I did some work for a committee which wa set up to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Peterloo just before I moved down to London - one of the songs I found is above (twice for some reason)
While I was researching I was staggered at the number of songs being written at the time of the events - Manchester Central Library had aa large collection of Chartist Newspapers on Microfilm and many of them had regular columns of songs sent in by the workers
I've come to the conclusion that those songs alongside those in Terry Moylan's massive 'Indignant Muse', the local songs we recorded in Clare and the Traveller-made ones are a strong indication that working people, far from being 'too busy earning a living', were instinctive poets and song makers who found it necessary to capture their experiences in verse, which makes their compositions and important addition to our history and self-knowldge
They weren't by any means 'deathless verse', but many of them carried information that would have otherwise have been lost

I must say that I was more than a little stunned by Mike Leigh's depiction of Henry Hunt as a pig-headed self promoter and his brutal treatment of Sam Bamford - must read Joyce Marlowe's book again
Jim Carroll