History and Today

Listed buildings in St. Albans and Croydon

2012-02-15T13:21:00.000Z

Thanks to Tim Hitchcock for alerting me to sketchmap.co.uk.

It has a handy feature of a listed buildings and scheduled monuments layer. So here's St. Albans compared with Croydon:

Having read the conservation area reports for stalbans I presume that many of the blue blobs are for 'locally listed' rather than nationally?

Prohist2: reflections on memory, material culture and the public history of protest

2012-02-14T17:10:00.008Z

'Protest, Memory and Public History', an Economic history society funded workshop, took place at UWE on 11 February 2012. It formed the second part of my 'new approaches to the history of protest' series.

James Baker's report on his blog tells you all you need to know about the papers and discussion. I will add my thoughts on the day, but focused more on the theoretical implications.

The theme that emerged from the morning's session was locality, region, place, and memory. Echoes of Pierre Nora's lieux de memoire and Maurice Halbwach's 'every society must have its landmarks' ran through the papers. Yet those places, in England at least, were local and defined by local rather than national commemorations.

Protests, demonstrations, oppositional incidents occur in specific places. Even if at the time such events had greater repercussions or wider support nationally or internationally, often their occurrence is only commemorated and remembered locally. Memory is kept alive locally.

Steve Poole asked why the English do not have national memorials to resistance, equivalent to the Communards' Wall in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. He hinted that such resistance has to be seen as part of the national 'story' by national authorities. Wales, Ireland, and Scotland have been able perhaps to incorporate incidents of protest within their national histories. Newport for example have celebrated the Chartist rising of 1839 in a big way, and Welsh flags seen at commemorations of the event hint at a national(ist) appropriation of a local event.


Newport

This is not as easy in England, and so commemoration of resistance events in particular places remain part of civic or local rather than national pride. Place and memory in England, as Carl Griffin reminds us, are about locality and community, and custom and ritual.

Nigel Costley explained how the annual Tolpuddle commemorations only came to mean as much as they do today because of the TUC's desire to use the event in 1934 to revitalise the trade union movement. Tolpuddle has been firmly part of the trade union canon, even if it was essentially a story of failure, and even the inhabitants today have a problematic relationship with the wider commemorations. Other protest history is commemorated from below as well as above as part of local pride rather than a national narrative - and even those are contested, as the Peterloo Massacre memorial campaign demonstrates. But the difficulties inherent in working out what that 'national story' should contain make this process even more problematic.

Yet even in Scotland, national histories of resistance are contested. Iain Robertson spoke about the contested memorials to the Clearances on the Isle of Lewis. His idea of 'heritage from below' encompasses how the communities of the Hebrides wrote counter-hegemonic 'landmarks' (referencing Maurice Halbwachs) into the landscape. Memory was made visible and physical. However, that memory was contested from within as well as from above. A regional group wished to have abstract memorials that referenced the local but were unified in style to represent their wider struggle against the landowners. Individual communities however desired and indeed created their own vernacular monuments representing their own identity.

The afternoon session focused on memory and public history.

In his blog, James Baker has picked up on the fallout left by the last decade's 'memory boom' in history and sociology. What we developed during the afternoon was a related debate about the interactions between collective memory, museums and archives, and our role as professional historians.

Participants aired opposing views about the display of an arm-bone of a Bristol rioter from 1831, now in the new M-Shed museum. Was it morally right to display this bone? What story could it tell? What could the gaps in our knowledge about it not tell us about its history, and about the riots of 1831?

An interesting conclusion emerged about the role of museums, archives, and the public in collecting and archiving records of protest. Material culture is indelibly linked with public history. The reason that museums that the People's History Museum, Manchester, and M-Shed are structured as they are is because of the objects they hold. We do not have the oral histories of nineteenth century rioters direct from their mouths. We have scraps of cloth banners, ragged handbills, souvenirs, that both protesters and the authorities thought interesting or worthy enough to save for posterity, but we have lost so much more: the slogans, the songs, the images.

30 November 2011, York Minster

The story of protest today is still shaped and confined by the surviving objects that can be displayed. How do we collate, archive, and display artefacts from the Occupy movement, from last summer's London riots, from strikes and demonstrations today? Can we use crowdsourcing through Flickr and other social media to provide an archive? James Baker made the crucial point that Flickr has made the public into their own curators, with hundreds of thousands of mini-exhibitions of contemporary and historic events, from all different points of view, from below. How can we utilise that as historians?

We hope to hold the third leg of the workshop series in late summer 2012 at the University of Gloucestershire. I hope you can join us.

Further reading:

Material Culture:

Ian Woodward, ed., Understanding Material Culture (London, 2007)
Ian Hodder, ed., The Meaning of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic Expression (Abingdon, 1989)

'Memory boom' and its critics:

Guy Beiner, 'In Anticipation of a Post-Memory Boom Syndrome', Cultural Analysis, 7 (2008)
Stefan Goebel, The Great War and Medieval Memory: War, Remembrance and Medievalism in Britain and Germany, 1914-1940 (Cambridge, 2007)
Susannah Radstone, ed., Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates (2010)
Gavriel Rosenfeld, 'A Looming Crash or a Soft Landing? Forecasting the Future of the Memory 'Industry', Journal of Modern History, 81 (March 2009)

Landscape and place:

James Elkins and Rachel Ziady DeLue, Landscape Theory (Oxford, 2008), which has Denis Cosgrove reflecting on critiques of his Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape
J. E. Malpas, Place and Experience: a Philosophical Topography (Cambridge, 2004)
Kenneth Olwig, Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic: from Britain's Renaissance to America's New World (Madison, 2002)

Place, material culture, and memory:

Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (MIT, 1995)
Nuala Johnson, 'Cast in Stone', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 13 (1995)
Iain Robertson, Heritage from Below (Ashgate, 2012)
Keith Snell, Parish and Belonging (2006)

Protest, Memory, and Public History: a workshop 11 February

2012-02-13T20:24:00.000Z

We held the second leg of my 'new approaches to the history of protest' series at UWE, Bristol, on the bright frosty cold day of 11 February 2012. The theme this time was 'protest, memory and public history'. About 40 participants came, and included a healthy mix of trade union activists, local historians, museum professionals, postgrad- and undergraduate students, and academic historians.

I will post some reflections relating to theories of memory and material culture soon, but in the meantime, I must highly recommend James Baker (University of Kent)'s detailed write-up of the main discussion points of the day: http://cradledincaricature.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/prohist-2/

Manchester modernist society

2012-01-06T09:41:00.000Z

I'm on a modernist bent at the moment, so am delighted to promote Manchester Modernist Society: http://www.manchestermodernistsociety.org/index.html - just check out the 'welcome to Manchester' poster on their homepage! They have events like a showing of 'Bata-ville' on 26 January, and are compiling a lovely modernist map of Manchester.

old photographs of modernist buildings in Manchester

2011-12-29T14:34:00.003Z

Manchester Archives are adding their fabulous photographic collection to flickr. Guest 'curators' select thematic groups of pics, such as 'Modernist Manchester'.

I love this picture of M & S in the 1960s: http://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/6130191250/

I also enjoyed the pictures of the new university buildings, such as this one of the Kilburn Building in 1971: http://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/6129643335/in/photostream/
It shows how the old Victoria university kept up with 'building the new universities' (see previous post).

See also this great series of stamps from 1971 showcasing modern universities: http://dirtymodernscoundrel.blogspot.com/2012/01/modern-university-buildings.html

On a somewhat tangental note, I also recommend reading Guy Ortolano's article, 'Planning the Urban Future in 1960s Britain', in Historical Journal, 54: 2 (2011). It's a thought-provoking and really well written account of Bucks county council's plans for a city connected by monorail. In the final event, Whitehall took over the new cities programme and built Milton Keynes there instead, where the car was king. But I love that initial sense of anything is possible, trying to find utopian solutions to the baby boom, car use, and green belt.

Update: thanks to Guy for alerting me to this project on tower blocks by Miles Glendinning and Stefan Muthesius: http://www.towerblock.org/

recommended blog on history of music education

2011-12-21T13:06:00.001Z

For all you retronaught/ghost box/library music fans/children of the 'zone out there, this blog: http://toysandtechniques.blogspot.com/ is a great collection of books and sounds from music education across the globe.

I especially like this 'Making Electronic Music' from the 1970s, which teaches children to do their own circuits and cut up tapes. The sounds are freakier than even the bbc radiophonic workshop.

When I was at primary school, there was a storage area under the stairs which as I recall had similar stuff and equipment like this, ready to be thrown away as outdated. But listening to the sounds now they seem as futuristic and experimental as ever.

paper at the IHR this Wednesday

2011-12-12T09:22:00.000Z

I'm giving a paper at the 'British History in the Long Eighteenth Century' seminar at the Institute of Historical Research this Wednesday, 5.15pm. The seminar will also be podcast on the IHR site.

I'll be speaking on the main themes of my next book, and the talk is called 'Space, Place, and Popular Politics in Northern England, 1789-1848'.

An extended version of my paper is available on History Working Papers project website in two parts: historical narrative and theory. Please comment on the drafts on the website and start the debate! I'll be amalgamating and summarising both papers on the day, and showing some of my experiments with historical mapping. They won't be as amazing as Locating London's Past, but it's a start.

James Chadderton and post-apocalyptic Manchester

2011-12-09T10:03:00.000Z

The BBC news site has a preview of the new exhibition by James Chadderton. The exhibition is on at the Incognito gallery in the Northern Quarter. His pictures portray a post-apocalyptic Manchester in vivid detail. A little bit over the top for me, but still very striking.

His website is here.

New buildings and urban geographies in the 1960s and 1970s

2011-11-30T21:51:00.003Z

There are some great books from the 1960s and 70s about the new buildings and modern urban geographies being constructed at that time. Here are three of my favourites:
1. Tony Birks, Building the New Universities (David and Charles publishers, 1972)

A guide to Sussex, York, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Warwick, and Lancaster universities, most of which had only finished their first stages of building at the time of publication. A fascinating insight into the ideas and ideals behind this wave of new universities, and how these ideals shaped their architecture and planning. It's also balanced in its assessment of some of the more experimental design features, especially the tendency for concrete to discolour in the British climate, and difficulties of ventilation and heating.

Choice quotations:

(on the budget freeze and cutbacks of 1968)

In a move to lower the cost of learning, or at least the unit-cost of higher education, buildings, like everything else, have to suffer. Any special pleading for architecture must take into consideration the need to resist the erosion of other benefits such as the student-staff ratio, currently 8.5:1 and the best in the world (compared with 30:1 in France and 12:1 in the United States) but likely to rise to 9:1 or more in the next few years. (p. 23)

As individuals in their university, students will make their first public speech, cast their first vote, work, make love, and all too often become lonely. The glass and concrete environment can be a protective shield, an exhilarating backcloth, or even a frightening cell. The charge that the country is building 'architects' universities' underlines the fundamental nervousness about the extent to which academics should contrive their own environment. (p. 45)

NB at the time of writing, there is a copy available in the Oxford Turl Street branch of Oxfam.

2. Charles McKean and Tom Jestico, Guide to Modern Buildings in London, 1965-75 (Warehouse publishing, 1976)

Fully illustrated guide to a range of new buildings around London, including the Barbican, Trellick Tower, and Pimlico school (now demolished). There are some interesting trails around Hampstead, South Bank, Richmond, etc, in the appendix, which I'd love to follow to see which buildings are left. The 'Heathrow Airport Trail' around the terminals and hangars might be a bit difficult these days though.

Choice quotation from the introduction:

Severe economic restraint has caused a sharp drop in the building programme, leaving thousands of London's acres unused or derelict. The energy crisis is forcing a re-appraisal of the more expensive forms of building, together with a serious investigation into the merits of 'ecological' or low-energy buildings. Despite London's expected loss of population (from almost 8 million in about 1939 to a projected 5 1/2 millions in 1991) there is still no end in sight to homelessness.

NB at the time of writing, there is another copy available of this book in Janette Ray's second-hand architecture bookshop in York.

3. James Stevens Curl, The Erosion of Oxford (Oxford Illustrated Press, 1977)

Curl's book is vicious in its criticism of the modern developments in 1960s and 70s Oxford. He seems to have a thing against modern streetlamps, and is obsessed with the new buildings going against the 'vertical' or 'horizontal' emphasis of particular streets. On some issues, however, he was right, particularly the clearance of St. Ebbes to make way for the Westgate Centre. The now foreboding multi-storey carpark and the expanse of coach park and scrubland is really a bleak noman's land. The Wharf House used to be an oasis of humanity in that area, but it is now private houses.

A classic quotation from Curl:

If Morris could only see the mess that has been made of St. Aldates; the destruction of Castle Street; the erosion of Cornmarket; the ruination of the High at its extremities; the rebuilding of George Street; the new buildings in Longwall; and the overall loss of national treasures, we can be sure that a howl of agonised rage would soon put the fear of God into the despoilers.

There is a danger of getting a smug sense of hindsight reading these books in 2011, with many of the projects described now either deemed a failure or demolished completely. The language and tone of the first two is undoubtedly optimistic and utopian: grand schemes of rebuilding and expanding after the slum clearances. The vision of the new universities, as they were then, helped shape their distinctive architecture as a break from the apparent past constraints of the Victorian and older universities. I do like 1960s architecture done well; the ambition of many of the schemes is admirable. However, they are also practical and critical of some of the new developments, identifying potential problems that did indeed come to bear, in terms of a coldness in the architecture, and lack of transport and social facilities in the urban planning.

