The Masque of Anarchy a Man", the character played by Jeff Hordley, Stan Keaton, quotes the last verse in its entirety whilst standing outside the Aidensfield Arms with his fellow sacked workers. The Masque of Anarchy "The Masque of Anarchy" (or "The Mask of Anarchy") is a British political poem written in 1819 (see 1819 in poetry) by Percy Bysshe Shelley following the Peterloo massacre of that year. In his call for freedom, it is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent resistance. The poem was not published during Shelley's lifetime and did not appear in print until 1832 (see 1832
James Wroe was the first journalist to describe the incident as the Peterloo massacre, taking his headline from the Battle of Waterloo that had taken place only four years before. Wroe subsequently wrote pamphlets entitled "The Peterloo Massacre: A Faithful Narrative of the Events". Priced at 2d each, they sold out each print run for 14 weeks, having a large national circulation. The government instigated repeated prosecutions of the "Manchester Observer" and those associated with it. Vendors of the "Manchester Observer" were prosecuted for seditious libel, and a total of fifteen charges of seditious libel were brought against Wroe, his wife and