. The uprising saw 3,000 protesting workers confronted by the [[Shropshire Yeomanry|South Shropshire Yeomanry]],<ref>{{cite book|last=Gladstone|first=E.W.|title=The Shropshire Yeomanry 1795–1945, the Story of a Volunteer Cavalry Regiment|year=1953|publisher=The Whitethorn Press|pages=21–22}}</ref> leading to the deaths of three crowd members.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/local-hubs/telford/2018/10/06/the-riot-that-telford-forgot--new-group-trying-to-raise-awareness-of-cinderloo-uprising/ |title=The riot that Telford forgot: New group trying to raise awareness of Cinderloo uprising |last=Growcott |first=Mat |date=6 October 2018 |website=Shropshire Star |access-date=18 July 2019 |archive-date=23 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191223132232/https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/local-hubs/telford/2018/10/06/the-riot-that-telford-forgot--new-group-trying-to-raise-awareness-of-cinderloo-uprising/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |title=Fatal Riot |date=9 February 1821 |work=Shrewsbury Chronicle}}</ref>

One direct consequence of Peterloo was the foundation of ''[[The Manchester Guardian]]'' newspaper in 1821, by the [[Little Circle]] group of [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|non-conformist]] Manchester businessmen headed by [[John Edward Taylor]], a witness to the massacre.<ref name="Guardian 2007-08-13">{{Cite news |title=Battle for the memory of Peterloo: Campaigners demand fitting tribute |last=Wainwright |first=Martin |newspaper=The Guardian |date=13 August 2007 |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/aug/13/britishidentity.artnews |access-date=26 March 2008 |archive-date=5 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130705035053/http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/aug/13/britishidentity.artnews |url-status=live }}</ref> The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty&nbsp;... warmly advocate the cause of Reform&nbsp;... endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and&nbsp;... support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures."<ref>{{cite web |title=The Scott Trust: History |url=http://www.gmgplc.co.uk/the-scott-trust/history/ |access-date=26 March 2012 |archive-date=30 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150630020858/http://www.gmgplc.co.uk/the-scott-trust/history/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Events such as the [[Pentrich rising]], the March of the [[Blanketeers]] and the [[Spa Fields riots|Spa Fields]] meeting, all serve to indicate the breadth, diversity and widespread geographical scale of the demand for economic and political reform at the time.{{sfnp|Davis|1993|pp=32–33|ps=none}} Peterloo had no effect on the speed of reform, but in due course all but one of the reformers' demands, annual parliaments, were met.{{sfnp|Reid|1989|p=218|ps=none}} Following the [[Great Reform Act 1832]], the newly created [[Manchester (UK Parliament constituency)|Manchester parliamentary borough]] elected its first two MPs. Five candidates including [[William Cobbett]] stood, and the [[British Whig Party|Whigs]], [[Charles Poulett Thomson]] and [[Mark Philips (politician)|Mark Philips]], were elected.{{sfnp|Prentice|1853|p=25|ps=none}} Manchester became a [[municipal borough]] in 1838, and  the [[manorial rights]] were purchased by the borough council in 1846.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1=Farrer |editor-first1=William |editor-last2=Brownbill |editor-first2=John |title=The Victoria history of the county of Lancaster. – Lancashire. Vol. 4 |chapter=Townships: Manchester (part 2 of 2) |orig-year=1911 |chapter-url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp230-251 |access-date=24 August 2019 |year=2017 |publisher=University of London |archive-date=16 May 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190516224842/https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp230-251 |url-status=live }}</ref>

On the other hand, R. J. White has affirmed the true significance of Peterloo as marking the point of final conversion of provincial England to the struggle for enfranchisement of the working class.

{{quote|"The ship which had tacked and lain for so long among the shoals and shallows of [[Luddite|Luddism]], hunger-marching, strikes and sabotage, was coming to port"}}

{{quote|"Henceforth, the people were to stand with ever greater fortitude behind that great movement, which, stage by stage throughout the nineteenth century, was to impose a new political order upon society"}}

{{quote|"With Peterloo, and the departure of [[Regency era|Regency England]], parliamentary reform had come of age."{{sfnp|White|1957|pp=191–192|ps=none}}}}