And for a European comparison, I'm very much taken by this 1970 guide to how the Munich olympic park was progressing in time for the 1972 Olympics. Thanks to Simon Webster, who bought it in Munich a few years ago.

Architekturwettbewerbe, special issue, December 1970.

It's a *very* detailed analysis, with architectural plans and overviews of the construction of the stadia, tracks, and athletes' village.
Most of the original architecture still stands, and although it feels a little tellytubby land sometimes, it still works well and has provided a lasting legacy to the area.

research papers on History Working Papers Project

2011-11-28T15:20:00.000Z

I'm trialling my research papers on the History Working Papers Project website, set up by Jason Kelly and Tim Hitchcock as a means of enabling open peer review.

I will be giving an abridged and combined version of the papers firstly at the University of York C18 seminar this Tuesday 29 November, and then at the Institute of Historical Research on 14 December, 5.15pm. They are in two parts, partly because I haven't worked out which bits I'm going to use, and partly to provide more extensive versions for people who wish to know more than I can explain in a 45 minute seminar. Part II is a theoretical overview of the 'spatial turn'.

Part I: 'Space, Place, and Popular Politics in Northern England, 1789-1848'
Part II: 'Theoretical Interlude: Why I'm tired of turning'.

Do post your comments and start the debate!

Material object of the week

2011-11-26T14:48:00.000Z

I love this little late C18 patch box featuring a vignette of the Tontine Inn, Sheffield. It's in Sheffield museum's excellent online collections.

Apologies to framework knitters and Rebecca Rioters

2011-11-23T09:41:00.001Z

Apologies to the good stocking knitters of Nottinghamshire - I kept referring to you as weavers on the debate 'Were the Luddites Right?' on BBC Radio 3 last night. Of course I meant knitters, but in the heat of debate, with no notes, I couldn't remember the right word.

Also, apologies to the Rebecca Rioters of Wales. I was considering cross-dressing customs used in protest in Lancashire and the West Riding in 1811-12 specifically rather than wider traditions and Wales in the 1840s.

Listen to the debate here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017cjqt

non-places: Rowan Moore and Anna Minton on Business Improvement Districts

2011-11-14T11:55:00.008Z

This week's Observer featured an article by Rowan Moore on the London River Park shopping development. He builds his argument around Anna Minton’s study of Business Improvement Districts such as Liverpool One, Paddington basin, and Spitalfields market.

The fashion now is for 'malls without walls', that is, large areas of shopping streets that remain uncovered and have the appearance of being open public spaces, but which have every aspect of them privately run and controlled.

Both Moore and Minton highlight how the private multinational conglomerates who own these shopping developments have changed the meaning of public space, surreptitiously and deliberately. These spaces appear to be public because they are in the open air, have some public amenities such as seats, sculptures and fountains, perhaps toilets, but they are only pretending to be public spaces. Activities which we assume are allowed in public space - such as photography with a tripod, picnics, chaining up a bicycle, and important for our case, handing out leaflets or making a political protest or meeting – are prohibited. Such activities are policed and prevented by private security forces rather than the police.

These are not public spaces because their definition of the 'public' are ABC1 consumers. Minton notes on p. 45 of her book that the 'list of undesirables' spans far more than the usual suspects of beggars 'to include groups of young people, old people, political protesters, photographers, really anyone who is not there to go shopping'. This reminds me of the Improvement acts passed for many towns in the early nineteenth century, which attempted to prohibit loitering and other (as we would call it now) anti-social behaviour. After the 1828 police act passed for Manchester, the committee expressed concern over popular street culture, among other activities, playing bat, ‘singing ballads and songs or uttering obscene language in the streets or delivering or posting indecent placards or handbills’. (Francis Dodsworth, ‘Mobility and Civility: Police and the Formation of the Modern City’, in Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, eds., The New Blackwell Companion to the City (Oxford, 2011), chapter 20.

The duties of police officers included ‘that idle persons, porters and others, do not stand in crowds at the corners of streets or on any of the pavements to the interruption of passengers’. (Manchester Archives, M9/30/9/1, Reports of Manchester Police Commissioners, 1828) Particular attention was paid to street corners as gathering places.

Urban improvement (see Patrick Joyce's Rule of Freedom on nineteenth-century Manchester) was concerned with a nineteenth century equivalent of the 'Clean and Safe' programmes identified by Minton. A desire for Benthamite economy and efficiency fuelled changes to street design, sewerage and lighting, and policing. But improvers were also influenced by a revived Reformation of Manners movement against vice and immoral behaviour, a middle-class clamp down on plebeian customs and culture such as cock fighting and bear-bating, and the last days of the old poor law, with its Malthusian fear of vagrants and beggars loitering on the streets.

Minton argues that the parallels lie with the early nineteenth century, when the private estates built up their railings round their leafy squares and hired their own security to watch over them, as at the Duke of Westminster’s estate in Mayfair and Belgravia. See Jason Kelly's recent History Workshop Online article on how, in 1852, the Prince of Wales moved to make Kennington Common into a regulated public park in order to prevent its previous uses as the major site of Chartist monster meetings, as well as being a common and used for executions and popular recreations. See also John Roberts' article on Hyde Park. Such restrictions met with popular resistance from the 1860s, a process that followed the rise of local democracy as ordinary inhabitants gained more control and participation in local government, and local authorities gained more control over property. By 1865, after 2 major parliamentary inquiries, 163 miles of road were passed over to local authority control and 140 tollbars removed.[1]

Minton claims that the process is now reversing – multinational property conglomerates are now the most likely owners of large chunks of British cities – as in Manchester, where CityCo runs much of Manchester city centre (Minton argues this marks ‘the beginning of private government and the decline of local democracy’). Ironically, the Duke of Westminster runs Grosvenor, the property company which owns and controls the Liverpool One development.[2]

The Free Trade Hall was the first major sign of a wave of enclosure of formerly iconic sites in Manchester. During the later Victorian period, the Free Trade Hall was a major venue for political meetings and rallies for Gladstone, Disraeli, Lloyd George, and the suffragettes. It also became a centre for Manchester’s cultural heritage, housing the Hallé orchestra. The lesser Free Trade Hall was also the venue for arguably crucially significant turning points in popular music, including Bob Dylan’s infamous ‘Judas’ concert in 1966, and two Sex Pistols gigs in 1977 that inspired Manchester musicians to create a ground-breaking independent music scene. Manchester continually mythologises both those events as a core part of its cultural identity, as testified by the images of its indie bands and ‘Madchester’ plastered across temporary hoardings covering renovation on Cross Street this year. The self-mythologising of the Manchester music scene of the 1980s is a distinctive and persistent feature of contemporary Mancunian identity. Nevertheless, one of its iconic buildings, the Haçienda, was demolished and replaced by residential flats that took on the name but not the character of the venue.

Yet in 1997, despite fierce resistance from Manchester Civic Society, the city council sold the Free Trade Hall to property developers. The building is now part of a major hotel chain, and is therefore, Minton contends, ‘removed from the public life of the city’. Minton highlights Piccadilly Gardens as another example. In 1755 the Mosley family had given Piccadilly Gardens to Manchester’s inhabitants ‘in perpetuity’ as an open space for recreation. Although the sunken gardens had been criticised as a gathering place for street drinkers and the homeless when I was growing up in the 1980s, it remained a genuinely public space in the heart of the city. Remodelled in 2001, however, a large part of the gardens was encroached upon by an office block, which houses the Bank of New York. A grey concrete transport exchange dominates the remaining open air space, while the statues of Queen Victoria and other local notables have been sidelined to the edges of the communal areas, overlooking the road.

We’ve always had buildings that are private but that have semi-public functions – museums, art galleries, theatres, restaurants, etc. But we know their rules and behave accordingly, and they don’t pretend to be anything else.

But in the case of the Business Improvement Districts (and their associated ‘Clean and Safe’ policy of security), what annoys Moore and Minton are that they pretend to be public spaces when they are not, and therefore the public are unclear of the rules. Moore associates outdoor public space with the civic realm and Minton links it with local democracy – i.e. council owned and run, and therefore somewhat accountable to local rate payers. As Moore comments:

‘If a space is private, it should not be called public…This matters because if we are kidded into thinking that there is a civic realm that is not actually there, we will suddenly find that there is less space than we had thought for such essential public actions as protest. This is what the Occupy movement found when it looked for a location to make its point in the City of London’.

Another element of such developments is what Anna Minton describes as their deliberate lack of historical reference. There is little sense of place because the owners use glass and bland architecture avoiding their historical surroundings. Or, as Owen Hatherley has pointed out in his book on PFI architecture, buildings are pastiches of historical features, which could be anywhere and nowhere, blurring and effacing real historical references. In the case of Liverpool One, this is because the developers wished to appeal to the wider region (the Cheshire 'set' of ABC1 consumers) rather than making the area Liverpool-particularist. But in doing so, the non-places therefore deliberately make it much more difficult for local inhabitants and users to affix symbolic or political meanings onto the spaces. They are therefore non-places.

[1] Anna Minton, Ground Control (Penguin, 2009), 20. JM. Roberts, 'Spatial Governance and Working Class Public Spheres: The Case of a Chartist Demonstration at Hyde Park', Journal of Historical Sociology 14 (3) (2001) : 308- 333

[2] Minton, Ground Control, 19, 39-40.

George Shaw and painting the everyday

2011-11-07T10:55:00.003Z

I've just seen the Turner Prize exhibition at the Baltic, Gateshead. One of the contenders is George Shaw, the Coventry painter. I suspect he won't win, because he is painter in a traditional sense of brush and canvas. I've been an admirer of his work for a while now, and, as is the case with most of my interests, it's because of his representation of place.

A sense of place is the key to his work. Shaw is a Coventry painter, rather than a painter who happens to come from Coventry. His subject matter is generally the urban and semi-urban landscapes of Coventry that he knew as a teenager. Yet the Coventry he depicts is also an everywhere: the concrete buildings, the rusty fences, the littered paths, the wet tarmac, is noman's land and every man's land.

These landscapes draw the viewer in because they are so familiar. It is distinctively Coventry for Shaw, with the sites filled with his own experience and memories. But the sites could also be anywhere in suburban, post-industrial, Britain.

I've never been to Coventry. Yet as I look through his back catalogue, I see scenes that seem so familiar. A painting of a new build estate of bright red brick houses in the middle ground, separated from the viewer by a muddy field, could be anywhere and everywhere; a sense of an artificial place with no past, and no centre or trees.

'Dead End' (2008), an expanse of tarmac by a row of green-doored garages looks like the garages by Southfield flats in east Oxford. 'Lowlife' (2009), with an algae-stained outflow in an underpass or roadbridge could be any non-space under any road. But it is also a space under a road that we all recognise.

Edward Relph theorised about place and belonging in his Place and Placelessness (1976). A key idea was that a sense of 'drudgery' was essential to people's experience of place. Repeated contact with places fosters in the individual not topophilia (as Yi Fu-Tuan argued) but rather a sense of drudgery, and, especially among teenagers, a desire to escape. Historical autobiographies and diaries often express this feeling: youths in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seemed keen to leave their apprenticeships and travel the world with the navy. Samuel Bamford, for example, escaped his Middleton industrial life to go to London on a boat, and then made a tortuous journey back up North. Relph then argues that after the initial excitement of escape, a sense of belonging returns. Once away from a place, the individual feels a stronger sense of attachment to it, as Bamford did, and wants to return. Bamford's relief on returning to Middleton was a formative moment in his deep attachment to the place.

Within Relph's schema are existential places, which are taken-for-granted environmental and spatial constructions of the everyday world, shaped by cultural and social norms. A deeper sense of belonging is fostered by tacit, unselfconscious daily contact with the spaces of these places. (Hubbard, Key Texts in Human Geography, 44)

Shaw's paintings seem to fit this idea of drudgery and belonging: these sites of mainly 1960s and 1970s architecture are on the surface sites of drudgery. There are no people in the scenes; the weather is generally grey, neither rainy nor sunny, a perpetual twilight.

Yet they are not unloved; Shaw would surely not have devoted his artistic career to portraying such sites if he did not experience an emotional connection with them. By doing so, he presents the weathered concrete and graffitied bikeshed alongside more traditional street scenes in art, and making us question what is beautiful. Does the artist or the viewer see say Venice as beautiful because its streets and canals fit a culturally shaped idea of beauty? Perhaps we need an emotional attachment to a place, whatever its architecture, to appreciate its own beauty?

Shaw's work also fits in with wider interest in the everyday: Joe Moran's work on roads, the annual Boring conference, even John Shuttleworth's celebration of suburbia. In a way it also mirrors the parodying shots by Welsh rappers Goldie Lookin' Chain, who gently made fun of the environment of their upbringing with photos of graffitied walls, dumped shopping trolleys and mattresses in their hometown of Newport. Yet both Shaw and the GLC recognise the importance of such sites for people's lives: the mattress as a venue for courting or early sexual experiences, or a wall outside a cab rank as a place for testing and asserting young men's place within the social community or gang groups. In this sense, these noman's or conventionally unbeautiful places are as important as the gothic arches of Venice or the Georgian Palladian terraces of London, as they convey meaning, memory, and connection.

