Peterloo 200 may be over, but the need to open up Manchester’s mesmerising political history continues.
Join Ed Glinert, Manchester’s most political guide, in recalling the history of struggle in Britain’s most political city.
On show: the Luddites who smashed the machines and whose necks were saved by Lord Byron; the Reformers who met at the Elephant pub on Tib Street in 1812 and were arrested for hating the government (no longer a crime); the Chartists who wanted to improve the limited democracy of 1840; the Suffragettes who clashed with Boris Johnson (sorry, Winston Churchill, easy mistake to make) after the 1905 Free Trade Hall debacle. As Johnny Strabler tells ’em in The Wild One, when asked what he’s rebelling against: “Whadda ya got?”