This book is a wide-ranging survey of the rise of mass movements for democracy and workers' rights in northern England from 1789 to 1848. It is a provocative narrative of the closing down of public space and dispossession from place. It offers historical parallels for contemporary debates about protests in public space and democracy and anti-globalisation movements. In response to fears of revolution from 1789 to 1848, the British government and local authorities prohibited mass working-class political meetings and societies. Protesters faced the privatisation of public space. The 'Peterloo Massacre' of 1819 marked a turning point. Radicals, trade unions and the Chartists fought back by challenging their exclusion from public spaces, creating their own sites and eventually constructing their own buildings or emigrating to America. New evidence of protest in rural areas of northern England, including rural Luddism, is also uncovered. -- .

Explores loyalism as a social and political force in eighteenth and nineteenth century British colonies and former colonies. Loyalism in Britain and Ireland, which was once seen as a crude reaction against radicalism or nationalism, stimulated by the elite and blindly followed by plebeians, has recently been shown by historians to have been, on the contrary, a politically multi-faceted, socially enabling phenomenon which did much to shape identity in the British Isles. This book takes further this revised picture by considering loyalism in the wider British World. It considersthe overall nature of loyalism, exploring its development in England, Ireland and Scotland, and goes on to examine its manifestation in a range of British colonies and former colonies, including the United States, Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand. It shows that whilst eighteenth-century Anglo-centric loyalism had a core of common ideological assumptions, associational structures and ritual behaviour, loyalism manifested itself differently in different territories. This divergence is explored through a discussion of the role of loyal associations and military institutions, loyalism's cultural and ritual dimensions and its key role in the formation of political identities. Chronologically, the book covers a pivotal period, comprehending the American and French Revolutions, the 1798 Irish rebellion and Irish Union, the Canadian rebellions of 1837, and Fenianism and Home Rule campaigns throughout the British World. Allan Blackstock is Reader in History at the University of Ulster and author of Loyalism in Ireland, 1789-1829 (Boydell, 2007). Frank O'Gorman was Professor of History at the Universityof Manchester. Contributors: Allan Blackstock, Richard P. Davis, Oliver Godsmark, William Gould, Jacqueline Hill, Andrew R. Holmes, Kyle Hughes, Mark G. McGowan, Donald M. MacRaild, Keith Mason, Patrick Maume, KatrinaNavickas, Frank O'Gorman, Brad Patterson, Scott W. See

Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798-1815 is a lively and detailed account of popular politics in Lancashire during the later years of the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic wars. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, such as letters, diaries, and broadside ballads, it offers fresh insights into the complicated dynamics between radicalism, loyalism, and patriotism, and emphasizes Lancashire's distinctive political culture and its place at the heart of the industrial revolution.
This region witnessed some of the most intense, disruptive, and violent popular politics in this period and beyond. Highly active and vocal groups emerged--extreme republicans, more moderate radicals, Luddites, early trade unionists, and also strong networks of "Church-and-King" loyalists and Orange lodges.
Katrina Navickas explains how this heady mix created a politically charged region where both local and national affairs played their part. She follows the inner workings of popular political activity in response to both internal and external threats, including loyalist processions and civic events, volunteer corps formed as defense against invasion, food riots, strikes by trade unions, and both secret and public meetings on the key issues of peace and parliamentary reform. Navickas argues for a distinct sense of regional identity that shaped not only local politics but also patriotism. Lancastrians felt British in the face of the French, but it was a particularly Lancastrian type of Britishness.