The Gordon Riots Revisited

The 1780 protests against the Catholic Relief Act were the most violent and controversial disturbances of the eighteenth century and have predictably given rise to several historical interpretations. Early studies sought to emphasize the political immaturity and deep sectarian prejudices of the common people and the anarchy and degenerate character of the riots themselves. By contrast, George Rude, in his first exploration of British crowds, insisted that the riots were more orderly and purposive than historians had assumed. Set within the context of the emergent radical movement, the riots, according to Rude, drew their inspiration from radical elements in London's Protestant Association and from antiauthoritarian notions of the “Englishman's birthright.” Directed initially against Catholic chapels and schools, the disturbances developed into a social protest against the rich and propertied. This essay adopts a different approach. Like Rude, it endorses the view that the riots seldom deviated from the cue of the Protestant Association. Despite the drunkeness and almost festive air which accompanied the disturbances, the riots constituted a disciplined reprisal against the Catholic community and a Parliament that refused to bow before popular pressure. Indeed, the pattern of violence reveals that rioters acted discriminately, directing their anger at Catholic chapels, houses, and schools and at the property of those sympathetic to Catholic relief. Only with the sacking of the gaols and distilleries did the disturbances deviate from their original objective and, even then, the degree of looting and lawlessness can be easily exaggerated. At the same time, the Gordon riots cannot be categorically viewed as a social protest against the rich. Although the targets of the crowd included a disproportionate number of prominent Catholics and parliamentary supporters of the Relief Act, the prime aim of the rioters was to immobilize the Catholic community and to intimidate Parliament. To be sure, elements of social protest did accompany the disturbances. In the carnivalesque freedom of the occasion participants sometimes showed a sardonic disrespect for rank. Moreover, the opening of the gaols, initially to rescue imprisoned rioters, denoted an almost Brechtian contempt for the prison system and the law in general. In the final phases of the riot, however, the social hostilities of the crowd were essentially local and concrete, directed against crimps, debtors' lockups, and toll bridges. That is, they addressed the customary oppressions of the poor, not a generalised form of social levelling. Nor were the riots closely associated with radical politics. Although some London radicals sympathised with the protesters in the initial stages of the disturbances, others, influenced by Enlightenment ideas, clearly did not. In fact, many were deeply troubled by the riots, fearing their excesses would prejudice popular movements in general. Basically the protests against the Catholic Relief Bill cut across traditional political alignments. Ideologically the Protestant Association was remarkably protean, drawing support from proministerial, but evangelical, conservatives as well as from radicals troubled by ministerial incursions upon liberty in Britain and America. Ultimately the anti-Catholic protests of 1780 pitted a cosmopolitan social elite against a more traditional rank and file fuelled by an evangelical fear of an incipient Catholic revival. In sum, the Gordon riots drew upon populist, nationalist sentiments that did not square with conventional political alignments. It remained to be seen how these forces could be accomodated in contemporary political discourse.

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