His paintings also mirror photographs taken by urban explorers of derelict buildings. The series about an old pub, including 'Age of Bullshit' (2010), feels very much like the outside shots of an urbex report. There is a story: a pub that Shaw remembers from childhood, in the second painting derelict with no roof, surrounded by metal barriers and cracking tarmac. In the final piece, all that is left of the pub is rubble. The latter two paintings were featured in the exhibition, and in a video interview accompanying the exhibition, Shaw expressed how the bricks held the remnants of a long history of people's lifecycles: their christening parties, wedding receptions, funeral wakes. That sense of a lost memory is something that urban explorers (and people like me interested in their reports) try to capture before they are lost forever.

'The Age of Bullshit' is in some senses an anti-Edward Hopper. Hopper's classic portrayal of the bar in 'Nighthawks' (1942) is peopled; it is in the shadows but also spotlit. Yet in another sense Shaw parallels Hopper, in a sense of melancholy and emptiness that both the bar and the pub evoke in the viewer.

Pubs of Manchester

2011-10-25T22:56:00.002+01:00

I've been trying to plot the pubs in Manchester and Salford who signed a declaration in September 1792 against seditious meetings and publications being held in their premises. I've been able to identify just 39 pubs for definite (out of a total of 158 listed in the World newspaper, 22 September 1792), and I've a rough idea of where another 20 or so were. Ten pubs had female landladies. Green's 1794 map and Pigot's directory are a help for locating pubs, and I also conducted some guess-work from later maps [pubs come and go, but their courts generally keep their original names] Trouble is there are so many Red Lions and White Harts that it is difficult to pin many pubs down for definite.

Yet lo and behold, I find this site: http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/ which is a completely comprehensive list of all the old pubs in Manchester, together with links to google street view of where they were located.

Things have gone a long way from those (admirable at the time) 'Pubs of Manchester', 'Pubs of Ancoats' yellow booklets you used to be able to buy at the now-defunkt Stationery Office shop off Albert Square.

Collating data using google fusion tables

2011-10-14T11:29:00.000+01:00

Meeting places in Manchester, 1775-1848: link to google fusion table

Total percentages of all public meetings in Manchester, 1775-1848, that I've recorded from newspapers, Home Office correspondence, and local archives, listed by broad type.

This is in no way complete. I have 391 records plotted by place, but I have not gone through all sources systematically, and there are many places (particularly pubs) that I cannot find exact locations either on maps or in trade directories - i.e. an address of simply 'Deansgate' is not much use. Furthermore, the categories are not definitive (i.e. some meetings could cover more than one category).

The data generally does not cover private meetings, regular meetings like weekly friendly societies, and secret meetings (i.e. in back rooms of pubs). It is therefore only representative of events that were publicly advertised or involved many people so that they were recorded in the press. Radical and Chartist meetings are likely to be over-represented in this data because the radical press seems keener about recording meetings (the Northern Star has whole pages dedicated to listing upcoming and past events in each town).

Also, the data is weighted towards the latter part of the period, because of the wider availability of sources. Again, more newspapers were published, and their recording of local events improved as the century went on. Eighteenth-century newspapers often did not bother recording local events because they were known about in the town; what editors thought readers wanted was international news that they could not access by word of mouth).

abbreviations include ACLA (anti-Corn Law League), abolition (of slave trade/slavery), radical (generally covers meetings for universal manhood suffrage from 1790 to 1820), loyal (Church and King, anti-radical meetings), reform (generally Whig-moderate reformists 1830-2), NPL (anti New Poor Law), 10 Hours (campaign for working day).

Squares:

Pubs:

Chartist places (note the placemarks only show one out of the many meetings in each place):
Loyalist places:

I've put my less extensive data on Leeds meetings on google maps. It looks pretty much the same as google fusion but there is no access to a table with geo-data etc. However, google fusion tables still has an issue with exporting the KML to Google Earth or ArcGIS - it doesn't export the placemark styles, unlike google maps. So I've not been able to plot the different types of meetings clearly on my historical maps of Manchester, whereas I can do for Leeds.

View Leeds meetings, 1789-1848 in a larger map

old footpaths in Manchester

2011-10-10T21:46:00.000+01:00

Another messing around with google earth and old maps session. Here I've highlighted a footpath on Green's 1794 map of Newtown, Manchester.

Link to the video here: http://screencast.com/t/kMOt7WR6

I like how the fields are all drawn with landowners' names, and that despite this becoming one of the factory districts of Manchester, some of the area is still fields, of sorts, around the River Irk.

View Larger Map Get Directions View Bird's Eye

locating London's past

2011-10-07T15:25:00.001+01:00

http://locatinglondonspast.wordpress.com/ is an interesting blog about a JISC funded project to "map and visualize textual and artefactual data relating to seventeenth and eighteenth-century London against a fully rasterised version of John Rocque’s 1746 map of London and the first accurate modern OS map (1869-80)."

Spatial theory, cultural geography, and the 'spatial turn'

2011-09-30T15:32:00.001+01:00

I'm currently working on various seminar papers, and the mood among many historians is that we need theory back in history. James Vernon made an impassioned plea for a return to theory in his plenary lecture for the 2011 Social History Society conference. Basically his message was 'what are we afraid of?' A focus on empiricism has meant we have lost sight of the big ideas, and the big frameworks that shape history. The SHS used to have a theory strand for its conference, but we dropped it a few years ago because the number of papers offered was in decline. In response to Joyce, however, the SHS has reintroduced the 'theory and methods' strand for the next conference. Perhaps this is a sign that theory is back on the agenda.

I too have neglected theory for the past few years. I went on a cultural geography bender in the last year of my DPhil research, and also immersed myself in social movement studies. My first article, 'The Search for General Ludd' was imbued with literary theory (thanks to Kevin Binfield) and postmodernism. The 'linguistic turn' still casts a long shadow on anyone who works with textual documents. I was less concerned with the cultural turn, and moved into more empirical methods with my work on popular protest.

Now historians seem to be taking the 'spatial turn'. I read all the French postmodern theorists during that last DPhil year, so all this seems a little old hat to me, as it is for cultural geographers, who made the initial 'turn' back in the 1990s. Writing my book I have strived to remain empirical and traditional, and avoid quoting de Certeau, Bourdieu, Foucault, et al, just for the sake of it. However, now my structure is crystallising, I've realised that some of my main formulations do fit the tripartite model of space offered by Lefebvre and Soja. It's time to put the theory back in.

So here's a quick cribsheet for the three modes of space, and a hint at where I fit. The spatial turn is useful, as it highlights the semiotics of space in a way that the linguistic turn made historians read between the lines and the cultural turn made historians treat culture as an agent in change.

1. Radical Spaces: Venues of popular politics in London, 1790–c. 1845Spatial practice transforms place into space. De Certeau’s much quotedchapter on the act of walking shows how everyday actions can turn places intospaces of meaning and history. Bourdieu similarly underlines the role ofspatial practices in moulding understandings of the physical environment.

2. Radical Spaces: Venues of popular politics in London, 1790–c. 1845‘representations of space’. For Lefebvre, representations are ‘tied tothe relations of production’.[1] In essence,representations of space are spaces of capital, whose physical form and themeanings ascribed to them are determined by wealth and elites. This modelparallels the influential interpretation of sociologist David Harvey, who arguedthat landscapes reflected the logic (or illogic) of commodity production at anygiven historical moment.^[2]

^{3. '}spaces of representation', or lived spaces. This concerns how everydaypractice is lived through the spaces constructed by elites and their symbols. This isassociated with counter spaces which challenge or subvert dominant spatialpractices or spatialities (Jon Stobart et al, Spaces of Consumption, p. 22). It echoes de Certeau, who showed howindividuals could reappropriate spaces for uses other than those for which theywere intended. Here is where popular agency is situated.

I'm also quite fond of Foucault's concept of heterotopia. Radical Spaces: Venues of popular politics in London, 1790–c. 1845Heterotopias are ‘counter-sites, akind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other realsites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented,contested, and inverted’ (Michel Foucault,‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics, 16(Spring 1986), 24) Some heterotopias areassociated with sacred or forbidden spaces; others are spaces for those whodeviate from societal norms.Significantly, these spaces are linked to ‘slices of time’. Foucault’s first type of heterotopia is infinite, building totimelessness; he gives the examples of museums and libraries. Radical Spaces: Venues of popular politics in London, 1790–c. 1845The second type of heterotopia is even more prominent in the history ofcollective action in this period: transitory or fleeting. Foucault ascribesthis to fairs and carnivals, here today gone tomorrow spaces of play, subversion,the world turned upside down. This theme of the carnivalesque, the charivari, is important in the history of popular protest.

So what lessons can we learn from spatial theory? Above all, space is not the inert background to action, but its foreground and in some senses, its agency. However, I am going to include in my seminar papers some warning about 'why I am bored of turning'. The 'spatial turn', based as it is on semiotics and cultural constructions, does not describe everything. It cannot describe the phenomenology of place; it tells us how inhabitants symbolised and understood space, but less about how they felt and experienced spaces. It also lacks distinctive historical contexts, which I will argue are situated in *place* rather than space, and in England, take the form and are shaped by custom and the law in particular. All will be revealed in the book.

[1] Lefebvre,Production of Space, p. 33.

[2] Barney Warfand Santa Arias, The Spatial Turn:Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Abingdon, 2009), p. 3; David Harvey, Spaces of Capital: towards a Critical geography (Routledge, 2001).

Further reading:

Radical Spaces: Venues of popular politics in London, 1790–c. 1845Don Mitchell, Cultural Geography:a Critical Introduction (Oxford: 2000);
Radical Spaces: Venues of popular politics in London, 1790–c. 1845 Beat Kümin, Political Space in Pre-industrial Europe (Adlershot, 2009)

Manchester meetings and crowdsourcing data

2011-09-22T16:36:00.001+01:00

Do you want to share in my project to map historical meetings in Manchester?

Here is the link to my draft database of public meetings in Manchester, 1775-1848. It's using google fusion tables.
You can map the points by clicking on 'visualise' and 'map'.

I'm thinking about crowd-sourcing it to get more data. I'll set up a separate page to explain the purposes of the database soon, but in the meantime, do add your own data from historical newspapers, Home Office papers, archives, etc. And let me know!

My aim is to show how the type and locations of public meetings in Manchester changed over time. So, for example, radical meetings used St. Peter's Fields from 1816; trades used St. George's Fields from 1808; the loci of meetings moved southwards as Manchester developed between Oxford Road and Chorlton.

The points are plotted on the map (using lat and long grid references and each category of public meeting has its own symbol. So loyal meetings are dark blue, religious meetings are a person at prayer, etc.

The categories are very broad and not meant to be definitive. 'Reform' meetings refer to liberal middle class reform meetings (e.g. during 1830-2), whereas 'radical' can refer to any meeting calling for universal suffrage or other more radical demands. 'Loyal' meetings are Church and King or anti-Jacobin meetings in the 1790s, and specifically anti-reform meetings in the early 19thC. ALCLA= Anti Corn Law League/Association; NPL = anti-New Poor Law.

I'm having trouble locating some of the public houses (directories only specify the street, and pub names aren't shown on maps until the first edition OS of 1846-9).

The only other problem is that I can't export the KML/KMZ file to google earth (and thus onto my historical map layers) without it losing the formatting for the different symbols. There's no way of doing this at present, so I have to rely on the old way of putting the symbols myself on google maps, then exporting it from there.

If you'd like to contribute, or know of any local history groups in Manchester who might want to get involved, let me know: k.navickas@herts.ac.uk

Hall of Science, Manchester, then (1846) and now (2011)

2011-09-15T22:03:00.000+01:00

Oxford characters

2011-09-13T20:02:00.002+01:00

I was saddened to here of Zoe Peterssen's death this week. Here is a link to a story in the Oxford Mail about her.

Zoe was a former academic who gave it all in, as she told me, for nature. She was most often seen sitting on the benches on the long tree-lined approach to Christ Church, drawing trees and flowers on large pieces of paper. She also enjoyed the gardens of St. John's, especially in Spring, as the trees in new leaf there pleased her. I often spoke to Zoe on my wanderings around Oxford and was always heartened by her warmth and her gift of time. She would let me watch her draw, tell me something philosophical, before giving me one of the cards she had made, in return for very little payment. Whenever I was troubled, and taking a walk to think my trouble out, Zoe had an ability to appear at just the right time and place, much more than would be co-incidental; or perhaps I was subconsciously looking for her...

As the story and comments in the Oxford Mail show, Oxford is rich with characters. I don't mean that in a pejorative way, as I admired them all. There are individuals whom everyone who has ever lived in the city will recognise and have some nickname for or some story about. So say to someone who has lived in Oxford, 'Did you see the tree-drawing lady/'Ragdolly Anna'/one man band'/(if you go to any gig)'the dancey lady' among many others, will elicit instant recognition of who you're talking about. I think it's an unusual characteristic specific to the city. Oxford is just the right size and attracts the right sort of eccentrics and individuals. Here's to them.

Stefan Collini, 'From Robbins to McKinsey' article in LRB

2011-08-23T17:03:00.001+01:00

Link here to Stefan Collini's article in the LRB, on how the late 20thc culture of managerialism has infiltrated government policy on university funding (and universities themselves).

I especially like this critique of the term 'student experience', which he defines as:

... part of the individualist subjectivism by means of which market transactions hollow out human relations. The model is that of, say, a hotel guest, filling in the feedback questionnaire on the morning of departure. Was ‘the guest experience’ a good one? Did you find the fluffy towels fluffy enough?

