Peterloo

Choir had to meet back at Central Library as our new venue has been closed for the last two weeks, no lights on and no response to our emails or phone calls.

This flag was in the entrance of Central Library.  I've been on quite a few walking tours of Manchester and they always take you to the site of the Peterloo Massacre, a huge part of Manchester's history.  It says that the flags are replicas from the upcoming PETERLOO film which is released on 2 November.

"On Monday the 16th August 1819, a sixty-thousand-strong crowd walked to St Peter's Field in Central Manchester. They gathered to call for parliamentary representation. Shortly after the meeting began, and whilst the orator Henry Hunt was making his address, local government forces charged into the crowd on horseback and, with swords drawn, injured around seven hundred people and killed eighteen men, women and children". 

Poem for today:
Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.
And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there;
Slash, and stab, and maim and hew;
What they like, that let them do.
With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay,
Till their rage has died away:
Then they will return with shame,
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek:
Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many - they are few!

The Masque of Anarchy by Percy Bysshe Shelley