‘Rioters’

By Harry Riley

The Moon Inn, Eastwood, October 1817

“We four meet each week sniping and complaining like old women while others are working for the cause. I say we join Captain Brandreth and the Derbyshire men on the Nottingham march. There’ll be hundreds more, ready to join them in the town centre and we should be part of it.”

“It’s all right for you to talk Tom Pearce, you’re a single man with no ties but I have a wife and three kids to support.”

“All the more reason to fight for what you believe in Bill Kirtley. It’s time they gave the working-man the vote instead of forcing wages below poverty level and making us scratch about like animals for a living.

Last week they drove old Benny Simkins out on the street and killed his pig and all because he asked his skinflint-money-grabbing landlord to fix his rotten roof. God knows he had precious little to call his own. So what if we do get topped or end up in clink, it’ll be no worse than being lowered down pit on the end of a rope. I’m sick of living on nowt.”

“Ha, but I’ve heard they’ll call out the soldiers to stop them. They can’t afford to let them get to Nottingham, Tom.”

“Arthur, you’re a nervous jellylegs. Our betters won’t have it all their own way; we have young Lord Byron to speak up for us now. There’s talk that one day we’ll have a Charter with every working-man over twenty one getting the right to vote.”

“I’m with Tom, It can’t go on, I’ve been living off stale bread and rotten potatoes for months now and it’s getting worse, bosses think they can walk all over us.

“Thanks Frank, now what about you two?”

The other two men reluctantly agreed to join the venture.

“Good, because there’s somebody at the bar I want you to meet. He’s a pal I used to knock around with as a kid when we both lived at Wilford.

A shabbily dressed, dark bearded man in his early thirties brought his pint of black-and-tan to their corner table and after furtively looking around sat down on an empty seat.