Collini argues that:

... the model of the student as consumer is inimical to the purposes of education.

... The paradox of real learning is that you don’t get what you ‘want’ – and you certainly can’t buy it. The really vital aspects of the experience of studying something (a condition very different from ‘the student experience’) are bafflement and effort. Hacking your way through the jungle of unintelligibility to a few small clearings of partial intelligibility is a demanding and not always enjoyable process. It isn’t much like wallowing in fluffy towels.

I'm tempted to put 'the paradox of real learning...' quotation in my course handbooks. I want to encourage students to realize that it is *normal* to not understand something the first time, have to go back and re-read something before grasping its basic meaning, and that everything can't be ingested (certainly not in History, anyway), in 'bite-size chunks'. This also applies, as Collini is arguing here, to their whole degree, what a university education is for, and how expansion of the mind *takes time*. It can't be an exercise in ticking the 'correct' boxes and completing exercises with the sole goal of completing them. Rather a university education should be developing oneself to think independently and critically for life.

trade union and legal history

2011-08-16T16:48:00.000+01:00

I'm currently working my way through some monographs and articles on nineteenth century trade unions and the law. The main theme that is coming through is that trade unions and labour combinations were able to develop much more sophisticated and prolonged forms of resistance from the time of the Combination Acts of 1799-1800, through their semi-repeal in 1825, and during the difficult conflicts of the 1840s. This is resistance using the tools of the law, both against employers in the courts, and by looking to parliament for legislative support.

Christopher Frank's new book, Master and Servant Law, powerfully explains in much detail how the most successful tools trade unions had were not physical acts of protest, but legal knowledge and clever lawyers. He focuses on the Chartist solicitor William P Roberts, who defended hundreds of unionists prosecuted under the Master and Servant law for breaking their contract. He shows how Roberts and the unionists were able to succeed because their challenges came at a time when the Queen's Bench was trying to codify and constrain magistrates' powers of summary jurisdiction.

These studies are helping me define collective action in broader and more complex ways. Protest on the streets in this sense is different from resistance. Resistance in the courts, using the power of the law, was arguably more successful or effective than intermittent strikes or demonstrations. Challenging employers using the law and appealing to parliament for legislation or protection were the everyday and constant form of collective action. As historians such as Peter Jones have found with regard to paupers manipulating the language of the poor law in their letters for relief, and E. P. Thompson hinted in his examination of the reciprocal relationship between plebeians and the law, law could facilitate agency. Roberts also puts me in mind of Thomas Erskine, and other lawyers who successfully defended radicals. Trade unions also were more effective in organising regionally and pan-regionally.

One notes, however, that when legal challenges did not succeed, or when the heat of the moment found the courts too slow, the protest tactics of trade unions were often much more violent than those of radical or other political groups. Trade unionists evolved innovative and often brutal forms of protests viz the body. Pickets, breaking machinery, marching, all used the body. Whereas other protests would focus on property, it was not uncommon for unionists to attack physically blackleg strike breakers or employers.

Christopher Frank, Master and Servant Law: Chartists, Trade Unions, Radical Lawyers and the Magistracy in England, 1840-1865 (Ashgate, Abingdon, 2010)
James A Jaffe, Striking a Bargain: Work and Industrial Relations in England, 1815-1865 (Manchester, 2000)
Michael Huberman, Escape from the Market: Negotiating Work in Lancashire (Cambridge, 1996)
John Batt, 'United to Support but Not Combined to Injure' Public Order, Trade unions and the Repeal of the Combination Acts of 1825-1800', International Review of Social History, 31: 2 (1986)

Riots, the Guardian, History & Policy

2011-08-12T07:56:00.001+01:00

I'm not going to say much about what happened this week, but rather use this post to correct a couple of media things I've already done.

Here's an article in the Guardian by Aditya Chakrabortty.
I had a long chat with Aditya, but of course he's only used one quotation. Then, oddly, the paragraph was edited later in the day and now has a sentence about Swing. NB I did not talk about Swing, nor call them 'peasants'. We're not going back to a basic Marxist interpretation; indeed the masses of new research on Captain Swing has shown the riots of 1830-1 were not a straight-forward case of class conflict, but involved a varied range of people and grievances.

I've done a short opinion piece for History & Policy which you can read here.
Again, it's somewhat shorter than I'd like it to be, but essentially distinguishes the looting of the current week from more politically-minded riots.

Voices from the Old Bailey

2011-07-22T21:10:00.001+01:00

The new series of 'Voices from the Old Bailey' is on BBC Radio 4, Wednesday 27 July, 9am, repeated at 9.30pm. The first programme is on riots. It's presented, exquisitely as always, by Amanda Vickery.

I'll be talking about the Wilkes and Liberty Riots of 1768 (note the BBC website is a little misleading in having riot in the singular - there were many, many riots during that crazy time when John Wilkes's supporters tried to get him out his prison sentence and re-elected back into parliament). The Wilkes riots were important because they were the first time ordinary working people got involved in a mass scale in political demonstrations campaigning for reform in parliament. 'Liberty' had a very ambiguous meaning, so the agitation for the libertine and later Mayor of London Wilkes was able to encompass a wide range of grievances.

I'm not sure how much of me will be kept off the cutting room floor, but hopefully I'll also be talking about food riots too. The image of the ballad from the British Museum website is a Cheap Repository Tract, and was designed to dissuade plebeians from rioting during the harvest failure years of 1795 and 1799-1800. It's an epitome of the 'conversation between two yokels' type of propaganda that loyalists and moralists thought most effective in the late eighteenth century.

Peter King and Tim Hitchcock will be discussing the Penlez riots of 1749 and the Gordon riots of 1780. Note also although the statement 'left-wing historians of the 70s and 80s ignored the Gordon Riots because they didn't fit their ideological model of the noble rioter,' is kind of correct, this does not mean that they are the preserve of 'right-wing' historians. The classic work on the riots still remains by George Rude, 'The Gordon Riots: A Study of the Rioters and their Victims', Trans. Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. 6 (1956).

Link to BBC site here

3d modern buildings on historical maps

2011-07-13T11:12:00.003+01:00

Plotting first edition OS maps on google earth with the 3d buildings option enabled. A bit freaky when you move round them but this could be a valuable tool in working out spatial dynamics and scale. It would be good to do some 3d representations of historical buildings. Here's some of Manchester.

New approaches to the history of protest and resistance in Britain and Ireland, 1500-1900

2011-06-29T16:39:00.000+01:00

The workshop runs this Friday from 11am. It will be broadcast live and subsequently podcast via http://protesthistory2011.org.uk/broadcast.html

Do contribute via the message board: http://protesthistory.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general
or via twitter: @prohist2011, tag #prohist

Historical quotation of the month

2011-05-30T16:30:00.000+01:00

The opinion of General Sir Charles James Napier, sent to suppress Chartist disturbances in the North, 1839:

Manchester is the chimney of the world. Rich rascals, poor rogues, drunken ragamuffins, and prostitutes form the moral; soot made into paste by the rain the physique, and the only view is a long chimney: what a place! The entrance to hell realised!

Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier (1857), vol. II, p. 8.

19th century cake wrecks

2011-05-26T17:33:00.000+01:00

Here's yet another website - http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ - that has made me look at historical evidence in a new way.

I've recently re-read Peter Brett's article on the significance of political dinners in the early nineteenth century. He describes the centrepiece of the table at a dinner in honour of the memory of Fox in Norfolk in 1820:

Temple of Liberty sculpted in sugar surmounted by a representation of Fame holding a flag of Whig colours inscribed with the initials MC for Magna Carta.

One suspects it was a right cake wreck.

Brett, Peter, ‘Political Dinners in Early Nineteenth Century Britain: Platform, Meeting Place and Battleground’, History, 81: 264 (Oct. 1996), 532

passive aggressive historical notes

2011-05-22T15:25:00.001+01:00

Having got a little bit addicted to this 'passive aggressive notes' website, I now read historical handbills and posters in a new way.

How about this one, issued by the Manchester boroughreeve and constables to advertise the celebrations for the peace treaty with France in October 1801:

'No warehouses or factories should be illuminated; nor any injury done to properties of such persons whose religious opinions may prevent their joining in the general mode of rejoicing on this occasion'.

[Chetham's library, Cambrics scrapbook, p. 53]

The authorities obviously feared a recurrence of the 'Church and King' riots that had disturbed Unitarians and Catholics in 1794, but it is the almost modern tone of the notice that is striking [such persons whose religious opinions...']

complaints about lack of street lighting contributing to crime rates

2011-05-20T15:21:00.001+01:00

'We are deeply concerned to hear of the great increase of vice and crime in this town, especially at night; and the difficulty of preventing and detecting offences is much augments by the want of sufficient light; by the total absence of lamps in some places - particularly apply to the north of Manchester and Bolton Railway Station, where numbers of loose and disorderly people are frequently collected for their evil purposes'.
George Piggot, the vicar and churchwardens to the trustees of Great Bolton, 3 February 1840, Bolton Archives, ZHE 36/10, Heywood papers.

Reading List

2011-05-19T11:04:00.004+01:00

Now it's approaching summer, I'm getting back to those piles of paper all around my desk that will eventually transmogrify into a book manuscript. I'm trying to sort out my bibliography and revisiting relevant books and articles that have informed my work. So I've decided to blog what I'm reading or revisiting here, just to keep a record. It may be of use if you're interested in popular politics and protest 1789-1848.

Today - the clamp down on radical spaces in the 1790s:
Christina Parolin, Radical Spaces: Venues of Popular Politics in London, 1790-1845 (ANU epress)

Michael Lobban, 'From Seditious Libel to Unlawful Assembly: Peterloo and the Changing Face of Political Crime, 1770-1820', Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 10:3 (1990) is an article I've come back to and re-read, and am utterly convinced by his argument.

Lobban argues that governments attempted to clamp down on political radicalism using the laws against seditious libel until the crisis of 1819. Peterloo, and more particularly the Six Acts that followed in response, shifted the emphasis to new definitions of unlawful assembly. By 1839, when the Royal Proclamation against seditious meetings was issued, the government defined sedition as intent displayed by the act of assembling in a potentially threatening manner, rather than as had been previously, concrete proof of treason through the speaking of seditious words.

His conclusion explains the whole narrative of the ideas I've been considering over the past week:

"Until the end of the eighteenth century, when riotous activity was relatively common, the ruling classes were not as frightened of crowds as they would later become-indeed, the idea of a national police force scared them more. The fear of the crowd grew as the crowd was seen more as a threat to the established order; and paradoxically, this occurred when the crowds were becoming less turbulent, but more organized. The fact that they were political crowds made them a threat: the fact that they might pose a public order threat allowed the authorities to-clamp down on them." (p.352)

See also John Barrell, The Spirit of Despotism: Invasions of Privacy in the 1790s, and all the old debates on Pitt's 'reign of terror' [Clive Emsley in Social History and EHR; Steve Poole in Southern History; Philip Harling in Historical Journal]. Also, Alan Booth, 'Popular Loyalism and Public Violence in the North-West of England, 1790-1800', Social History, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Oct., 1983), pp. 295-313.

Livestreaming seminars

2011-05-18T12:32:00.001+01:00

I've been working on how to live stream the 1 July colloquium on protest history. I'm fairly impressed by how the new digital history seminar at the IHR do it - http://www.history.ac.uk/podcasts/live-stream.

So I'm attempting to use Livestream for the broadcast, and zoho chat for the chat function, together with a live twitter feed. http://protesthistory2011.org.uk/broadcast.html

Any suggestions for useful technologies (especially free ones) most welcome.

Here's my first webcam experiment with an advert for the workshop: completely amateurish, but I was just testing the technology.

I've also set up a discussion board for questions for 1 July: http://protesthistory.proboards.com/index.cgi

Luddites on R3; class and labour history in Social History

2011-04-26T14:49:00.001+01:00

My new article, 'What happened to class? New histories of labour and collective action in Britain', is now published in the new issue of Social History: link here

I am also discussing the Luddites on Night Waves on Radio 3 tonight from 9.15pm.

loyalist sculpture and material objects

2011-04-25T22:00:00.001+01:00

I'm now on a mission to find as many surviving loyalist sculptures, memorials, and other material objects as I can find for the period 1780-1832.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43394061@N02/sets/72157626577249748/

The first are from Manchester Cathedral - the memorial to the Grand Orange Lodge Grand Master Samuel Taylor, and the statue of Thomas Fleming, a Tory who weeded out radicals and Whig-liberals from Manchester local government.

Any information on more like these is most appreciated.

Doreen Massey on place, landscape, class and protest

2011-04-19T20:09:00.000+01:00

Link to the essay by Doreen Massey, 'Landscape/space/politics: an essay' - here: http://thefutureoflandscape.wordpress.com/landscapespacepolitics-an-essay/

protest history workshop 1 July

2011-04-18T21:33:00.000+01:00

'New approaches to the history of popular protest and resistance in Britain and Ireland, 1500-1900,' University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield. Contact me to book a place.

For more details, see the website protesthistory2011.org.uk/

The twitter feed is at @prohist2011 and the tag is #prohist

Full text of my letter to the Guardian

2011-03-28T10:25:00.001+01:00

This was in response to Simon Jenkins's article on the history of protest in Britain.

Simon Jenkins disparages the long history of non-violent protest in Britain. Surely we should be proud, rather than ashamed, of the fact that most protesters seek to "cause a genteel nuisance without breaching the law"? The essence of democracy, in contrast to tyrannical regimes abroad, is the right to peaceful protest. When protesters do turn violent, they are rightly denounced by the majority.

