In
1795 local militia fired on a crowd in Sheffield, killing two people
and injuring many others: this is the earliest example mentioned in
an exhibition at the city’s Weston Park Museum. In 1819 fifty
thousand attended a meeting to show solidarity with the victims of
the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, while in 1840 Samuel Holberry
attempted to organise a Chartist uprising in Sheffield, but he was
betrayed to the authorities and imprisoned; a bust of him is
displayed.
And
so the protests and struggles continued, from the Sheffield Women’s
Suffrage Society (formed 1882) to the gay-rights campaigning of local
resident Edward Carpenter. In the last century Sheffield and
surrounding areas played an important role in the fight for access to
the countryside; G.H.B. Ward, one of the main organisers, referred to
the ‘gentle art of trespassing’. The miners’ strike of the
1980s naturally gets a lot of attention, but so does a less
well-known but even longer-lasting strike, at the Keeton engineering
firm from 1986 to 1994 (38 workers were sacked after a secret strike
ballot).
More
recent protests covered here include current campaigns against the
council’s tree-felling policy, and anti-Trump posters, one of which
announces, ‘Gi ’Oer Tha Gret Wazzock’ (wazzock is a
dialect term with a pejorative meaning).
At
the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield city centre is an exhibition
‘Hope Is Strong’, which is claimed to explore ‘the power of art
to question the world we live in’. Sean Scully’s ‘Ghost’ is a
painting of the US flag, with the stars replaced by a gun. The most
powerful piece here is Jeremy Deller’s installation ‘The Battle
of Orgreave’, dealing with the most notorious confrontation of the
miners’ strike, and making it quite clear how the government had it
in for the miners and their union.
PB
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