Massacre de Peterloo

Le massacre de Peterloo (ou bataille de Peterloo) eut lieu le 16 août 1819 sur le terrain de St Peter's Fields à Manchester en Angleterre (Royaume-Uni) lorsque la cavalerie chargea une manifestation pacifique de 60 000 à 80 000 personnes rassemblées pour demander une réforme de la représentation parlementaire. Après la fin des guerres napoléoniennes en 1815, des périodes de famine et de chômage chroniques s'installent dans le pays, exacerbées par les Corn Laws. Au début de l'année 1819, la pression générée par ces conditions économiques associées à la faible représentation parlementaire du nord de l'Angleterre avait entrainé une montée du radicalisme politique. En réponse, la Manchester Patriotic Union, un groupe soutenant une réforme parlementaire, organisa une manifestation à laquelle le célèbre orateur Henry Hunt devait participer. Peu après le début du rassemblement, les magistrats locaux firent appel aux autorités militaires pour qu'elles arrêtent Hunt et plusieurs de ses soutiens et qu'elles dispersent la foule. La cavalerie chargea la foule sabre au clair et dans la panique qui s'ensuivit, 18 personnes moururent et entre 400 et 700 furent blessées. Le massacre reçut le nom de Peterloo en une référence ironique à la bataille de Waterloo qui avait eu lieu quatre ans auparavant. L'historien Robert Poole (en) qualifie ce drame comme « l'événement décisif de son époque ». Les journaux de Londres et de tout le pays relayèrent l'horreur et la désapprobation ressenties dans la région de Manchester. La conséquence immédiate de Peterloo fut le vote par le parlement britannique des Six Acts (en) qui limitaient très fortement la liberté de rassemblement et le droit de manifester. Le massacre entraîna directement la fondation du journal The Manchester Guardian (aujourd'hui The Guardian) mais n'accéléra pas la réforme parlementaire. Dans un sondage mené par The Guardian en 2006, Peterloo arriva en deuxième place après les débats de Putney comme l'événement de l'histoire du Royaume-Uni qui méritait le plus un mémorial ou un monument convenable. Pendant un certain temps, Peterloo n'a été commémoré que par une plaque bleue, critiquée comme étant insuffisante et ne faisant référence qu'à la « dispersion par les militaires » d'une assemblée. En 2007, le conseil municipal a remplacé la plaque bleue par une plaque rouge avec une formulation moins euphémique, faisant explicitement référence à « un rassemblement pacifique » étant « attaqué par de la cavalerie armée » et mentionnant « 15 morts et plus de 600 blessés ». En 2019, à l'occasion du 200e anniversaire du massacre, le conseil municipal de Manchester a inauguré un nouveau mémorial de Peterloo par l'artiste Jeremy Deller, comportant onze cercles concentriques de pierre locale gravés des noms des morts et des lieux d'où venaient les victimes.