Jenkins suggests that the Peterloo massacre and Chartism were failures because they did not lead to a "national uprising". This not only denigrates the memory of those who did lose their lives in the fight for the vote, but also misinterprets a major point of the radical movement. "Moral force" protesters saw that "physical force" would lead the government to military oppression. They believed that parliament would grant them their demands because of their peacefulness and loyalty, rather than because they threatened revolution.

Demonstrations and marches are not just about a selfish desire for "self-expression" or self-interest, as Jenkins claims. They involve a genuine desire for parliament to listen to the people and to respond reasonably. Parliament's intractability surely provides even more reason for protesters to express discontent rather than to stay at home and give the impression of apathy.

Richard J Evans on the need for critical thinking and nuanced themes within history teaching

2011-03-10T22:03:00.001Z

LRB link here

I especially like this line: "Better History declares that ‘it is by the acquisition and use of historical knowledge that historians are primarily judged’ – but in reality that only makes a Mastermind contestant"

conduct into the behaviour of the Duke of York

2011-03-08T11:44:00.002Z

Those historical parallels from the Napoleonic war period keep coming up again and again. First the attack on the Prince of Wales's coach; now calls from within parliament for an enquiry into the behaviour of the Duke of York. This time, 1809 style.

Link to the parliamentary debate here.

Thomas Rowlandson, 'The York March', 1809

See Philip Harling, 'The Duke of York Affair and the Complexities of Wartime Patriotism', in History, 39: 4 (1996)

Food Riots in July 1795

2011-02-28T20:40:00.001Z

Gentleman's Magazine

What would Tom Paine do?

2011-02-25T10:04:00.002Z

Perhaps with each new government policy measure, we need to ask 'what would Tom Paine do?'

Thomas Paine, 'Ways and Means of Improving the Condition of Europe', The Rights of Man, part II (1792), Chapter 5, part 6 of 8:

First, Abolition of two millions poor-rates.
Secondly, Provision for two hundred and fifty thousand poor families.
Thirdly, Education for one million and thirty thousand children.
Fourthly, Comfortable provision for one hundred and forty thousand aged persons.
Fifthly, Donation of twenty shillings each for fifty thousand births.
Sixthly, Donation of twenty shillings each for twenty thousand marriages.
Seventhly, Allowance of twenty thousand pounds for the funeral expenses of persons travelling for work, and dying at a distance from their friends.
Eighthly, Employment, at all times, for the casual poor in the cities of London and Westminster.

[note - £1 in 1792 was worth the equivalent in 2008 of £101 using the retail price index; or £1140 using average earnings - old money price calculator]

Paine called for the basis of the welfare state in 1792, but it took until 1911, if not 1945, to achieve.

social movements, revolutions, narratives and positive feedback

2011-02-23T22:58:00.003Z

Why does the emergence of a protest movement or revolutionary situation in one area seemingly lead to a domino effect in other countries or societies?

1. structuralist interpretations:
Traditional 'structuralist' social movement theories point to the central role of external circumstances and the break-down of structures [e.g. the state, the economy]. The 'political opportunities' thesis presumes that protesters are motivated to act because they interpret rationally the influence of these external structural factors. Their ability to resist is determined by these external forces too: e.g. the strength of the military or the weakness of the economy. [Goodwin and Jasper, 10]

2. ruptures of structures as culture:
Other social movement theorists do not deny that structural dislocation is important in creating the conditions for protests to occur and for the potential of overturning or remodelling those structures. 'Ruptures spiral into transformative historical events when a sequence of interrelated ruptures disarticulates the previous structural network, makes repair difficult and makes an novel rearticulation possible'. [Sewell, 844] Structures, they argue, are influenced by culture, and can be constituted of culture. Historical events are cultural transformations. They are acts of signification that introduce new conceptions of what really exists, of what is good and what is possible. [Sewell, 861-2]

3. Narratives of success and optimism
Activists create and shape narratives about previous actions and successes to formulate potential supporters' ideas of what is possible. These narratives play an important part of this cultural transformation [Polletta].

4. emotion and positive feedback:
Sewell, Biggs and Polletta argue that participants in collective action need something else, other than a rational interpretation of external forces, to motivate them. Narratives are one influence. Another linked factor is 'positive feedback'.

Collective action often comes in waves, defined as a rapid increase in participation over days or weeks that takes not only the forces of authority but also the organisers of action by surprise. Optimism escalates with participation. What was unthinkable now seems inevitable. With the start of a wave of action, a threefold process of positive feedback occurs:
- the expected collective benefits increase;
- the expected individual and collective costs decrease;
- the moral obligation to participation increases.

Social movements catch on 'like a fever' or by emotions, a kind of contagious emotional excitement that Durkheim called 'collective effervescence' that lifts people out of their ordinary inhibitions and limitations [Sewell, 866]. A process of inspiration operates among and then between different groups:
- consideration of the possibility of collective action;
- the outcome is uncertain but raising expectation for success;
- success breeds higher hopes but failure lowers hopes.
[Biggs, 224]

Revolutionary historical events therefore have these features [Sewell, 861-2]:
1. cultural transformations; [acts of signification; understood through narratives]
2. shaped by particular conditions;
3. characterised by heightened emotion [collective effervescence]
4. acts of collective creativity [ordinary routines of social life are overturned and power relations subverted]
5. punctuated by ritual [enables social constraints and hierarchies to momentarily evaporate and for celebrants to experience a profound sense of unity]
6. produce more events - a cascade of consequences;
7. rearticulations of structures gain authoritative sanction in the new regimes.

References:
Francesca Polletta, It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics (Chicago, 2006)
J. Goodwin and J. M. Jasper, eds., Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning and Emotion (Oxford, 2004)
Michael Biggs, 'Positive Feedback in Collective Mobilisation: the American Strike Wave of 1866', Theory and Society, 32 (2003)
William Sewell, "Political Events as Structural Transformations: Inventing Revolution at the Bastille", Theory and Society, 25:6 (1996)

planting trees

2011-01-24T14:10:00.001Z

I went to help with the tree planting at the new Heartwood Forest in Hertfordshire, owned by the Woodland Trust, and which will become the largest new native forest in England.

William Cobbett wrote about tree planting in his treatise, The Woodlands (1825). Cobbett was concerned with 'improvement', and in the extract below talks about the benefits of plantations for the creation of property and profit. This sentiment is against the current debates about the Forestry Commission's decision to sell their forests. I do like, however, his castigation of Dr Johnson for saying that planting a tree made him think of dying, because the tree would outlive him. While planting the saplings, I thought that this is their very purpose.

p.20 -

p.22 -

eighteenth century fireworks

2011-01-04T10:56:00.003Z

I wanted to know what 'sky rockets' in eighteenth century England were. I keep coming across references to them in spies' reports of the supposed 'general risings' planned in 1798-1802 and 1812.

For example, Major Yates, stationed in Manchester, informed Lord Lowther on 4 May 1812:

“A plan according to the old system in Ireland was formed of stopping the Mail Coaches and their non-arrival was to be the signal of Revolt. For the last four nights they have been escorted by Dragoons some miles to the south of Stockport. Last Friday is supposed to have been intended for a General Rising. Sky Rockets had been observed thrown up from Stockport from some nights preceding, but that night a Blue Light of a circular Form was seen, and it is conjectured that was a signal not to rise...”

Cumbria RO, D/LONS/L1/2/131

See also 'The Politics of Sky Battles in Early Hanoverian Britain', by Vladimir Jankovic, Journal of British Studies, 41:4 (2002)

Here's a link to a Jane Austen blog which shows a beautiful display of fireworks at Richmond House, detailing the different types of sky rockets available.

http://austenonly.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/richmond-fireworks1566-correction.jpg

what to do with that tacky Santa hat now Christmas is nearly over

2010-12-30T23:30:00.000Z

Tacky Santa Hat.


Bonnet Rouge.

Come and see me model this headgear at my talk on political clothing on Tuesday 11 January, Enfield, Jubilee Hall, for the North London branch of the Historical Association.

A guide to the new ruins of Great Britain

2010-12-22T10:41:00.007Z

I'm currently enjoying Owen Hatherley, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (Verso, 2010).

It's a vicious attack on New Labour's PFI projects in 'regenerating' city centres. He terms the new style of PFI architecture 'pseudo-modernism', which takes some of the clean lines of modernism and bastardises them with the overt and ironic 'signs' features of postmodernism. The characteristics of the 'Blairite urbanism' are as follows (p.302):

use of a former brownfield site;
lots of wood detailing;
rhetoric of sustainability undermined by huge car parks and shopping malls adjacent;
water features;
brightly coloured rendered concrete;
irregular windows;
estate agent cliches.

There's an interesting chapter on Manchester, investigating how post-punk reflected the reaction to the slum clearances of the 1960s. By contrast, all he sees in the 'regenerated' Manchester is emptiness and falsity. Interesting fact that before all the warehouses were turned into loft apartments, in 1987 the city centre population was only around 300; now it's around 11,000. Yet all this comes with a social and indeed cultural price. The Spinningfields business district is the 'home of credit crunch chic'. The Urban Splash tower blocks in Collyhurst, which I often watch trundle by as I leave Victoria, come in for particular criticism. Named after suffragettes, and decked in artificial wood and pink paint, they are 'another example of the use of radical Mancunian history to sell Old Corruption all over again...It's surely only a matter of time before some disused factory or council block becomes Peterloo Apartments or Engels Mansions'. (p.141) Perfect examples of the soul-lessness of 'pseudo-modernism', slapping heritage onto every project to give it meaning, but taking the real meaning out in the process.

one of the 'Pankhurst' blocks in the mist

Also, the chapter on the West Riding has photographs of the wastes around Wakefield Kirkgate and the massive hole in the centre of Bradford that mirror almost exactly the ones that I took on my research trips. I must have a similar architectural/psychogeographical mind.

old railway station hotel pub,
Wakefield Kirkgate, 2010

'give it back to the people' graffiti
on the defunkt Bradford Westfield development, 2009

His blog is also worth a look - http://nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com/.

These are the people all tattered and torn, part II

2010-12-15T00:06:00.002Z

I've been trying to draw out the parallels between current protests and eighteenth and nineteenth-century protests. I discussed it with my third-year students in their final seminar of the year, but there is much more to be said, so I shall start to put it down here, as work in progress.

First of all some links, some old, some new:

Guardian article on the 1795 attack on George III's coach;
A Scottish nationalist take on the attack, with references to 1795 and 1817;
An early modern comparison with 1641 attack of the apprentices in Parliament Square
Report in the Independent on the initial suggestions of Sir Paul Stephenson concerning policing future demonstrations;
BBC News report on Stephenson's suggestions;
New Statesman editorial, with references to Peterloo

Crucial events and turning points:

Attack on the Prince of Wales:

Leeds Mercury, 1 February 1817, on the attack on the Prince Regent's Coach during the state opening of parliament, 28 January 1817:
'The multitude was vociferous - and the most outrageous epithets were applied to His Royal Highness as he passed along in the State Carriage, guarded on both sides by a strong escort of guards and constables. On the return of His Royal Highness from the Lords' Chamber of Parliament, the crowding, clamour and insults increased. ...After the calvacade had entered the park, at the Horse Guards, and that it had processed about half way down the Mall, one of the windows of the state carriage in which His Royal Highness was placed...was shattered in two places by stones or some missiles, from a hand unseen'.

Forms of action by the authorities:

Papers relative to the internal state of the country, 24 November 1819

Government legislation and proposed legislation:

On 14 December, Met Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson made some comments about the current situation, which included (as reported in the press):
- The actions of mounted colleagues during protests was "absolutely splendid" and they are part of the "proud tradition" of British policing.

- Senior officers will consider applying to the Home Secretary to ban forthcoming marches if necessary and if it will not inflame the situation further.

Here are two links to some Youtube footage of the mounted police: one taken by a protester, and another from the BBC.

George Cruikshank, 'Massacre at St. Peter's, or Britons Strike Home!', 1819

The 'Six Acts' of 1819, passed in response to Peterloo - extracts from the London Magazine, vol 1, 1820:

'These are the people, all tattered and torn'

2010-12-09T21:29:00.012Z

From William Hone, 'The Political House that Jack Built' (1819), a response to Peterloo.

British Museum Image

Full text from http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/hone/vpeople.htm

'These are THE PEOPLE all tatter'd and torn,
Who curse the day wherein they were born,
On account of Taxation too great to be borne,
And pray for relief from night to morn;
Who, in vain, Petition in every form.'

The picture, drawn by George Cruikshank, shows the poor people in despair, and in the background, an echo of his representation of the Manchester Yeomanry hacking down the reformers at Peterloo.

Attack on George III's coach in October 1795 - link to a Guardian article on the event.

Attack on the Prince of Wales:

Leeds Mercury, 1 February 1817, on the attack on the Prince Regent's Coach during the state opening of parliament, 28 January 1817:

'The multitude was vociferous - and the most outrageous epithets were applied to His Royal Highness as he passed along in the State Carriage, guarded on both sides by a strong escort of guards and constables. On the return of His Royal Highness from the Lords' Chamber of Parliament, the crowding, clamour and insults increased. ...After the calvacade had entered the park, at the Horse Guards, and that it had processed about half way down the Mall, one of the windows of the state carriage in which His Royal Highness was placed...was shattered in two places by stones or some missiles, from a hand unseen'.

