Mike Sanders, Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature & Culture at the University of Manchester and a member of the Society’s executive committee, delivered his inaugural professorial lecture at the John Rylands Library on Wednesday 31 May. The lecture was titled ‘Singing Sweet Liberty’: John Stafford and the creation of radical memory from Luddism to Chartism.

The lecture explored the role played by song in creating and disseminating radical memory in the first half of the nineteenth century, focusing on the songs composed by John Stafford, an illiterate radical who participated in every major working-class campaign from Luddism to Chartism. It argued that through their combination of words and tunes, Stafford’s songs actively created, rather than merely recording, popular history.

Jennifer Reid, Lancashire’s finest Broadside Balladress and star of the TV drama The Gallows Pole, performed a number of Stafford’s songs as part of the lecture.