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| The Peterloo massacre and history lessons that echo through the ages | The Peterloo massacre and history lessons that echo through the ages |
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| All credit to Mike Leigh who, in his new film, has turned his great talent to honouring those butchered in the Peterloo massacre of 1819 for peacefully gathering to demand extension of the suffrage and an end to the brutal denial of workers’ rights during that terrible age of repression following the Napoleonic wars (Put the Peterloo massacre on school curriculum, says Leigh, 16 August). | All credit to Mike Leigh who, in his new film, has turned his great talent to honouring those butchered in the Peterloo massacre of 1819 for peacefully gathering to demand extension of the suffrage and an end to the brutal denial of workers’ rights during that terrible age of repression following the Napoleonic wars (Put the Peterloo massacre on school curriculum, says Leigh, 16 August). |
| As he says himself, it is remarkable that Leigh, who is in his 70s and grew up in Salford, never learned about the Peterloo massacre at school. It seems that it is still not mentioned in the national curriculum. | As he says himself, it is remarkable that Leigh, who is in his 70s and grew up in Salford, never learned about the Peterloo massacre at school. It seems that it is still not mentioned in the national curriculum. |
| I am 81. I attended a grammar school in east London from 1948 to 1954, an experience that, as far as my general education went, left a lot to be desired. But in the history lessons prior to the GCE O-level exams, we covered English history from 1815 to 1918, dealing in some detail with the repressive Tory administration of Lord Liverpool (1812-27), the Gagging Acts, the Six Acts against “combinations”, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Anti-Corn Law League and the Chartist movement. | I am 81. I attended a grammar school in east London from 1948 to 1954, an experience that, as far as my general education went, left a lot to be desired. But in the history lessons prior to the GCE O-level exams, we covered English history from 1815 to 1918, dealing in some detail with the repressive Tory administration of Lord Liverpool (1812-27), the Gagging Acts, the Six Acts against “combinations”, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Anti-Corn Law League and the Chartist movement. |
| We had an inspired teacher who brought the horrific reality of the Peterloo massacre vividly to life. I believe he went on to be an education officer for the TUC and later, if my memory serves me correctly, director of education for Northumberland and Durham.His classes inspired me to read EP Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class and to go on to teach history in comprehensive schools and FE colleges.Mike FaulknerLondon | We had an inspired teacher who brought the horrific reality of the Peterloo massacre vividly to life. I believe he went on to be an education officer for the TUC and later, if my memory serves me correctly, director of education for Northumberland and Durham.His classes inspired me to read EP Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class and to go on to teach history in comprehensive schools and FE colleges.Mike FaulknerLondon |
| • I remember, as a Mancunian, teaching, in Inverness, early 19th-century history for the Scottish higher certificate in the late 1980s, and particularly a section on British working-class movements, which accommodated detailed work on the period of Peterloo. By the early 1990s, under the Scottish secretaryships of Rifkind and latterly Forsyth, this had gone. | • I remember, as a Mancunian, teaching, in Inverness, early 19th-century history for the Scottish higher certificate in the late 1980s, and particularly a section on British working-class movements, which accommodated detailed work on the period of Peterloo. By the early 1990s, under the Scottish secretaryships of Rifkind and latterly Forsyth, this had gone. |
| It wasn’t so much that the French revolution had been deemed no longer to have existed, rather that improvement of living conditions and the political system had to be presented as handed down from above by an enlightened, technologically aware, wise and secure governing class. Of which, briefly, Wilberforce (from a banking family) was presented as a suitable exemplar, as was Humphry Davy. | It wasn’t so much that the French revolution had been deemed no longer to have existed, rather that improvement of living conditions and the political system had to be presented as handed down from above by an enlightened, technologically aware, wise and secure governing class. Of which, briefly, Wilberforce (from a banking family) was presented as a suitable exemplar, as was Humphry Davy. |