Lord Liverpool's government responded to the attack by passing the Seditious Meetings Act, which limited public political meetings to 50 people. Habeas Corpus was suspended on 3 March 1817 in response to the Spa Fields mass radical meetings.

This blog has an interesting comparison with present events - http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/

Comparison with 1641 on Mercurius Politicus blog

Social History Society statement on Thursday's vote

2010-12-06T08:48:00.001Z

http://www.gellius.net/downloads/org_3/protecthe.pdf

PROTECT HIGHER EDUCATION

The Social History Society UK is totally opposed to the current threat posed by the policies of the Coalition Government to the future of our university system, and in particular the arts, humanities and social sciences, within which the discipline of history has an important place. We consider the potential for damage to the education and life-chances of future generations to be an issue of the utmost seriousness.

At a time when OECD countries are investing in higher education as a way out of recession, we question the wisdom of withdrawing government funding from most academic subjects at tertiary level. These proposals will not only burden young and more mature students with a future of debt but also be more expensive to the taxpayer in the long term.

We are committed to working with student organisations, vice-chancellors, other learned societies, parents’ groups and others (whether academic, public or local) interested in the defence of history and the arts, humanities and social sciences generally, in order to challenge these proposals. Please contact your MP urgently, sign the online Humanities Matter petition (link below), and forward this to anyone you know who may be concerned about this issue.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/humanitiesmatter/

The SHS UK executive committee. Please use the SHS Executive Committee’s group email address for any enquiries: protecthe@gmail.com

Concert review of These New Puritans at the Barbican, 23 October 2010

2010-12-04T21:11:00.001Z

A little late this, one, but I've had to do a concert review for an application form, and so reproduce it here for interest. I will warn you it does venture into Paul Morley-speak, but then he did do the programme notes after all. Nothing to do with history, just good exciting music.

These New Puritans with the Britten Sinfonia and London Children's Choir, Barbican Centre, London, 23 October 2010.

These New Puritans are a four-piece guitar band, but this was no ordinary rock gig. For a start, we saw watermelons being smashed with hammers to a pulp that splattered across the back curtain, no doubt leaving the Barbican with a hefty dry-cleaning bill. Yet even watermelons aside, this was an exceptional performance, one that shows how British alternative rock music can be experimental and genuinely break the boundaries between rock and classical.

Their current release, 'Hidden', is no ordinary rock album. Singer Jack Barnett scored the album for lower woodwind and brass. He was inspired by Benjamin Britten's Seascapes, pieces that clearly resonate with the band’s upbringing in Southend-on-Sea. The idea to perform with full accompaniment came not from the band, however, but from the Britten Sinfonia, one of the new breed of risk-taking ensembles around today. So up on stage, beside the monitors, amps and guitars, were contrabassoon, alto flute, bass clarinet, tuba and bass trombone among other wind and brass. For the first time, the choral parts were performed live, by London Children's Choir. The rest of the stage was crowded with a grand piano, and a whole swathe of percussion, including a huge Japanese Taiko drum, a glockenspeil and two vibraphones, and that pile of watermelons (used to recreate the sound of, apparently, skulls being cracked).

The band were clearly nervous. Jack and his twin brother George are strikingly only 22 years old, and they briefly look anxious at the challenge they had not tackled before on such a scale. Jack wore his stage gear of a shirt made of chainmail. But perhaps tellingly, it was underneath his t-shirt rather than, as usual, on top. Only I and my fellow audience members on the first couple of rows could see his hidden chainmail. Did it represent the album title ‘Hidden’, a sign that the music was more introspective than the brash exuberance of their debut album ‘Beat Pyramid’? Or was Jack keeping his former self closer to his chest as his band metamorphasised into an all-consuming spectacle?

Conductor André de Ridder faced a major logistical difficulty of co-ordinating a tight rock band with the players, choir and percussion. This meant that the first few songs were slightly disjointed and not as tight as they are on record. Yet that reflected the nature of the music: edgy, difficult, challenging. By the middle of the piece the band and performers had settled down. The Britten Sinfonia masterfully built up the rich and dark autumny timbres of the pieces. I would have preferred them to have been stronger in the sound balance, but the emphasis of the whole performance was on the urging, difficult rhythms. The tightest playing came when the glockenspiel and vibraphones interacted in a section that is part-gamelan part-Philip Glass. The children's choir added an ethereal but still sinester overtone to the piece, in a manner that recalled the female 'sirens' in Holst's 'Neptune’. Overall, a superb concert well worthy of the standing ovation received at the end.

Poster issues by the committee of the Trades' Union of Manchester and Salford on Queen Victoria's coronation, 28 June 1838

2010-12-03T11:43:00.000Z

"...We assure the municipal authorities that we are not wanting in love and loyalty to the Queen, but that dear-bought experience has taught us the folly of such idle pomp and useless parade, and we can no longer as rational and intelligent beings become the dupes of our oppressors, the passive instruments for creating by shows and gewgaws a false notion of our prosperity; for the truth is, the working classes have not wherewithal to spend on glittering paraphernalia, neither have they confidence in the government of the country being willing to better their condition, and remove the embarrassments under which our merchants and manufacturers are now labouring.
We deeply deplore the present state of things, and we regret that our government should have agreed to spend so much money upon a Coronation, while so many of our fellow labourers are out of employment..."
National Archives, HO 40/38, f.692

For an excellent account of the Manchester trades' unions' boycott of the Coronation celebrations, and the formation of their own counter-processions, see John Knott, Popular Opposition to the 1834 Poor Law (Croom Helm, 1986), pp. 1-10.

Historyonics: The Conundrums of Assessment

2010-11-30T20:57:00.001Z

Link to Tim Hitchcock's excellent blog on assessing grant applications:

Historyonics: The Conundrums of Assessment: "To my chagrin I recently realised that I have been assessing research proposals and grant applications for some twenty years, and have done ..."

40 years later, the debate reincarnated

2010-11-08T17:01:00.001Z

Found this Times editorial (25 April 1970) in a second hand copy of E.P. Thompson, Warwick University Ltd (Penguin, 1970).

Somewhat apposite, 40 years later.

the meaning of humanity and the humanities.

2010-11-03T23:51:00.000Z

I wish British society respected learning and knowledge for the good of humanity rather than for the free market. University = universality. We study and teach at university to engage with higher goals of civilisation rather than just being consumers of (and indeed products of) a commercial machine. A country that doesn't know its own history, its own literature, its own identities, is going to be poorer, no matter how much more economic 'product' we make. After we're dead money is useless, but words and deeds can last forever.

Luddite mapping

2010-10-29T18:44:00.000+01:00

London Quaker Thomas Shillitoe's visit to Luddite widows in the Spen and Calder valleys, February-March 1813 - Journal of the Life, Labourers and Travels of Thomas Shillitoe (London, 1839), pp.184-191.

Plotted onto Jeffrey's map of Yorkshire and Google Earth:

links to articles on the browne report

2010-10-28T20:24:00.001+01:00

Stefan Collini in the LRB:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble

James Vernon in InsideHigherEd:
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/globalhighered/the_end_of_the_public_university_in_england

social history society annual conference - deadline extended!

2010-10-05T21:06:00.000+01:00

Deadline is now extended to 25 October.

Please submit proposals for papers via the Social History Society website –

http://www.socialhistory.org.uk/annualconference.php

http://www.manchester.gov.uk/galleries/gallery/9/item/62/m69193

The Society's conference has no single theme. It is organised in six strands:

· Deviance, Inclusion and Exclusion

· Life-cycles and Life-styles

· Markets, Culture and Society

· Political Cultures, Policy and Citizenship

· Narratives, Emotions and the Self

· Spaces and Places

Postgraduate students are encouraged to offer papers. Details of bursaries and the postgraduate paper prize are available on the conference website.

Social History Society annual conference deadline approaching

2010-10-01T09:23:00.000+01:00

The Social History Society annual conference takes place at the University of Manchester, 12-14 April 2011. Call for papers link here. Deadline is 4 October.
For further information also see the conference website.

architectural contrasts

2010-09-17T09:58:00.000+01:00

I've spent the past few days exploring some interesting architecture, thanks to the Open Doors events and a conference. Going from old to modern back to old and to new again has been intriguing if not disorientating.

First on the list was the new Centre for Islamic Studies in Oxford. This huge development looks finished from the main road, but clearly has a long way to go inside. The guide explained that they were trying to amalgamate traditional Islamic style with the Oxford collegiate model of building. In some senses, this works, especially the main 'quad' with its 'cloisters', which has a feel of a Moorish courtyard, but it remains to be seen what the rest of the place will look like when it's finished.

Then I visited St. Catherine's College, and was over-awed by the beautiful simplicity of the modernist design. Newer modifications have been made to Arne Jacobsen's model (principally double-glazing), and the college has expanded with more buildings, but it is the original buildings that still stand out. Being able to sit in an original Jacobsen Swan chair in the library was a privilege that the students perhaps don't realise. The dining hall was so light and spacious, but the highlight was nosying round the SCR (with a guide, of course). It maintained its 'man with briefcase' look - an air of elegant calm, sophisticated modernism, so far removed from the destructive concrete Corbusian brutalism that most people conflate with all 60s design.

The next contrast was a visit to Brighton. A mix of Blackpool, Hebden Bridge and Islington. The clash of architectural styles just in the streets was fun. A visit round the Pavilion emphasized the somewhat oxymoronic juxtaposition of styles even further, with its 'Indian' exterior and over the top Chinoiserie interior. It confirmed my impression of George IV at any rate.

Finally, the University of Sussex. Contemporaneous with Jacobsen's design for St. Catz (1962-64), Sir Basil Spence's architecture is more utilitarian and vernacular. For me, it felt understated, and I much preferred the experimentation and attention to detail that Jacobsen enforced over St. Catz.

a quick look at the East Riding

2010-08-13T22:42:00.001+01:00

An archive trip to Beverley and Hull, East Yorkshire (or Riding, as the locals still call it), this time.

Beverley Minster

relief in the pavement of one of the early fourteenth century stone carvings of musicians in the Minster.

One of the many Georgian houses, on Butcher Row, with added 'outdoor art'.

Carving of Disraeli, 'the Political Cheap Jack'.

Lamp-post, presumably originating from a Lighting and Watching Act.

This pair are on a church wall in Hull.

Hull

social history society conference call for papers

2010-07-09T11:38:00.000+01:00

A photographical tour of Wakefield

2010-07-03T11:09:00.002+01:00

A wander round Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in photos.

Wakefield Kirkgate. A shell of a railway station. Built 1854 for the Manchester and Leeds Railway; now dying.

Not even a ticket machine, never mind a clock on the platform or a current departure board. Felt like a ghost town.

The former grandeur of these buildings not hard to see, but now shrouded in rusty girders, boarded up windows, crumbling stonework and a general sense of decay.

The urban development of the 1960s and 70s around the station also gave an air of stasis, and visions of improvement now long lost.

Yet just round the corner is the medieval bridge and Chantry Chapel. A physical vignette of a different world and a different world view. Yet a promise of peace is eroded by the dual carriageway roaring alongside.

Monument to Joseph Horner jnr, Wakefield Chartist, in the Orangery.

The Art House

the art of being a historian, or antiquarianism?

2010-06-24T09:58:00.001+01:00

LRB
TLS

Oxford from the air

2010-06-13T23:26:00.001+01:00

A balloon trip over Oxford. Such a calm and peaceful experience - indeed, there was hardly any wind, so we didn't go far, and were forced to land on a slip road off the A34.

Seeing the traces of iron age workings on Port Meadow is very intriguing and forces me to think about perception and topography in different ways. It's difficult to imagine the sense of awe and wonder that the early balloonists in the eighteenth century must have felt, seeing the world in a completely new way. Seeing the extent of the earth, its curvature. It also seems incredible that it was only in the early decades of the twentieth century that photography from the air added a powerful tool to archaeologists' kit.

Another aspect that the flight confirmed for me is the nature of property in Britain. I had already thought about this when walking through the grounds of Blenheim Palace recently, and from the air we could see the long stretch of land that leads to the Column of Victory. Eighteenth century society was predicated upon property. A person's standing in relation to their family, to their contemporaries, and to society and politics was determined by the amount of property they owned (or did not own). The grounds of these private estates were designed to demonstrate in the most overwhelming and spectacular way the fundamental connection between property and power.

Godstow nunnery

article on political clothing now published

2010-06-12T12:02:00.000+01:00

'That Sash Will Hang You': Political Clothing and Adornment in England, 1780-1840', is now published in the Journal of British Studies.

a psychogeographic walk

2010-05-31T20:06:00.002+01:00

Went for a walk in Hertfordshire which ended up being somewhat of a derive.

Firstly, along the 'Alban Way', which is the old London Midland line between Hatfield and St. Albans. I always seem to end up going along old railway tracks and they all share that air of quiet neglect, no matter how much they were part of a regeneration strategy. Reached Hill End station, and again thought about all the people who would have waited there on the overgrown platform that survives for a train, now never to come [I feel like that often with First Great Western].

