Sean Cooney 2025
Part of Peter’s Field folk opera about the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. 60,000 people walked peacefully many miles from across Lancashire and further afield to attend a mass meeting in the centre of Manchester to advocate for parliamentary reform at a time when only a tiny proportion of people had the vote. They were to be addressed by the famous radical speaker Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt. Local magistrates sent in soldiers to disperse the unarmed crowd and aid the arrest of the speakers. At least 18 people were killed and hundreds injured and assaulted. The magistrates and military were completely exonerated and only recently have the victims of Peterloo been properly commemorated.
Sean Cooney: Radical Rags
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpQlTiOZqXc
Jesus was a working man he threw the merchants out and he said there’ll be a banquet, boys, for all those who have doubt ‘Cause no camel can through a needle get, quicker than any rich man But if any camel heard just what we’ve [et], then [I] might say it can Help the poor, big Jesus swore, and all your mates may wag He said share your homes and all you own, and dance in your radical rags Big John Ball he spoke to all from hedge and field and lane When he said “God made us equal”, boys, then he got sent to jail Well the men of Kent to London went in 1381 And when the king agreed to concede they must’ve thought it won ‘Til Big John Ball got hung and drawn and fifteen hundred [stag] But now’s the time to sing his rhyme and dance in your radical rags Winstanley he said to me, property’s a rig. So he took his spade to St. George Hill and he began to dig Well the year was 1649 the earth was theirs to share But the thugs they came and beat him there and squashed him like a prayer But in the room of reason where there’s none that can get [scrag] Winstanley’s spade got up and played, dance in your radical rags So Old Tom Paine he took the reins and he began to sing My own mind is my own church [and then he be more king] Well an outlaw in his native land he fired like a [tench] When he went to France and won the vote even though he never spoke French And when he died, his bones got dug and carried in [covered sbag] And from inside his old bones cried, dance in your radical rags ‘Cause it’s plain we were and plain we are and plain we will remain Until this Norman yoke gets broke and we are freed from chains Where e’er they march for liberty, we’ll be at the front So now we’re off to Manchester to hear big Henry Hunt And when he takes off his white hat and waves it like a flag With ball and [pain] we’ll rise again and dance in our radical rags