Due to the ongoing social distancing restrictions, the Society’s current season of monthly Monday evening talks will initially be delivered online from our website and may be subject to change.

This Month’s Talk: Alan Brooke — Peterloo: The Aftermath in West Yorkshire

This talk covers the period of the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre in West Yorkshire and looks at how the event intensified political tensions and polarised opinions, leading to intensified repression by the government and the driving underground of the movement for radical reform of parliament. It also describes some of the social and economic problems affecting textile workers and miners that increased fears of growing class conflict linked to political discontent. The account ends on the eve of the uprising of 1820.

Alan Brooke is author, along with Lesley Kipling, of Liberty or Death – Radicals, Republicans and Luddites in the Huddersfield Area, published by Huddersfield Local History Society (2012). He has written several booklets on aspects of local working class life, including accounts of miners and hand-loom weavers. He is a former miner who worked at Emley Moor Colliery and a retired archaeologist. His website is Underground Histories.

Alan recorded this audio talk at his home near Honley. The online video presentation includes a small number of maps.

If you’re not currently a member of the Society and have enjoyed this talk, you can find details of joining here.

You may wish to subscribe to our new YouTube channel. The subtitles for this talk were generated automatically by YouTube and may contain the occasional spelling or conversion error.

Podcast

Alan’s talk can also be listened to online or downloaded as an audio podcast.

Download options:

2020/21 Season

28 Sep 2020 — ‘The town that bought itself’? New light on 1920 — Edward Royle
28 Sep 2020 — Peterloo: The Aftermath in West Yorkshire. Prelude to Insurrection August 1819-March 1820 — Alan Brooke
30 Nov 2020 — ‘Wools for the World’ in Railway Street — Barbara Smith.
18 Dec 2020 — ‘People who talk Edgerton’? James R. Gregson and the Huddersfield Thespians — Christine Verguson.
25 Jan 2021 — Highfields: ‘a most handsome’ suburb — David Griffiths.
22 Feb 2021 — The Holme Valley in the Middle Ages — Peter Burton.
29 Mar 2021 — Telling Their Stories: ‘Shell-Shocked’ Ex-servicemen in Storthes Hall Mental Hospital, 1924-1931 — Alice Brumby.
26 Apr 2021 — Annual Luddite Memorial Lecture: Radicalism in the West Riding 1790 to 1890 — Edward Royle.
24 May 2021 — Medieval Almondbury and Kirkburton — Patricia Callum.

Edwward Royle — ‘The town that bought itself’? New light on 1920

To look back at previous seasons, click here.

For details of all upcoming events, including those by other local societies, please see the Upcoming Events Calendar.