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When film makers set about making films about historical events these days, very rarely do they seek to simply tell a tale of then. More often than not they're hoping to make parallels with now, and in the case of Mike Leigh's Peterloo it is, in places, glaringly apparent that in telling the shameful story of the massacre of Pererloo in 1819 the director is trying to warn us against the rising power of the populists, the demagogues, and, not least, the dangers of autocracy.
It's not a perfect fit for the times we live in, the terrible thing about history is not that it repeats itself but that it does so in cunningly different guises each time, but, for the most part, Leigh manages to pull this off in a manner that is neither too heavy handed, too morally superior, or, alternatively, too oblique.
Following on from the end of the Napoleonic Wars (the horror of which we glimpse via a brief prologue), Britain, and the cotton mills of Lancashire particularly, has been hit by mass unemployment and a famine that has been exacerbated by the Corn Laws, a nativist Regency era policy to impose tariffs and thus restrict import of foreign food and grain. A policy which made the landed gentry a lot of money and forced much of the working class into penury and destitution.
Penury and destitution which led, inevitably, to anger and, more positively, to political radicalism, campaigning for full (male) suffrage, and the first publishing of the Manchester Observer. A paper which, later, gave birth to both The Guardian and The Observer. Joshua (Pierce Quigley) and Nellie (Maxine Peake) live with their children under the shadows of the dark Satanic mills in an era that looks to be so much further back in time than a mere two centuries ago. On occasions, we could be looking at early Puritan settlers in the new world or even two millennia back to biblical times.
Idealistic Joshua and resigned, practical, Nellie argue over how realistic the prospects of full (male) suffrage are. Nellie just wants to put food on the table. Joshua thinks a change in the political situation will provide a better future for his children and grandchildren. Nellie, essentially, wants a fish, Joshua wants to learn how to fish.
Assorted Mancunian firebrands assemble in various taverns, fields, and moors to argue the toss about the future direction of their movement. Some believe in evolution (suffrage first and then let's see where that gets us) whilst others, most notably the fire and brimstone evangelical preacher Robert (Tom Meredith), lead the assembled crowds in chants of 'Liberty or Death' and calls for the head of King George III. Robert, clearly, is as much informed by the French Revolution as he is by the Old Testament.
Understandably, this occasionally puts him at odds with the more liberal minded reformers. A motley, but well meaning, collection of Hogarthian scrunts and suffering, but proud, men aged beyond their years and resembling dusty Rembrandt portraits unearthed in Lancashire garrets. They debate into the night, raise tankards with comrades from as far afield as Oldham and Wigan, and look south to the political classes of London with no little contempt.
The man who can, seemingly, unite this disparate group is the agitator and radical reformer Henry 'Orator' Hunt, an idealistic wealthy Wiltshire farmer whose peaceful intentions, some fear, fail to take into account the sheer amount of anger, and the potential for violence, brewing in a city that has seen most of its population slide into poverty, or drudgery, following the advent of the industrial loom.
Hunt (a fantastic performance by Rory Kinnear) travels to Manchester for a huge rally due to take place on Monday (not the Sabbath - which most displeased the hypocritical mill owners) August 16th. Throughout the planning of the meeting we're alerted to several obviously suspicious interlopers and we're also privy to scenes of political manouevring taking place between the then pillars of society:- the yeomanry, the judiciary, and the politicians.
The judge that merrily sends a man to the gallows for the theft of an overcoat is just one part of a stratified, hierarchical society that fears that to give one inch to the poor or to the working would eventually open the floodgates to a dreaded equality and, with universal (male) suffrage, perhaps put a check on their own power.
This simply can't be allowed to happen so as the crowds of men, women, and children gather in St Peter's Field, Manchester on the day of the rally, and Henry Hunt arrives in a stagecoach accompanied by minstrels, we see, first, the reading of the Riot Act, and, secondly, the unleashing of The 15th The King's Hussars whereupon fifteen protestors are killed and four hundred, to give a conservative estimate, are injured.
The massacre scene is long and bloody. Women are punched, kicked, and stabbed in the face by soldiers on horseback. Some of the soldiers are pulled off their horses and beaten too. Nobody seems to be in charge and nobody seems quite certain what is going on, which is what one would imagine such an event to be like, except that the powers that be are exercising their might with a force majeure utterly disproportionate to the peaceful rally they have broken up.
While these stout yeoman guards are allowed nearly as much nuance as the less fortunate protesting classes, it's never in doubt that, when threatened, they will close ranks, punch down on the poor, and punch down hard. Twas ever thus and, to look at the Jacob Rees-Moggs and Iain Duncan-Smiths of this world, we can see how resistant the ruling classes are to any change that doesn't empower them further.
But Leigh takes the admirable step of looking even further up the food chain, punching up even higher. The 15th Hussars were those administering the death and brutality and the yeomanry were the ones authorising it, sure, but none of it would have been possible without an uncaring, negligent, and callous ruling class exemplified here by General Sir John Byng (Alastair Mackenzie) who prefers to spend the afternoon of Peterloo at the races, the obsequious kowtowing PM Lord Liverpool (Robert Wilfort) and Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth (Karl Johnson), and the man they all must suck up to. The bloated charlatan that tends the throne in lieu of his incapacitated father, King George III, the Prince Regent.
Tim McInnerny (you'll remember him as Percy in Blackadder II with his 'brooch of purest green') doesn't get much screen time as the Prince Regent but when he does he steals the scene. Whether chewing on a grape, drinking from a goblet of wine, indulging in flirtatious talk with the equally grotesque Lady Coynygham, or having a potato lobbed through the window of his carriage, you can't keep your eyes off him and the awful, entitled, spectacle he is a synecdoche for.
That's not to detract from the other performances. Maxine Peake is, as ever, excellent. So too Kinnear. Pearce Quigly, David Moorst (as their permanently shellshocked son, Joseph), and Tom Meredith put in fine performances, as do all the lesser known names that make up what amounts to a fine ensemble piece and, with a two and a half hour running time, something of an epic.
It's worth investing that time, though, because this is both an important history lesson (and one that shamefully is not taught as part of British history at school) and a warning from the past that still holds relevance in the future. In the first instance it was long overdue. In the second it could hardly have been more timely, and that, surely, is exactly what Leigh intended. But on top of all that, it's a bloody good piece of film making.
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