From Hill End, I diverted to the park on the grounds of the former Hill End mental asylum, founded in the late 1890s, changing its name in the 1930s to the euphemistic 'hospital for nervous diseases', and which was eventually closed in 1995. There is an ongoing project to commemorate the patients and staff of the hospital, but I've not seen anything from this yet. All that there is on site is an information plaque in the somewhat neglected commemoration garden, and even on that, the language is very coded. Half the site is now a big housing estate, which cut into what appears to have been a substantial orchard. Now only a few trees remain. This reminds me of the seemingly endless series of housing estates built on the sites of mental hospitals that Iain Sinclair visited for London Orbital. I don't have the book to hand to check whether Hill End was one of them, but it certainly fits the characteristics that Sinclair identified. A liminal space, for marginal people. Now, a plot of cookie-cutter houses plonked on an old estate, with the language of the private developers masking the history of the site and its original buildings. Yet the memories and old histories still seep through somehow.

The park maintains an atmosphere of peace and natural beauty, but a sadness still lingers. The hospital itself was huge, but now only three of the original big redbrick buildings remain, plus a chapel now used as Trestle Arts Base.

class yet again

2010-05-25T21:45:00.001+01:00

Still ploughing my way through The Uses of Literacy. A usual exercise in picking out what seems most relevant, but at the moment pp. 59-60 caught my eye. A balanced if a little romantic view of the history of violence in working class culture, and how by the 1950s it was a bygone age, to be replaced by a desire for self respect.
Were the 1950s that golden, that removed from the cut-throats and bare knuckled fighting of the Edwardian and Victorian eras? Again, usual comment here about contemporary concerns about the drunken violence of town centres being nothing new.

It's also worth listening to this stand up/documentary about growing up in the East End. Runs through similar themes as Hoggart and Hanley, but with an personally acute awareness of the lack of aspirations and poverty of the working classes compared with the facades of being bourgeois.

'biggest shake-up since 1832'

2010-05-19T17:20:00.002+01:00

'The biggest shake up since 1832'. No, no and thrice no. As any historian of reform will tell you, the first reform acts [yes, there was a separate act for Scotland], were far from 'great'. See my summary of the reform crisis in a previous post below.

1832 and democracy should not be mentioned in the same sentence, if not paragraph.
1832 changed very little. Representation was still based on the principle of property. the £10 householder franchise was a compromise [MPs originally wanted it to be £20], and actually defranchised the working classes in some large boroughs like Westminster, Preston, and Liverpool, which had previously had 'potwalloper' franchises or similar.
the middle classes, though some of them got the vote, were too busy in their exchanges and factories to want to become MPs. They went on to 'single issue' politics in the Anti-Corn Law League, and bitterly opposed the Chartists [see the rants in the Manchester Guardian, that bastion of bourgeois liberalism, against the working classes].
see these responses on the History and Policy website.

Hearing of the chaos in Thailand, with 'red shirts' and 'barricades' also puts this into focus too.

Denis Diderot (1713-84)

2010-05-12T09:00:00.001+01:00

Denis Diderot

I can't find a French philosopher who looks like Nick Clegg.

parliamentary reform - aide memoire

2010-05-07T10:32:00.004+01:00

Fact time.
Key points from this story:

during the American revolution, Major Cartwright called for what essentially became the Chartist six points sixty years later - annual parliaments, universal male suffrage, secret ballot, etc.
It took until the French Revolution and Paine's Rights of Man (1791-2) to popularise the idea that the vote should be based on something other than the possession of property. Yet the battles around the reform bills in 1830-2 in parliament were focused solely on the possession of property, in its various forms. Even many of the working class men campaigning for the vote in the 1830s and 40s still framed the debate within the notion of property - arguing that labour was a form of property and therefore gave them a right to representation. It would arguably take until 1884, the third reform act, for parliament to recognise the 'rights of man' - representation based on some idea of equality.
the redistribution of seats was always arranged for political benefit rather than on some genuine belief in equal representation.
secret ballot not achieved until 1872; payment of MPs not until the early 1900s; we still don't have annual parliaments.

Timeline:
1688 - establishment of the idea of a constitutional monarchy, without a written constitution. King, Lords, and Commons are supposed to 'balance' each others' power.

1760s - John Wilkes challenges the government's right to remove him from his seat, three times.

1776 - Major John Cartwright, Take Your Choice!

1780s - Yorkshire Association pushes for moderate reform in parliament; achieves economical reform. Westminster Association calls for more extensive reform, on Cartwright's model. Achieves nothing.

1791-2 - Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, parts 1 and 2. One of the most important treatises that spreads the idea that the right to vote should be divorced from the possession of property.

1790s - first working-class reform groups form. London Corresponding Society promise 'members unlimited'. 'Two Acts' of 1795 mark highpoint of government repression of radicals.

1810s - the 'mass platform' becomes the central tactic of radical reformers. First female reform societies. Huge demonstrations across the country.

16 August 1819 - Peterloo

1830-2 - reform groups re-emerge and press for the parliamentary reform act.

the battle for the Reform Act:

23 February 1830 – Lord John Russell’s redistribution plan.

May 1830 – Daniel O’Connell moves for manhood suffrage, secret ballot and triennial parliaments – received only 13 votes.

28 May 1830 – Russell’s motion for redistribution. Defeated 223 to 117.

26 June 1830 – death of George IV. William IV accedes to the throne. General election.

July 1830 – revolution in France.

2 November 1830 – Wellington made a speech in the Lords against reform.

Ministers defeated in the Commons on a civil list vote and resigned. Grey’s ministry formed.

November 1830 – Manchester Political Union established

December 1830 – Henry Hunt won by-election in Preston.

December 1830 – committee set up to draw up reform bill

Late 1830-early 1831 – ‘Swing Riots’ across southern England

March 1831 – Hunt and O’Connell established Metropolitan Political Union.

1 March 1831 – Lord John Russell introduced first reform bill to the Commons

23 March 1831 – Reform bill passed its second reading by 302 to 301 votes.

20 April 1831 – William IV advised to dissolve parliament by the cabinet.

Late April 1831 – general election gave Grey’s government majority of 140

24 June 1831 – reform bill re-introduced by Russell.

22 September 1831 – Commons passed reform bill by 345 to 236.

8 October 1831 – Lords defeated the bill on its second reading, 199 to 158.

Late 1831 – serious rioting in Nottingham, Derby, and Bristol. Large demonstrations across the country.

12 December 1831 – third reform bill introduced.

18 December 1831 – second reading in Commons passed 324 to 162.

23 March 1832 – third reading in the Commons passed 355 to 239.

14 April 1832 – Reform bill passed second reading in Lords by 184 to 175.

7 May 1832 – ministers defeated on a motion to postpone consideration of disenfranchisement clauses until the rest of the bill had been sanctioned.

7 May 1832 – huge meeting of political unions in Birmingham.

8 May 1832 – Grey asked William IV for the creation of 50 new peers. King refused.

9 May 1832 – ministers resigned. William IV asked Wellington to form government. Massive petitions from across the country calling upon the kign to stop supplies.

15 May 1832 – Wellington gave up his commission. William IV forced to recall the Grey ministry.

18 May 1832 – William IV reluctantly gave a pledge to create new peers.

19 May 1832 – Wellington agreed to support Grey.

4 June 1832 – Reform bill passed on third reading in the Lords 106 to 27.

Results:

Redistribution:

56 rotten boroughs abolished.

30 boroughs lost 1 MP.

143 seats made available for redistribution.

– 65 seats to the counties.

– 22 large towns, including Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and London, given 2 MPs.

– 21 smaller towns given 1 MP.

Scotland awarded 8 extra seats.

Ireland given 5 extra seats.

Enfranchisement:

The total electorate out of a population of 24 million was 813,000, or less than 15% of adult males.

Chandos Clause, which enlarged the county electorate by 30% more than the Whigs wanted.

Scotland: Fifteen fold increase in electors to 65,000

Still only votes for 1 in 8 men (1 in 5 for England).

Ireland: only 5% of Irish men could vote

sources:

M. J. Turner, The Age of Unease: Government and Reform in Britain, 1782-1832 (2000)

N. LoPatin-Lummis, 'The 1832 Reform Act Debate: Should the Suffrage Be Based on Property or Taxpaying?', Journal of British Studies, 46:2 (2007), 320-45

Short article in THES on my research

2010-05-06T13:18:00.002+01:00

short article in THES on my research

election candidates' unusual propaganda

2010-05-04T12:55:00.004+01:00

Henry 'Orator' Hunt, the radical leader and speaker, was imprisoned for three years for his central role in the Manchester reform demonstration that became 'Peterloo' in 1819. After his release from Ilchester Gaol, he became a successful businessman and entrepreneur to fund his political activities. Notably, he sold tax-free 'Breakfast Powder' [?], and bottles of shoe polish with the label: ‘Equal Laws, Equal Rights, Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage and the Ballot’. Now that's a way to get your message across using the power of consumerism!
[Source: John Belchem, Oxford National Dictionary of Biography]

I'll also give a nod to the wide array of paraphernalia made in support of John Wilkes in the 1760s, including mugs, pots, pin-badges, and, allegedly, chamber pots, and the soles of shoes marked with '45' written in reverse so that the symbol would be imprinted on the ground.

Guardian article on my research

2010-04-26T19:24:00.004+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/apr/26/students-higher-education

Just some small corrections or clarifications -

rosettes and ribbons were generally not worn in the hair but were rather worn on or around clothing, especially hats. On the other hand there are some cartoons of aristocratic ladies wearing head-dresses with ribbons stamped with patriotic messages such as 'God Save the King' during royal celebrations.

Although there are some material items in the British Museum, such as these fantastic '45' pins in support of John Wilkes from 1763, most of the evidence I used was from cartoons, paintings, newspaper reports, and diary entries. The Foundling museum however have some interesting patriotic ribbons that had been left as identifiers with the foundling babies.

class

2010-04-14T14:32:00.005+01:00

I'll comment on this in more detail later: story in the Guardian,
but here are some initial thoughts:

I've been thinking a lot about class over the past few months. It comes as inevitable being a socio-political historian, but I'm also interested in contemporary social categories. One event that really got me thinking was when Lynsey Hanley, the author of Estates, an Intimate History, came to speak at our university. I'd read her columns in the Guardian before, but had only dipped into the book now and again. She spoke mainly about her childhood and transition into university and adult life. I re-read the book, and have been trying to work out what it is about class that she's pointing to. The above article in the Guardian is pointing the same way.

I'm not sure whether I agree or not, and part of why I keep thinking about the topic of class is because I can't work out why I disagree, so these are still my 'thoughts in progress'.

Common themes:

class is determined by education in England;
people generally define their class with reference to what their parents did for a living;
possession of 'cultural capital' is vital for entry into the upper middle class.

1. Both Hanley and the Guardian article focus on education as one of the key determinants of class. Hanley seemed to express great resentment at the teachers at her school in particular for putting working class children in unacademic or indeed unteachable boxes, and therefore stunting their aspirations. It's only when Hanley moved to sixth form, and then ultimately to university, that she realised that she was different in wanting to learn, read books, etc.

2. will discuss later

3. Hanley mentioned 'cultural capital' a lot in her talk, and alludes to it in her book. What I think it means is knowledge of the arts, literature, music, culture - and more importantly, the ability to thread such knowledge seamlessly into conversation. I get the impression that Hanley feels aggrieved that she had to wait until sixth form to begin to obtain cultural capital, whereas the (upper) middle classes and middle-class schools already put their children ahead of the game by instilling this knowledge much earlier.

What I'm not sure is explained is that cultural capital is useful for gaining entry into the upper middle class. You might not need an expansive vocabulary and knowledge of the arts to get onto a graduate training scheme for an average corporate firm, but I suspect it is a great advantage for entry into more upper middle class professions - law, politics, the media. What I'm wondering, therefore, is whether the process that Hanley describes is one of 'coming out', so to speak, as middle class. The anguish of being bullied at school for being a bookworm, the internalisation of worries about not being enabled to learn by disruptive peers and beleagured teachers, then the sheer relief and excitement about entering a world where your new peers are more like you (sixth form, university), and tense returns to your old world where your family and old acquaintances no longer understand you.

Where I'm not sure whether I agree with Hanley or the Guardian article, is on the role of the teachers. I'm explain this later when I have time...

What I've been thinking about is what happened to the auto-didact tradition among the working classes, or indeed, how prevalent that tradition ever was. In Estates and in her talk, Hanley pointed the blame at the loss of this tradition among late 20th century working classes: I think she is arguing that many working class families have lost that respect for knowledge and a desire to learn, despite the odds. Hanley has written the new preface to the re-issue of the Uses of Literacy, but I haven't seen it yet so can't comment here. I will input some of my historical thoughts.

I'll explain these in more detail when I have time later...

Political clothing and adornment

2010-03-24T21:18:00.001Z

I've a new article coming out in the Journal of British Studies in July.

I've been asked by our PR team to write an executive summary of it, so I might as well post this here too. It's designed for the general reader rather than historians, so excuse the somewhat basic nature of it. The full-length article is much more scholarly, though just as fun!

‘“That Sash Will Hang You”: Political Clothing and Adornment in England, 1780–1840’ will be published in the major American history journal, Journal of British Studies, in July 2010.

