Peterloo
Directed by Mike Leigh
Written by Mike Leigh
2hour 23 minutes
CAST:
Rory Kinnear – Henry Hunt
Maxine Peake – Nellie
Pearce Quigley- Joshua
David Moorst – Joseph, Waterloo veteran
Neil Bell- Samuel Bamford
John-Paul Hurley – John Thacker Saxton
Robert Wilfort- Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister
Karl Johnson – Lord Sidmouth, Home Secretary
Alistair Mackenzie- General Byng
Tim McInnery- Prince Regent
Marion Bailey – Lady Conyngham
Sam Troughton – Mr Hobhouse
Ian Mercer- Doctor Healey
Vincent Franklin – Magistrate Rev Ethelson
Jeff Rawle- Magistrate Rev Hay
Philip Whitchurch – Magistrate Colonel Fletcher
Robert Gillespie Magistrate Warmley
Jonathan Jaynes – Magistrate Tatton
Nicholas Lumley- Magistrate Rev Perryn
Shaun Prendergast- Magistrate Bolt
Alan Williams- Magistrate Marriot
Patrick Kennedy- Colonel L’Estrange
It’s hard to catch “art house” films on release which is why this is a DVD review. I don’t normally bother to review DVD or Netflix viewings, but this film left me wanting to say stuff!
The Peterloo Massacre of 1819 is a key point in 19thcentury British political history. Four years after the Battle Waterloo, a peaceful meeting of working people wanting to expand the franchise and reform parliamentary representation took place at St. Peter’s Field in Manchester. Between 60,000 and 80,000 people turned up on 16thAugust. At this point, Manchester had no MP, and voters travelled to Lancaster to vote for the county’s two MPs. Old Sarum had one voter and two MPs. Weymouth & Portland had four MPs between them. Half the MPs were elected from “owned” or rotten boroughs.
The meeting was peaceful, and addressed by the orator Henry Hunt from London (he was a Wiltshire man, and in the film, Rory Kinnear accurately pins a mild Wiltshire accent). On accents, the Lancashire accent in the film is rural, not urban, but it’s 1819. These were new towns thrown up by the industrial revolution.
It was a clear summer day, and the crowd turned out in their Sunday clothes, and women and children were present in numbers. Many had walked ten miles or more from mill towns outside Manchester. 10,000 marched from Oldham alone.
From “Peterloo” – marching from the mill towns to Manchester
The local magistrates watched the meeting from a house overlooking the field. They called in the cavalry who arrived with drawn swords, and who were drunk. A two year old child was the first casualty. More troops arrived. Fifteen people were killed, between 400 and 700 were injured. Many of the slightly injured never reported their wounds for fear of arrest.
Research showed that 12% of the crowd were female, but over a third of those injured were female, suggesting they were targeted by the troops. Henry Hunt, speaking from two carts, was arrested along with several prominent journalists. Hunt spent two years in prison.
While it was a major episode in 19thcentury history, it was another 13 years before the first reform act. It wasn’t the last mounted cavalry / mounted police riot against working people either. In 1910 and 1911, Welsh miners were on strike in Tonypandy. Winston Churchill as Home Secretary, ordered the troops in allegedly ordering them to drive the rats back into their holes. My Great Uncle Ben was there as a miner, and when I was a child he repeatedly told me the story, and said whenever Churchill spoke on radio, even in World War Two he was booed in South Wales. I took this with a pinch of salt, though my mother assured me it was true. She said she never forgave my dad for voting for Churchill in 1951. Then when I was at university, a friend’s Scottish miner father visited, and told us that mining communities all over the UK never forgave Churchill for Tonypandy. It seems the troops, ordered in by Churchill, behaved far better than the local police, who were not under his direct control. I could mention Grosvenor Square, Vietnam demos and police horses in 1968 … but to the film.
The film has fallen over backwards for historical accuracy, right down to the colour of the carts used for hustings and the exact journalists present. The colours are muted 19thcentury hues too. This is both its greatest virtue … and its greatest failing.
You need human interest. They start from a fact … one of the killed was a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo (Peter’s Field + Waterloo = Peter-loo). So that’s where we begin on the 1815 battlefield. Joseph ( David Moorst) is shell-shocked, or maybe just not very bright. We follow him home (on foot) to his family in Manchester, and Leigh is bringing in major theatrical talent to play his father, Joshua, (Pearce Quigley) and mother, Nellie, (Maxine Peake). That all bodes well. So do the scenes in London with the stuttering Lord Sidmouth as Home Secretary and General Byng, given command of the army in the north of England.
Then they get caught by over attention to historical accuracy (hoist by their own petard … For Maxine Peake who has played Hamlet? As has Rory Kinnear) It starts to go wrong. We need to know that the local magistrates are total bastards, so see three sentencing sessions one after the other … whipping, transportation to Australia, hanging. Hanging for stealing a coat. As I know from The Transports folk-opera, there was a price level where theft went from transportation to hanging. They might have mentioned that, but didn’t. The one-two-three effect made me think … BBC School’s Unit, afternoon history lesson re-enactment. The story does it all on its own without over-signposted polemics.
That BBC School’s Unit historical drama effect continued. We see a series of meetings among the politicized locals, and they forget about our human interest family group for much too long. They should have kept the story close to their point of view.
The political meetings earlier on are NOT the most interesting bits …
I had the feeling we were getting word for word accuracy, and more than 50 years ago, I did this period for history A level, and then did joint Politics at university, but if it was dull for me (and I knew it), it was more than dull for most viewers. My companion also took history A level, but as she said in an all-girls grammar school in the 1960s they thought opting for the Tudors and Stuarts was more suitable for females than all that 19thcentury radical political stuff. In terms of excitement, they might have had a point. The Manchester leaders go down to London to lobby Hunt to come and speak (he cuts them dead somewhat).
It starts to pick up again once Hunt gets to Manchester. First, Rory Kinnear as Henry Hunt is always a fascinating actor, but more he’s lodged with the local reporter’s family, and we get some domestic stuff, like having his portrait done, and the rather thick female servant being instructed to hold down his writing paper. We also have local politician Bamford along who wants to prepare for a fight, which Hunt forbids.
Rory Kinnear, waving hat, as Henry Hunt
On to the actual meeting and massacre and we’re into flat out 5 star brilliant film making – our family is back, there’s a huge crowd, intercutting with the magistrates, watching from above, deciding to read the riot act then calling in the troops.
The magistrates clad in black … so many women below are clad in white …
The commander of the Northern army, General Byng is off at York races, as we see in a cutaway. I thought for a second the TV had switched to a sport channel on its own (weird things happen with Sky Q boxes) as horses with jockeys throwing up dust look much the same as they do in 2019.
The massacre is superb, heart-rending and thrilling. It also shows individual troopers viciously out of control … a “police riot” while an officer vainly tries to keep them in order.
The troops advance, swords drawn
The aftermath, with the effete pancake made-up Prince of Wales (Tim McInnerny), soon to be George IV, and his mutton-dressed-up as lamb daft mistress, Lady Conygham (Marion Bailey), continually muttering “Tranquility!” is very funny. And of course bears no relationship whatsoever to any contemporary princes of Wales as heirs in waiting with less than beautiful consorts. Not at all.
Lady Conygham Marion Bailey) entrances the Prince Regent.
So great start … a very dull soggy middle, we needed more focus on Joshua, Nellie and Joseph … and a fabulous ending.
Peter Viney's Blog 
Leave a Reply