From the #PeterlooMassacre to the #miners’ #strike, the state has always pointed its guns and batons at the working class, not the ruling class. That’s not history, that’s policy - class war isn’t coming, it’s here.

#SocialistSunday

#PublicArt. This is the best term for it, not statues or street art, because the public is involved, so you know you gotta think about the public response - intended and incidental - as well as the artist's intention.

Older public art is particularly interesting because of change. Mostly - but not always - the artist's intentions don't change over time, but the public's reaction certainly does.

#TrafalgarSquare is a good example. It was built 180 years ago or so. Later than you might think, but earlier than I expected. It commemorates a naval battle of the #NapoleonicWars, but it wasn't originally going to - they were going to call it #WilliamIV Square or something. The theme changed from #royalism to #militarism, but that change isn't visible in the statues.

After 1815 and before about 1880, the #BritishEmpire was mainly #India, the #WestIndies, #Ireland, and an archipelago of #navy bases dotted around the world. The #UnitedKingdom was figuring out how to deal with its #democratic deficit, so there were a series of reactionary governments that paradoxically passed #ReformBills to extend the franchise. There were #labour riots, and an #industrial boom, and huge cities - particularly #London, but also #Manchester, #Birmingham, #Liverpool, #Belfast - growing like galloping weeds over the countryside. This was #Dickens 's England. This was the time of #TheMakingOfTheEnglishWorkingClass.

So what did they mean at the time by building Trafalgar Square? It has #propaganda value. Lord #Nelson was a controversial figure in his own time, but I can imagine the Duke of #Wellington trying to link his own political fortunes to a safely-dead hero in the 1830s. The square was built with #parliamentary approval and funding, and with quite a lot of public subscription too - though what a 'public' means in that context isn't obvious. Probably wealthy #industrialists, the #techbros of the age, but I'm guessing.

Since it was built, more - but much smaller - naval commemorations have been added. So its original goals weren't forgotten, but extended - artist intentionality changing over time.

The #Suffragettes used Trafalgar Square extensively for protests. I think we can reasonably link their use of the square to the original political use of the square. It was built in an era of Reform Bills that didn't reform the vote for #women. They could hardly do better than to make their protest clear in a space which modeled the thing they were protesting about - a powerful, militarist, partly-democratic England that didn't include women.

#Labour also used Trafalgar Square for protests. One of my favourite photos is of #KeirHardy - the Keir who the current prime minister is named for - speaking from the base of #NelsonsColumn in 1908. You have to know about it, but Trafalgar Square is a labour monument.

And to this day, Trafalgar Square is a traditional rally point for demonstrations and protests. No important London protest or demo happens without going through Trafalgar Square.

This use of their commemorative art would be totally alien to people who funded its construction. They're more likely to have been the backers of the #PeterlooMassacre.

The square was famously sandbagged during the Second World War, to preserve it from being damaged, and I gather many Londoners at the time considered that to be symbolic of resistance and survival. So the art became invisible to the public, but people were still aware of it.

These days, Trafalgar Square is a landmark of London, in many ways as iconic and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. That might please its builders, but probably wasn't what they expected. It's also a rendezvous point, with its tube station and its buses. A gathering place. It hosts incidental modern art on the famous empty plinth.

Public art is inspirational. This is just Trafalgar Square - all the things I've seen give me the shivers when I think about how much embattled history is locked up in stone and bronze, under which people eat sandwiches, kiss lovers, wave placards, make speeches, and which get periodic paint douses, get stood on, relabeled and reinterpreted, dressed up and eventually pulled down.

Another time I'll write about other public art I've seen. #StPetersburg and #Moscow are rather heavy on such art, but there is so much important stuff to say about it.

Today is the 250th birthday of Henry Hunt, the Radical orator arrested in 1819 at the Manchester rally now known as Peterloo. He was tried for Conspiracy to Excite Terror and Rioting (in reality, it was the soldiers who rioted) and jailed for 30 months, but served as Preston's MP from 1830 to 1832. While in Parliament, he was ridiculed by fellow MPs for presenting a petition for women to be given the vote.
#HenryHunt #RadicalHistory #ParliamentaryHistory #Peterloo #PeterlooMassacre #Democracy

This is a good read about the area I live in. I was involved in some of the protests.

"Chainsaws, disguises and toxic tea: the battle for Sheffield’s trees"

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/24/chainsaws-disguises-and-toxic-tea-the-battle-for-sheffield-trees

#sheffield #sheffieldtrees #environmentalActivism #activism #trees #TreesOfFediverse #TreesMakeAir #treesOfSheffield #sheffieldCouncil #amey #southYorkshirePolice #meersbrook #rustlingsRoad #PeterlooMassacre #peterloo #sheffieldTreeScandal

On #ThisDayInHistory in 1819 in #Manchester the #PeterlooMassacre took place. At a rally to demand the vote (Manchester had no-one in parliament) cavalry charged the crowd, killing 18 and injuring over 500. The event fed the #Chartist movement and the creation of labour #unions.

#peterloomassacre

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.

Happy birthday, Percy Bysshe Shelley! Born on this day in 1792, Shelley wrote the Mask (or Masque) of Anarchy, a scathing satire on the hypocrisy of the English government and a call for true democracy, in 1819, after news of the Peterloo Massacre reached him in Italy.
#Shelley #PercyByssheShelley #RomanticPoetry #Peterloo #PeterlooMassacre #Democracy

#PeterlooMassacre took place at Manchester, on Monday 16 August 1819. Fifteen people died when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.

Details below:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre
/4