دانلود کتاب زنان رادیکال، اصلاح طلب و انقلابی غیرقابل کنترل

On the evening of Monday, 16 August 1819 a woman was arrested outside Mr Tate’s grocer’s shop on Oldham Road in Manchester. It had been a long and terrifying day and in the warm summer evening tempers were still running high. Mr Tate had got hold of a flag belonging to the Female Reformers of Manchester, which had been taken as a trophy from St Peter’s Field, and it was now hanging in an upstairs window. A crowd of women and youths had gathered to protest and throw stones, and soldiers were trying to disperse them. The woman who was arrested was furiously angry and did not care who knew it. Perhaps she had friends who had been killed or injured by the troops’ charge into the crowd of unarmed demonstrators that afternoon. Perhaps she herself had narrowly missed being trampled under the feet of the horses or crushed by the falling masonry of collapsing walls as people tried to escape. She may have been part of the group of workers who were attacked by mounted soldiers as they left a nearby mill that evening. She had probably had a drink or two, but she may also simply have been driven by pent-up rage and despair, and the fear of being shot by trigger-happy soldiers.