Kelly Message in Leigh film will resonate

bread unaffordable. Provocative banners like ‘Reform’, ‘universal suffrage’, ‘equal representation’ and, er, ‘love’, made the powers-that-be uneasy.

The speakers and organisers were put on trial, at first under the charge of high treason – a charge that was reluctantly dropped by the prosecution.

The Hussars and those ‘who kept order’ received a message of congratulations from the Prince Regent, and were cleared of any wrong-doing by the official inquiry.

Peterloo was hugely influential in winning the vote for ordinary people; it led to the rise of the Chartist Movement from which grew the Trade Unions. A businessman who saw the massacre launched the Manchester Guardian newspaper – now the Guardian – in response.

Is it just a coincidence how films seem to reflect or mirror the age they are made in?

Of late we’ve had Dunkirk, viewed by some as an allegory about Brexit, because it’s a story of plucky Brits getting out of Europe against all the odds (whilst ignoring the disaster bit).

Now Peterloo, a story about a marginalised and ignored part of society beginning to get their voices heard.

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, then living in Italy, was inspired to write “The Mask of Anarchy”, when he learned of it. He had a pop at, among others, Lord Eldon who as lord chan- cellor, played a key role in drafting Acts to gag newspapers, prevent public meetings, and restrict freedom of speech after Peterloo.

He was from Newcastle and was the subject of one of the city’s most romantic tales, his elopement with Bessie Surtees.

The poem finishes: ‘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.’

Two hundreds years later it’s a message that continues to reverberate. So much so, it might not just be the opportunity for work that benefits people in the North when Peterloo is made. Film director Mike Leigh