Town hall chiefs give green light to memorial for Peterloo victims
A MEMORIAL commemorating the Peterloo Massacre will be built outside Manchester Central convention centre after it won the backing of the town hall’s planning committee – with some tweaks to the original design to make it more accessible to wheelchair users.
A decade-long campaign saw Turner Prize-winning architect Jeremy Deller commissioned to create a tribute ahead of the 200th anniversary this year.
His design shows a landscaped ‘hill’ made up of steps carved with the names and villages of the massacre’s victims.
In an alteration to the original plan, the lower step will now be widened so people using wheelchairs or those with other mobility issues can access it.
One objector said that if the designs hadn’t become more accessible, the memorial risked being an international ‘embarrassment.’ The adapted design was approved by Manchester’s planning committee, and council officers are hoping it will be in place by the anniversary in August - although they admit that timescale will be ‘challenging.’
Each step on the memorial will be made from materials from around the UK and will include motifs that recall Lancashire industrial heritage, as well as iconography related to revolutionary movements.
The ‘hill’ will also be accompanied by a second flat circle that will be accessible for those who can’t reach the top of the main memorial.
Both aspects are intended to look like a compass, locating places in Manchester and the wider world.
Councillors stressed the need to have information boards so that visitors understand the significance of the massacre.
Coun Ben Clay said: “It’s not just national significance – it’s world significance. This needs to be a memorial for the many not the few. It is really important that we include some form of display board to tell the story of Peterloo for people that visit and need to understand the significance of our democracy and our politics.”
Coun Gavin White said that the recently-added Emmeline Pankhurst statue in St Peter’s Square had been a focal point for education about the suffragette movement and said the Peterloo memorial could play a similar role in informing youngsters about the massacre’s role in parliamentary reform.
On August 16, 1819, local government forces charged a crowd of 60,000 people gathered to listen to anti-poverty and pro-democracy speeches at a peaceful rally, near where St Peter’s Square is today.
The order was given as orator Henry Hunt was making an address from the podium.
The marchers had come from as far afield as Wigan, Rochdale, Saddleworth and Altrincham to call for parliamentary representation. An artist’s impression of what the memorial will look like