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Peterloo Massacre

The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. Eighteen people were killed and 400–700 were injured when the cavalry of the Yeomen charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, there was an acute economic slump, accompanied by chronic unemployment and harvest failure due to the Year Without a Summer, and worsened by the Corn Laws, which kept the price of bread high. At that time, only around 11 percent of adult males had the right to vote, very few of them in the industrial north of England, which was worst hit. Radicals identified parliamentary reform as the solution, and a mass campaign to petition parliament for manhood suffrage gained three-quarters of a million signatures in 1817 but was flatly rejected by the House of Commons. When a second slump occurred in early 1819, Radicals sought to mobilise huge crowds to force the government to back down. The movement was particularly strong in the north-west, where the Manchester Patriotic Union organised a mass rally in August 1819, addressed by well-known Radical orator Henry Hunt. Shortly after the meeting began, local magistrates called on the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry to arrest Hunt and several others on the platform with him. The Yeomanry charged into the crowd, knocking down a woman and killing a child, and finally apprehended Hunt. Cheshire Magistrates' chairman William Hulton then summoned the 15th Hussars to disperse the crowd. They charged with sabres drawn, and contemporary accounts estimated that between nine and seventeen people were killed and 400 to 700 injured in the ensuing confusion. The event was first labelled the "Peterloo massacre" by the radical Manchester Observer newspaper in a bitterly ironic reference to the bloody Battle of Waterloo which had taken place four years earlier. Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre "the bloodiest political event of the 19th century in English soil", and "a political earthquake in the northern powerhouse of the industrial revolution". The London and national papers shared the horror felt in the Manchester region, but Peterloo's immediate effect was to cause the Tory government under Lord Liverpool to pass the Six Acts, which were aimed at suppressing any meetings for the purpose of radical reform. It also led indirectly to the foundation of The Manchester Guardian newspaper. In a survey conducted by The Guardian (the modern iteration of The Manchester Guardian) in 2006, Peterloo came second to the Putney Debates as the event from radical British history that most deserved a proper monument or a memorial. For some time, Peterloo was commemorated only by a blue plaque, criticised as being inadequate and referring only to the "dispersal by the military" of an assembly. In 2007, the city council replaced the blue plaque with a red plaque referring to "a peaceful rally" being "attacked by armed cavalry" and mentioning "15 deaths and over 600 injuries". In 2019, on the 200th anniversary of the massacre, Manchester City Council inaugurated a new Peterloo Memorial by the artist Jeremy Deller, featuring eleven concentric circles of local stone engraved with the names of the dead and the places from which the victims came.

Peterloo Memorial

The Peterloo Memorial is a memorial in Manchester, England, commemorating the Peterloo Massacre. It is sited close to the site of the massacre and was unveiled on 14 August 2019.

Midland Hotel, Manchester

The Midland Hotel is a grand hotel in Manchester, England. Opened in 1903, it was built by the Midland Railway to serve Manchester Central railway station, its northern terminus for its rail services to London St Pancras. It faces onto St Peter's Square. The hotel was designed by Charles Trubshaw in Edwardian Baroque style and is a Grade II* listed building.

Intercontinental Tower, Manchester

The Intercontinental Tower, Manchester is a cancelled landmark skyscraper that was proposed in Manchester city centre, England. The building would have been a five-star luxury hotel run by InterContinental Hotels Group, and developed by Northern Irish development firm, Benmore. The skyscraper was proposed in a press release by developer Benmore in May 2009 and discussed with Manchester City Council in summer 2009. In 2010, the tower was part of the city council's preliminary plans to regenerate the surrounding civic quarter, and opposition to building a skyscraper in the heart of its historic district had been minimal. The tower would have featured a helipad and two decorative spires, much like the Willis Tower in Chicago, which would have taken its pinnacle height to approximately 200 m (660 ft), 30 m taller than Greater Manchester's tallest skyscraper at the time, the Beetham Tower. The plans for the 48-storey tower were drawn up before the Great Recession but were abandoned when the financial market crashed. Planning negotiations resumed and architect Roger Stephenson designed a 25-storey tower to contain 270 hotel rooms and a presidential suite at the top. The theatre façade was to be retained to become the entrance to the hotel foyer. The structure was intended to be created behind the theatre's façade.

Manchester Central Convention Complex

Manchester Central Convention Complex (commonly known as Manchester Central and formerly GMEX (Greater Manchester Exhibition Centre)) is an exhibition and conference centre converted from the former Manchester Central railway station in Manchester, England. The building has a distinctive arched roof with a span of 64 metres (210 ft) – the second-largest railway station roof span in the United Kingdom, and was granted Grade II* listed building status in 1963. After 89 years as a railway terminus, it closed to passengers in May 1969. It was renovated as an exhibition centre formerly known as the G-Mex Centre in 1982 and was Manchester's primary music concert venue until the construction of the Manchester Arena. After renovation the venue reverted to its former name Manchester Central in 2007. From April 2020 until March 2021, the complex became a temporary field hospital for non-critical COVID-19 patients, part of a network of temporary NHS Nightingale Hospitals.