Would the Peterloo marchers be satisfied with today's Britain?

200 years ago, a crowd of people seeking political change became victims of a massacre. Are their issues now our issues?

At 8am on 16 August 1819, a bugle sounded at Barrowfields in Middleton, a town six miles north of Manchester. A crowd of 3,000 fell silent as Samuel Bamford, a radical reformer, poet and weaver, climbed on a chair to speak. They were, he bellowed, about to embark on "the most important meeting that had ever been held for parliamentary reform".

There was to be no silly business. No sticks, no weapons, no back-chat. He admired their attire, "not even one who did not exhibit a white Sunday's shirt". Their conduct was to be "marked by a steadiness and seriousness befitting the occasion", Bamford later recalled, casting shame upon their enemies, "who had always represented the reformers as a mob-like rabble".