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→Key Characters
Joseph Peake: A fictional character, he is a veteran of Waterloo, where the movie begins by showing him having suffered PTSD after fighting for the government against Napolean. He returns to Manchester distraught by events of the war and having few or little options in England after the war. He becomes radicalized and joins the movement against the government by 1819.
Lord Sidmouth: He is the Home Secretary who is depicted as someone who ran something akin to the Gestapo, controlling a network of spies and others who were eager to stamp out any possible agitation for rebellion or reform. He even uses the event of a potato thrown at the Prince Regent as an excuse to say that there was an assassination attempt against the Prince, justifying greater oppression of rights.
Prince Regent (George IV): An overweight spoiled child who effectively became the monarch of Great Britain as his ailing father (George III) increasingly went mad. He is shown as a humorous but uncaring figure. Ultimately, he was more interested in women and socializing then government, with most of the governing tasks given to Lord Liverpool.
Lord Liverpool: The Prime Minister who ruled during the end of the Napoleonic wars and who had to oversee the rise of discontent after the wars. Lord Liverpool was known for banning the slave trade and emancipating Catholics, who were repressed in England. However, he presided over increasingly austere government towards the working poor, limiting their collective power to strike and gather.
==Wider Impact of the Film==
In many ways, the film seems to be about events that most people don't remember today. However, the filmmakers try to show the parallels today, where left-wing opposition to greater social inequality and increased populism as agitators try to push the government to reform. The long road to eventually greater freedoms are depicted as having been bathed in blood and many years of unsuccessful protests that only succeeded with perseverance and small victories such as the founding the <i> Guardian</i>. Ultimately the movie is a critique of how wealth and powerful classes pass legislation and manipulate government to keep power concentrated with them, while also using the poorer classes to fight their wars and power industry. The film does generally show key events in a historically accurate manner, although historians still debate the true impact of Peterloo on British democracy. Many other repressive laws and events continued to occur long after Peterloo and, in fact, probably represents a beginning of several decades of agitation that slowly faded as the 19th century continued with gradually increasing freedoms given to lower classes and greater benefits given through improved worker laws and rights such as the right to gather and protest.
==References==
