For #ExplorePeterloo Week, we have partnered with The People's History Museum for a series of events surrounding the Peterloo massacre of 1819.

Tom Branfoot, our writer-in-residence, has penned a poem titled 'You Are Here' considering the contemporary resonances of the events of August 16th 1819.

You Are Here

Sun a burnished finial

searing a swinish

multitude of clouds. Skyscrapers

dominate their grey horizon,

financial sabres.

You are here. At the massacre site.

Green vales down which workers

marched – from Prestwich,

Rochdale, Bury

– long developed.

Concrete fields sweeping

constituencies, rivers

rise like bills in August’s great confusion.

And though the drunken

yeomen gone to dust

abandoned mills spun

with spider webs, our rebel tongues

and wounded hearts will not rest,

we are not free

until none is oppressed.