| We have now reached the stage where even the question of the origin of the 1833 Factory Act is presented as a sample lesson for one of the English “key stages” by the National Archives at Kew as the action of an anonymous and unpolitical “government”. There is a good deal more than Peterloo to be resurrected and studied.Jim BrennanInverness | We have now reached the stage where even the question of the origin of the 1833 Factory Act is presented as a sample lesson for one of the English “key stages” by the National Archives at Kew as the action of an anonymous and unpolitical “government”. There is a good deal more than Peterloo to be resurrected and studied.Jim BrennanInverness |
| • As a former history teacher in an academy I was tasked with a rewrite of the year 8/9 curriculum, in which I included a number of lessons on the impact and legacy of the Peterloo massacre. When this was submitted for approval to the appropriate line managers I was instructed to remove the lessons on Peterloo as they were “unnecessary”, “no one has ever heard of it”, and it was “not relevant to a modern curriculum”. | • As a former history teacher in an academy I was tasked with a rewrite of the year 8/9 curriculum, in which I included a number of lessons on the impact and legacy of the Peterloo massacre. When this was submitted for approval to the appropriate line managers I was instructed to remove the lessons on Peterloo as they were “unnecessary”, “no one has ever heard of it”, and it was “not relevant to a modern curriculum”. |
| Hopefully Mike Leigh’s new film will go some way to address the above and return this tragedy to its rightful place within the educational curriculum.Gavin GlasbyRotherham | Hopefully Mike Leigh’s new film will go some way to address the above and return this tragedy to its rightful place within the educational curriculum.Gavin GlasbyRotherham |
| • Mike Leigh’s sound suggestion to include the Peterloo massacre on the school curriculum should be taken up by our education authority immediately. How many Labour members know that Shelley’s poem about this incident is the source of our slogan “For the many, not the few”? This item triggered a discussion in which my wife reminded me that she first learned about the British role in the Irish famine on a visit to Ireland as an adult. In the 1970s on a visit to Hong Kong, a local trainee teacher I met had never heard of the opium wars. Perhaps “they” don’t want us to know about such things.Gren GaskellMalvern, Worcestershire | • Mike Leigh’s sound suggestion to include the Peterloo massacre on the school curriculum should be taken up by our education authority immediately. How many Labour members know that Shelley’s poem about this incident is the source of our slogan “For the many, not the few”? This item triggered a discussion in which my wife reminded me that she first learned about the British role in the Irish famine on a visit to Ireland as an adult. In the 1970s on a visit to Hong Kong, a local trainee teacher I met had never heard of the opium wars. Perhaps “they” don’t want us to know about such things.Gren GaskellMalvern, Worcestershire |
| • Mike Leigh says he wasn’t taught about Peterloo at school. If he’d been a pupil in 1976 he could have seen a BBC School Television dramatisation for teenagers of Peter Carter’s historical novel The Black Lamp, in which the massacre is the climax. That’s why I adapted and produced it.John Prescott ThomasBristol | • Mike Leigh says he wasn’t taught about Peterloo at school. If he’d been a pupil in 1976 he could have seen a BBC School Television dramatisation for teenagers of Peter Carter’s historical novel The Black Lamp, in which the massacre is the climax. That’s why I adapted and produced it.John Prescott ThomasBristol |
| • I went to The Derby School, a grammar/tech in Bury, Lancashire, in the 1960s. Peterloo was on the syllabus for O-level and A-level social and economic history, and fortunately we did not have to learn anything about kings and queens. I can only think that since then the Department for Education has been dominated by southerners.Linda HardmanRamsbottom, Lancashire | • I went to The Derby School, a grammar/tech in Bury, Lancashire, in the 1960s. Peterloo was on the syllabus for O-level and A-level social and economic history, and fortunately we did not have to learn anything about kings and queens. I can only think that since then the Department for Education has been dominated by southerners.Linda HardmanRamsbottom, Lancashire |
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