Meetings
to petition for Parliamentary Reform were held in many parts of
the country; and amongst others in Leeds, in the month of January,
1817. At this meeting Edward Baines was the principal speaker. He
showed the extreme inequalities and abuses in the representation,
which gave members of decayed boroughs, and withheld them from the
largest commercial towns, such as Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.
(2) Edward
Baines, The
Life of Edward Baines (1851)
During
this summer occurred the dismal event in Manchester, which was popularly
and not unjustly called the Peterloo Massacre. I was an eye-witness,
and was on the hustings, having attended to observe and report the
proceedings of the meeting. I was a perfectly impartial spectator,
disapproving both of the opinions and the proceedings of Henry Hunt
and his colleagues.
On the 16th August, 1819, when seventy or eighty thousand persons
were collected at Manchester, on St. Peter's Field, to petition
for Parliamentary Reform, and when Henry Hunt was addressing the
meeting, a troop of Manchester yeomanry was ordered by the magistrates
to take Hunt and others into custody; and in execution of this most
unwise and improper order, the yeomanry dashed furiously into the
midst of an unarmed multitude, whom they trampled down and struck
with their sabres, till they surrounded the hustings, which they
threw down, and took all the persons who had been upon them into
custody. Then, galloping over the field, they dispersed the immense
assemblage, who fled in every direction. Several persons were killed
and hundreds wounded by this military outrage.
It is my conviction now, at the distance of thirty years, is precisely
the same as it was on the day of the massacre, namely, that the
military assault on the unarmed and peaceful multitude was a mad,
savage, and wicked act. Henry Hunt was not blameless: but the meeting
was perfectly peaceable; and the best proof that the intentions
of its leaders were so is supported by the fact that many young
women, the daughters of the active promoters of the meeting, were
placed on the hustings, from whence they were hurled when the yeomanry
overturned the hustings, and were cut and trampled upon in that
brutal assault.
(3)
Edward Baines, The Life of Edward
Baines (1851)
The
poll for Leeds commenced on the 13th February 1834. For some hours,
owing to superior arrangements and energy, Sir John Beckett. was
considerably ahead of his competitor. At eleven he had a majority
of more than 200 - the numbers being Beckett 718, Baines 515, Bower
6. At one o'clock the Tory majority had been reduced to 125. During
the afternoon the majority was slowly reduced but at the close of
the first day's poll, to the extreme mortification of the Liberals,
Sir John Beckett had a majority of 70. The second day of polling
was Saturday, the market-day; and perhaps never has there been so
high a degree of excitement in town. The friends of Edward Baines,
stung with shame at their position, made every exertion. The clothiers
left their places in the Cloth Hall and gathered round Edward Baines's
Committee Room. At one o'clock the majority for Mr. Baines was 30.
At the close of poll, at four o'clock, the numbers were as follows:
Mr. Baines 1,951, Sir John Beckett 1,917, Mr. Bower 24.
(4)
In his memoirs, Philip Snowden, explained
how his father was a reader of the Leeds Mercury in the 1840s.
I have heard my father relate how a number
of handloom weavers contributed a halfpenny a week to buy a copy
of the weekly Leeds Mercury, which was then sevenpence, and
with these coppers he was sent to a village four miles away each
week to get the paper; and then the subscribers to this newspaper
met in a cottage and he read the news to them.
The Leeds Mercury in those days was a Radical journal. Those
were times of great political and social excitement. The Chartist
movement was affecting the industrial population, and the agitation
was affecting the industrial population, and the agitation for the
Repeal of the Corn Laws was at its height. They were dangerous times
for those known to harbour Radical opinions. Throughout the West
Riding, as well as other parts of England, men were being arrested
and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for alleged sedition
and political conspiracy.
This group of Radical-Chartists in Cowling had to take precautions
against the attentions of the constable, and when they gathered
together to discuss politics and hear my father read the paper for
them they shuttered the window and sometimes placed a scout outside
to watch for the constable.
