The Peterloo massacre happened 200 years ago in Manchester
and was one of the bloodiest political clashes in modern British history.
People lost their lives peacefully demanding the right to vote for the working classes.
But other reasons that drove them to gather and to call for change are still relevant today.
I've never ever seen as many people on the streets begging.
Never, even when I was a kid.
200 years ago, up to 60,000 people from all of the mill towns surrounding Manchester
marched into the centre.
One of the largest contingents came from Middleton,
a town six miles north of Manchester.
They gathered at this very spot, it's called Barrowfields
and the crowd was led by a poet and radical working-class reformer called Sam Bamford.
'Because what we want it's not theirs to give!'
We've decided to retrace the steps of Samuel Bamford and the Middleton contingent
and ask whether the issues that drove so many Mancunians to risk their lives back in 1819
are still relevant today.
Samuel Bamford worked as a cloth weaver at a time when many of these jobs were being replaced
by mechanised looms.
People feared for their livelihoods and standards of living.
It's not hard to see modern parallels with the rise of robotics and automation
and wage stagnation leading to a rise in hunger.
200 years ago, a hunger crisis was made worse by the Corn Laws which put heavy tariffs
on imported foreign grain that caused the price of bread to rise.
A lot of things is expensive.
You're going, you know, everything, you go in shops now
it's like double the price, everything's doubled.
You know, £1.30-odd for a loaf of bread, you know things like that
and tea bags are like £1,50.
You get two of them.
Thank you.
I was using the same teabag twice.
Cornflakes, a little bit [of milk] and then the water.
That's how things were, tight it was.
Did you use to work?
Yeah.
What did you do?
I used to strip asbestos.
I thought you were going to say you were a stripper.
Yeah, a lot of people say that.
I'm a stripper.
Asbestos, yeah, I done it for about 20 years.
… and then on to Manchester and liberty!
So, we have driven from Middleton to Harpurhey
which remains are very kind of working-class the district of north Manchester.
Samuel Bamford and his protesters would have marched through here.
So we are going to stop and talk to a few people about Peterloo and see what they think
about the main issues that affected the protesters then and whether they still feel relevant today.
Well, what's going on now, we've got more poverty,
we've got more children going hungry,
apparently according to the papers ...
I don't know what it was like 200 hundred years ago.
I didn't think you were a witness to the massacre!
But since I was a child, I don't think it's for the better.
I don't think life is changing for the better.
What them people must have been going through, when Peterloo was on,
they really will have been hungry, they really will have been starving,
I don't think anybody in England today has to starve. I don't know why the food banks are so busy …
I could be completely wrong but I work on the market, I see the price of food
and it sounds really cheap, I mean, I do buy, it feels really cheap.
Benefits is a life choice for people I know, it's a life choice.
Don't you think it's still kind of … it's not exactly glamorous life though, is it?
I don't think it's glamorous and I don't think they care.
They're capable of a lot, lot more than they'll ever achieve because they'll never be pushed.
That's me, but I get it, I always voted Labour,
automatically, just like my parents did, always voted Labour.
Couldn't bare Maggie Tatcher, I thought she was cruel …
And the older I've got, I changed.
I don't really know.
Right, why not?
I don't want to vote.
I can't, I just can't get my head round them.
I don't like liars, put it that way.
And, do you buy a newspaper?
No, I pinch it from Asda.
Yeah, I get the Evening News.
And you believe what you read?
Not all the time.
Papers do not print the truth.
Like in America, they praise you, don't they?
They lift you up.
Here, they push you down.
That's where they are, the media.
He's filming you!
You're on telly!
Distrust of the media has become rife in the modern age.
And I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news.
It's fake, phoney, fake.
But actual fake news was rampant after the Peterloo massacre.
The authorities tried their best to spin the events to make it seem
like a violent riot had been heroically suppressed.
They tried to claim that many of the deaths were purely accidental.
The protesters fought back with pamphlets and documents of their own.
One journalist present at the massacre by the name of John Edward Taylor
even set up his own newspaper to give reformists a stronger voice.
That paper was to become The Guardian.
So after they'd had a pint in Harpurhey,
the protesters marched through Collyhurst
which is now a district largely comprised of social housing
and then they marched through to the city centre.
So, there was a point last year when there were more cranes on the horizon in Manchester
than in any other European city.
It's becoming a city of skyscrapers and great riches
and there's luxury apartments going up all around the city
up for sale, often to foreign investors.
Living this aspirational, modern, metropolitan life,
completely out of the price range of your average Mancunian.
It's definitely becoming a city of haves and have-nots.
Protesters would have marched down these streets from all directions in their Sunday best.
Some walking almost 30 miles to congregate in St Peter's Fields
now St Peter's Square.
Today, the area remains a focus for protests,
with the recent schools' climate strike taking place here.
I don't know why but I feel proud of myself
that I am carrying on the torch with me as well,
and carrying down the generation of the strike in Manchester.
Because we've done Peterloo, we've done the strike for women's rights,
we've done a racism strike …
They are all strikes of Manchester and we are making history.
And some people say, well what difference does it make?
What difference do protests make?
Not everyone stops and listens in St Peter's Square
but if you are here and you're present, then you're less ignorable.
Where are you from?
Hull.
I'm a trade unionist.
I'm just visiting, we bought the video so we're going to be watching that …
Are these your kids?
These are my lads, yeah.
So you're going to indoctrinate them, are you? With the radical history …
I think they are already there anyway.
And since you are an union rep,
another big theme of Peterloo was mass unemployment,
after the Napoleonic wars, and very insecure work as well …
You know, the mills just taking on hands when they wanted people
and then maybe there was a trade slump
and then all of a sudden people were out the job and then, you know,
we see some parallels with that today with zero-hours contracts …
When you see the official figures, you look and: 'Oh, they don't look so bad.'
The employment figures, you mean?
When you actually look up, well he's classed as employed and he does five hours a week.
You know, that's not right, is it?
It's coming around again.
So although the Manchester of 2019 would be unrecognisable to the 60,000 people
who marched on this spot 200 hundred years ago, what they would recognise is
that many of the issues which prompted them to risk their lives and take to the streets,
are still so visible today.