Main findings:

- Rosettes are not a new way of expressing belonging to a political party: their history stretches way back to the eighteenth century, as do sashes, colours and other forms of material clothing and adornment used as forms of political expression. They enabled the illiterate and those without the vote to express their political views.
- Many political symbols still used today have their origins in the eighteenth century, if not before. For example, ‘true blue’ was always the colour of the Tory party: its origins are somewhat debatable, but may reflect a desire to be seen as aristocratic [blue blood]. The Liberals took orange or yellow as their colour, in honour of William of Orange, who became king of Great Britain in 1688.
- Women were involved in elections and other types of popular politics, even though they could not vote. Clothing was an ideal way for women to express their political preferences, and aristocratic women even made whole fashions out of party colours. For example, the infamous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, (most recently played in film by Keira Knightley), designed a dress of light blue and beige stripes, in support of the leader of the opposition.
- The working classes used the dress of carnival and festival as forms of political communication, which were often designed to be unintelligible to the upper classes. So the costume of morris men (white shirts, ribbons, blackened faces or masks, jack-in-the-green) was more subversive than you may think!

2010-03-17T09:17:00.000Z

The 'blood protest' in Thailand this week caught the headlines. Commentators have noted the world-wide symbolic and religious origins of such a ritualistic act of protest, although scholars of Thai culture disagree over the exact meaning of using human blood.

For me, it brings me to mind of the food riots in eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. Food riots attempted to assert the 'moral economy' or 'just price' against middlemen dealers in grain or other produce. A key symbol used by the rioters was a loaf of bread dipped in blood, which was placed on a stick and paraded round the market.
The agrarian disturbances in East Anglia in 1816 were known as the 'Bread and Blood' riots. Certain leaders of the Swing rioters in the 1830s identified themselves by wearing a scarf stained with blood.
Later types of protest used the symbol to great effect, such as demonstrations against the New Poor Law of 1834.

Rubbish video

2010-03-12T23:28:00.001Z

Here's my first attempt at recreating the route of a procession in Manchester. It's really bad, and I sound like Frank Sidebottom, but I'm just experimenting with the technology and with what works.

Click on the thumbnail to stream the video in media player or equivalent.

George Leigh Street Ancoats, 16 August 1820

More processions

2010-03-10T19:42:00.002Z

Here's an interesting snippet from the Manchester procession to celebrate the passing of the 1832 Reform Act. The glassmakers of Messrs Molineaux Webb Ellis and Co processed as follows:

A man bearing a silk flag motto ‘W Rex’; in the reverse, ‘success to the glass trade’.
Glass blowers with glass hats decorated with ribbons and appropriate mottoes inscribed with ‘Old England forever’, ‘Abolition of all monopolies’, ‘Success to the town and trade of Manchester’ accoutred with glass swords.
Two large goblets carried by men adorned with rich superb spun glass wigs.
Fishglobe and bird cage with a canary bird and fish swimming round.
Two large globes silvered both ornamented with the Crown and Sceptre.

Other trades included the ‘Gas Men’, who processed with a cannel drawn by horses, a large union flag and the Manchester Arms [ex fume dere lucem]; and a carriage filled up with portable gas filling balloons and ornamented with a gas chandelier. The bakers processed with a ‘large loaf, nine foot long’.[1]

[1] Manchester Archives, M71/2/19/10, 15, details of trades’ participations in the Reform procession, 4 August 1832.

Another useful local history site: Leeds this time

Adventures with google earth part II

2010-02-24T22:51:00.000Z

adventures with GIS and google earth

2010-02-22T20:14:00.009Z

I'm trying to plot the Peterloo processions using a mash up of google earth and ArGIS, and old maps. Any advice on geo-referencing or flash animations much appreciated.

mapping sites

2010-02-16T21:39:00.003Z

Here are some links to some mapping sites I'm trying to emulate.

Geograph [OS site with added photos and routes]

Philaplace [Philadelphia public history site]

Tracks in Time [West Yorkshire tithes maps]

Geomaker [mapping]

GPS visualiser

newspapers and inflammatory media

2010-01-23T10:46:00.003Z

This week, Charlie Brooker made an excellent deconstruction of the role of the media in spreading panic - Newswipe - ties in to what I'm thinking about at the moment.

I've been working on the Swing riots, the wave of arson and machine breaking that swept across the country in 1830-1. What is apparent is that not all protests and agitation had completely rational causes: in fact, rumour, emotion, panic, fear and many other 'irrational' forces shaped the way people acted.

What interests me in particular is the role of the press in spreading rumours, causing panic, and shaping perceptions of what 'Captain Swing' should be. They used, to excuse the pun, inflammatory language, and created the idea of Swing in the panicked minds of inhabitants of places that did not experience the Swing riots. Arson and incendiarism was a regular expression of everyday tensions throughout the eighteenth century, but once Swing captured the imaginations of landowners and magistrates, it became a meme that stuck. Any incident of incendiarism became tarred with the sticky brush of Swing, whether or not it had any relation to the Swing riots. Newspapers were particularly involved in stoking up these rumours.

the notion of 'public' space

2009-12-16T10:26:00.004Z

The ongoing debate about photography in 'public' spaces has many parallels with my own work on space in the eighteenth century.

This recent article and Steve Bell's excellent 'If' series last week raise the same issues that have been troubling eighteenth century historians ever since Jurgen Habermas's Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere was translated into English in the late 80s. In fact, streets, squares, town halls, and other seemingly 'public' buildings have in essence always been 'private', controlled by local authorities, private estates and landowners, who determined their uses, who had the right to use them, and when.

I'm looking at loitering as a means of protest at the moment, not just during obvious types of action such as strikes and demonstrations, but also during what de Certeau would term the resistance of 'everyday life'.

Loitering disrupted authorities' control over the streets, but its very disorganisation and non-obvious way of protesting confused sanctioned uses even more than more 'organised' processions or meetings. Its very unpredictability was its weapon. Loitering transgressed the vagrancy laws, and challenged the authorities' attempts to blur the line between criminality, vagrancy, unemployment, tramping, and customary uses of public spaces such as recreation, for children playing, women hanging out washing, etc.

article on Gillray cartoons

2009-12-15T19:23:00.000Z

article in the Guardian on James Gillray cartoons

new university webpage

2009-12-06T17:52:00.000Z

Link to my personal webpage on the University of Hertfordshire website

online map

2009-10-12T16:42:00.002+01:00

I'm working on an online map of sites of protests in Manchester. Do contact me if you're interested in seeing/contributing to it.

View Manchester meetings and riots, 1770-1848 in a larger map

interactive maps

2009-10-05T19:52:00.002+01:00

At the moment I'm trying to work out how to do an interactive map. Any suggestions welcome.

These are good examples:
Edinburgh University MSc in Landscape
West Yorkshire Archives Tracks in Time

nice website by the Pevsner people

2009-09-18T20:51:00.001+01:00

I quite like the design of this website to promote the Pevsner guides.

Looking at Buildings

article in the Guardian

2009-09-10T09:22:00.002+01:00

article in the Guardian, 10/9/09, on public history

Procession

2009-07-12T15:44:00.004+01:00

The recent art-work 'Procession' by Jeremy Deller is a significant reminder and celebration of the processions that used to be a regular feature of Manchester's civic calendar. Indeed, Deller's banner that headed the procession [now on display at the Cornerhouse] deliberately and kindly imitated the traditional trade union banners now catalogued by the People's History Museum. Deansgate has long been a central feature of processions, its straight length linking the symbols of old power [the Collegiate Church, now Cathedral] with the new [the canals of Castlefield and the railway].

Local elites encouraged civic pride and national patriotism through processions: no birthday of a royal family member or celebration of a naval victory was complete without a procession round the town. Yet the ritual of processions - their banners and their bands - were highly regulated and controlled. The order of the procession was a visual reminder of the order in society: gentlemen and officers at the front, trades at the back.

Ordinary inhabitants and those on the margins of society had to content themselves with being spectators at the sidelines. By parading round the 'principal streets' of a city, local elites reminded inhabitants of their power over the city. The inhabitants could conform, disagree in silence whilst still participating in the spectacle, or could resist by non-attendance or organising their own processions.

For the Manchester trade unions' boycott of the 1838 Coronation procession, see:
- R. Sykes, 'Early Chartism and Trade Unionism,' in D. Thompson and J. Epstein, eds., The Chartist Experience
- J. Knott, Popular Opposition to the 1834 Poor Law (1986)

interesting articles on non-obvious protests

2009-06-03T14:11:00.004+01:00

I'm currently looking at protests that were not as overtly obvious as demonstrations, meetings or strikes. Such protests could include arson; trespass along or reopening of closed footpaths, deliberate slacking off at work; wearing of political symbols in everyday life.

All fall under the shady category of 'social protest' or defence of custom, but I'm wary that I don't fall into the old trap of classifying crime as protest. They fall perhaps more neatly under the category of 'pauper/labourer agency'; that is, giving a voice and credit to the actions of the most disadvantaged or voiceless in Georgian society.

Here's a selection of articles and books I've been reading recently:

M. Huberman, Escape from the Market: Negotiating Work in Lancashire (CUP, 1996)
P. King, 'Gleaners, Farmers and the Failure of Legal Sanctions in England, 1750-1850,' Past & Present, 125 (1989)
R. J. Soderlund, 'Resistance from the Margins: the Yorkshire Worsted Spinners, Policing and the Transformation of Work in the Early Industrial Revolution,' Int. Rev. Social History, 51 (2006)
S. Poole, 'A lasting and salutary warning: Incendiarism, Rural Order and England's Last Scene of Crime Execution,' Rural History, 19:2 (2008)
P. D. Jones, 'I cannot keep my place without being deascent: Pauper Letters, Parish Clothing and Pragmatism in the South of England, 1750-1830,' Rural History, 20:1 (2009)

'As I tried to bludgeon Chartist demonstrators in the square'

2009-05-17T14:05:00.003+01:00

The quotation above of course is made up by Half Man Half Biscuit, in 'Letters Sent.'

Chartist demonstrations almost automatically bring to mind urban settings of protest - particularly 'monster' meetings in Georgian and early Victorian civic squares: Stevenson's Square in Manchester, Clayton Square in Liverpool, Paradise Square in Sheffield, and so on. Many of the big meetings - and conflicts - occurred in what should be 'public' space, but in fact were not freely open to all, but controlled by local elites opposed to any threats to public order.

Yet Chartist demonstrations were not solely urban in character. Partly because they were being forced out of 'public' spaces in towns, and partly because inhabitants still had connections with the countryside, 'camp meetings' and demonstrations also occurred in rural areas, especially on moors and commons. Processions from towns out to the more remote moors connected urban with rural. Monster meetings were held on Kersal Moor near Manchester, Blackstone Edge, on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border on the Pennines, Kennington Common in London, Newcastle Moor, Skircoat moor and Peep Green in the Calder and Spen valleys in West Riding, among many others. These were sites of sublime beauty, elevated ordinary working-class to feel powerful over the environment, or connected to it; they were sites of fairs and races; sites of free movement and free speech.

At the great Chartist meeting on Blackstone Edge in 1848, George Archdeacon was reported to have said in his speech:

We commented at great length on the police and said dare the police come here to stop our meeting. We are not now in the narrow streets where they can call upon Special Constables. We are on a broad field of free discussion — and such are the places where we ought to meet.
(Navickas, 2009, 107)

The revival of 'Old Corruption'

2009-05-09T09:46:00.004+01:00

Probably one of the many posts I'll write beginning with 'Twas ever thus.'

The sustained outrage in the press about the expenses of MPs has many echoes in the campaigns against 'Old Corruption' during the long eighteenth century.

'Country' Whig MPs and radicals outside parliament had many solutions for parliamentary corruption, from annual elections to cutting the civil list.

The 'South Sea Bubble' of 1720, the 'credit crunch' [how I hate that phrase] of their times, renewed suspicions about the government's handling of the economy, but Britain's 'saviour' Sir Robert Walpole also had much mud slung at him for his shady deals to keep in power. John Wilkes revived calls against parliamentary corruption in the 1760s, and supporting 'economical reform' became a badge of the Association movement of the 1770s and 1780s.

The most vivid campaign arose in 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars. Huge scandals emerged around major figures, most notably the Duke of York, whose mistress was accused of selling commissions in the army. All the sordid details of tabloid outrage were there: adultery, corruption, military failure. A minor Welsh MP raised the issue, and the Duke of York was impeached, though unsuccessfully. The press lapped the scandal up and spewed it out, despite this being a time when a patriotic attachment to the monarchy was to be expected.

'A Morning Scene in Gloucester' print

Why was corruption such an issue in the later part of the Napoleonic Wars? Shouldn't we have just been revelling in the afterglow of Trafalgar or getting on with fighting on the Peninsula? Well war-weariness was kicking in and there was no immediate end in sight to the war. At the peak of the conflict, the government was spending 30% of national income on the war. [Harling, 1996, p. 136] The press, especially William Cobbett's Political Register, stoked up suspicions among the ordinary public that this money was being spent for corrupt purposes: from paying for emigre French Catholic clergy to hide in Britain, to supporting the Prince of Wales's increasing waistline.

'Never, never till 1809 were found men of such bold, such boldfaced infamy as to avow the corruption, to assert that it was necessary to the support of good government in this country, and that to put an end to corruption would be to endanger the existence of government...'
[Cobbett's Political Register, 19 June 1811, p. 1512]

Suggested reading:

Philip Harling, The Waning of Old Corruption: the politics of economical reform in Britain, 1779-1846 (1996)
John Brewer, The sinews of power: war, money, and the English state, 1688-1783 (1990)
Philip Harling, 'The Duke of York affair (1809) and the complexities of wartime patriotism'. Historical Journal, 39 (1996)

first of all, a plug for my book

2009-05-09T09:31:00.002+01:00

My new book, Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798-1815, is published with OUP.

link to OUP website