"By the Law or the Sword."

January 2019

It's not like it's every day: Chris has been announed as a speaker to the Radical Readings event organised by the university of Salford - university where he has studied when he was younger and where he had gotten a Master of Arts certificate - among other personalities like Julie Hesmondhalgh (Coronation Street, Broadchurch, Doctor Who) and Maxine Peake (Linda Green, Black Mirror, Hamlet, Miss Julie).

What is Radical Readings?

The Radical Readings is an event created by the Working Class Movement Library of the university of Salford. Every year, speakers, personalities from this particular class, gather in Salford on a given date and they read poignant texts on a chosen topic and discuss about it afterwards.

This is the fourth year this event, created in 2015, happens in Salford, and the second time Chris is announced as a speaker. 2019 will be all about Peterloo as the title shows: Those who were there - the people at Peterloo have their say. He and the other guests (Julie Hesmondhalgh, Mike Joyce, Nico Mirallegro and Maxine Peake) will read accounts from actual witnesses about this terrible event.

The Radical Readings event of 2019 will occur in the Maxwell Hall of the Salford university on the 14 of April between 2 and 4pm.

What is Peterloo?

Peterloo is the name we give to a awfully bloody event that happened in 1819: the attack of the cavalry on the millions of persons that were doing a peaceful march to protest against the hard living conditions after the end of the Napoleonic wars that led to starvation and unemployement aggravated by the Corn Laws regulating the imports of cereals. This march was organised on the 16 of August on Saint Peter's Fields in Manchester and the attack caused 15 deaths and 650 wounded persons.

We've seen it already, it's not the first time that Chris and Maxine Peake are involved in Peterloo's commemorations and this time again, they're present to speak in the names of those victims who deserve justice, even 200 years after the events.

xxx

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