English Language and Literature Commons^™

Preventing Revolution: Cato Street, Bonnymuir, And Cathkin, John Gardner

Studies in Scottish Literature

Argues, from a range of evidence including popular poetry and woodcuts, that popular risings in 1820 in Scotland, England, and Ireland were produced as a coordinated strategy by central government in the aftermath of Peterloo to instigate (through agents provocateurs) local popular uprisings and then brutally suppress them, with show trials and public executions, in order to deter or forestall larger social unrest or revolution.