Peterloo: 200 years ago today

It is 200 years ago today since the Peterloo Massacre in St Peters Fields in Manchester when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000 to 80,000 who were demanding political reform. 18 died, including 4 women, and hundreds were injured. 

As this was only four years after the Battle of Waterloo, the event was sarcastically referred to as Peterloo. John Lees, a cloth worker from Oldham who died from his wounds on 9 September, had been present at the Battle of Waterloo. Shortly before his death he told a friend that he had never been in such danger as at Peterloo: "At Waterloo there was man to man, but there it was downright murder."

How far have we progressed since then? While the Peterloo Massacre has been called one of the defining moments of its age, the Miners' Strike of 1984-1985 showed that official attitudes to ordinary people standing up for themselves haven't changed significantly, demonstrated by the prime minister in the 1980s describing trade unions as "the enemy within".

2nd A-bomb dropped - but not the last.

At 3:49 am on the morning of August 9, 1945, the crew of the Bockscar, a United States Army Air Forces plane set off. It carried the 'Fat Man' atomic bomb towards its primary target, the city of Kokura in Japan. Clouds and smoke obscured Kokura so the Bockscar headed for its second target, the city of Nagasaki. At 11.01 am the target was sighted and the Fat Man bomb was dropped.

The bomb was devastating. 22% of Nagasaki’s buildings were consumed by flames. The death toll and destruction was less than in Hiroshima because of Nagasaki's hilly geography, but as many as 50,000 to 100,000 died instantly and others died slowly and agonisingly as a result of burns and radiation. A staggering 340,000 were killed by the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The bomb on Nagasaki won't be the last unless nuclear bombs are eradicated. That's why CND campaigns tirelessly to see them abolished, so the world can be free from the fear of nuclear annihilation.

There is hope. The international momentum behind the UN's nuclear ban treaty is enormous. We must do all we can to support these efforts and to strengthen the consensus against Trident here in Britain.

Find out more about how CND has marked the 74th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.