In our continuing series on places in labour history, Keith Flett revisits the contested site of the Peterloo Massacre.

The Manchester Free Trade Hall was built on the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, its address being Peter Street.

Constructed on land given by Richard Cobden it was designed to mark the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and was completed in 1856. While the price of bread was an issue at Peterloo, the construction of the Free Trade Hall marked a successful attempt by the Anti-Corn Law League and what was to become the Liberal Party in 1859 to put their politics firmly to the fore. That is a more middle than working-class radicalism.

I attended left-wing trade union conferences at the Free Trade Hall in the 1980s, but despite its Grade II listing, the building was sold and since 2004 has been a Radisson Hotel.

The façade of the building was maintained together with some key internal features and a plaque commemorating Peterloo is fixed to the outside of the building.

As a delegate to the 150^th TUC in 2018 I stayed in the hotel. It was distinctly odd to find meeting rooms with names like Henry Hunt and perhaps even odder to think that one was sleeping in a hotel room on the site of the Peterloo Massacre.

It was not, I’m sure, what was in the minds of those who gathered there on that Manchester Monday 16 August 1819. Just as the Anti-Corn Law League put their stamp on the memory of the event, so now has private capital.

Keith Flett is a Convenor of the London Socialist Historians Group.

Read more articles in the series ‘A Place in Labour History’.

The Society for the Study of Labour History’s archives and resources committee has created a free resource pack and guide to sources on the Peterloo massacre.