Unfortunately, I only passed the Briton’s Protection on my last day in Manchester, on the way to the train station, with no time for a pint. But I was interested by the sign, showing soldiers on horseback chasing down people carrying ‘REFORM’ banners. I took a picture and looked up the story behind it when I got home.
It refers to what happened at nearby St. Peter’s Field on a summer afternoon in 1819, when around 80,000 people gathered to peacefully demonstrate for voting reform. The British Library site has a good summary of the context and what happened that day.
What struck me reading about the beginning of that rally is how much it sounds like a lot of British demonstrations I’ve been to. I really enjoy going on demonstrations for things like democracy and peace; they’re usually friendly, social events in the fresh air, with cheery music, drums, and lots of people carrying very earnest banners and signs. It’s a nice excuse to go into town and it’s always encouraging to spend time with other people who all publicly agree that e.g. racism is bad.
The last one I went on was the Stand Up to Racism march and rally for UN Anti-Racism Day (March 21): I walked down Regent’s Street next to four London Met students pushing a shopping trolley, which held a portable speaker playing Wham! songs. There was an enthusiastic steel drum band at the top west corner of Trafalgar Square (possibly more enthusiastic than competent), everyone was in a good mood, and it was a jolly afternoon out in town until I got too cold and went to the pub. As I left I passed a young woman in a headscarf helping students register to vote.
At St. Peter’s Field in 1819, the local authorities got nervous because the people were, I guess, waving banners too aggressively, and ordered soldiers on horseback to charge the crowd with sabres. There was nowhere for people to go; 10-20 people were killed, and around 700 injured. It’s hard to estimate the casualties because a lot of people didn’t get medical help, because they were afraid of what would happen if there was a record that they had been at the rally. The attack quickly became known the ‘Peterloo Massacre’, a swipe at the soldiers for acting as though they were at Waterloo fighting Napoleon, instead of charging on unarmed citizens.
The pub name ‘The Britons Protection’ supposedly refers to the story that people took cover there during the attack. Although the pub has been called that since 1806, so couldn’t have been named after the 1819 rally, it seems to me likely that protesters did hide there (a pub is generally an excellent place to go in times of danger). Whatever the original reason behind the name, the Peterloo Massacre definitely the story associated with the pub now: as well as the sign, there’s a mural of the rally and attack in the pub’s corridor.
What’s really interesting to me is who gets the name ‘Briton’. You’d think the pointedly patriotic name would go to the people representing the government – the king’s soldiers. But the ‘Briton’ in the pub name refers to pro-democracy protesters, and the protection they’re seeking is from representatives of their own government, which is trying to kill them. That is, ‘Britishness’ means demonstrating for change, in the face of violent state suppression. (It also counters the very common accusation that pro-democracy protesters are just foreign agitators – French Jacobins trying to bring the Terror to England, or later German communists, or Russian Soviets – who are only pretending to want reform, and so can be repressed and ignored.)
When home secretary Theresa May is saying the government plans to ‘actively promote British values’, it’s encouraging to see Britishness being associated with democratic protest, in opposition to state violence. Something May will hopefully keep in mind as she decides whether to authorise water cannons being used against protesters in London.
