Riot!

Across roughly two centuries, Ian Hernon follows the disorder that has repeatedly broken out on the British mainland, seen through the eyes of a reporter who gives space to the people who took part. The book begins with the Peterloo killings and moves forward to the drug-related street violence of recent years, arguing that this record of unrest has been largely overlooked.

Hernon contends that protest, sometimes at a cost and sometimes to good effect, helped shape the parliamentary democracy Britain now has, along with the welfare state, the trade unions, protections for immigrants and civil liberties. He suggests that several of these gains are now under pressure. The narrative traces how local workplace disputes grew into a national push for electoral reform and justice, how harsh policing often hardened rather than ended unrest, and how unions fought for broader social fairness.

The later chapters cover the Thatcher years, when a sweeping reversal of earlier reforms set off widespread turmoil, and the part played by one riot in bringing about her fall. The book closes with the anti-globalisation movement and the G8 protests, and makes the case that street disorder has often moved society further than formal debate in Parliament.