Procession

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)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Commemoration of the execution of 17 Luddites, York, 19 January 2013

Image
On Saturday 19 January, York's Alternative History held an afternoon of talks and commemoration for the Luddites tried and executed at York. placards outside York Castle In the huge space of the Guild Hall, Adam Gutteridge , one of the organisers, introduced the themes of the day. His speech echoed the two interesting articles publicising the event in the Guardian (by local historian Paul Furness, here , and by another organiser Helen Graham, here ). They argue that now that York's industrial economy is no more (chocolate and railways), York has remade itself round the past: an economy of tourism. Yet the past as presented to tourists and indeed to residents, is a sanitised and normalised history, centring round Vikings, medieval religion, and Georgian middle-class pleasures. The recent York 800 celebrations had no place for the popular protest and resistance that had a distinguished history in the city. I began the talks by explaining the context and meaning of the ...
Read more

Protest history workshop #3, Cheltenham, 2/3/13

Image
TNA, PL 27/9 'Sarah Short refused to sign this Examination before me, R. Wright'. Manchester, 5 May 1812. TNA, PL 27/9. Charged with being at the Luddite attack on Burtons' powerloom mill at Middleton, Lancs, on 21 April 1812, this woman made a defiant act of resistance by refusing to sign the record of her examination by the Manchester magistrate Ralph Wright of Flixton Hall. But is this protest? Did it work? Can protest be individual? What is the difference between protest, collective action, resistance and opposition? can we include all types of opposition within the term 'protest'? These were questions we had asked at the first workshop on ' new approaches to the history of protest ' back in 2011, and returned to last weekend at the third workshop at the University of Gloucestershire. I started off the day with some reflections on the spatial turn in history (see extended version in my HWPP paper ) combined with some questions about th...
Read more