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The outcry went beyond the radical press: even some of the mill owners were horrified by the violence. The event became known as the Peterloo Massacre, a parody on the Battle of Waterloo four years before. One of the most powerful attacks on the behaviour of the authorities came from the Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poem, 'The Mask of Anarchy', written in the aftermath of the massacre, could not be published until after his death.
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Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few. |
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This powerful exhortation to grab power finally saw the light of day in 1832, the year of the first parliamentary Reform Act, when the franchise was finally extended – albeit only to middle-class, property-owning men living there – to the towns and cities that had never been represented before.
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