The Gordon Riots

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most destructive riots in London’s history, which reached their peak on 7th June 1780 as troops fired on the crowd outside the Bank of England. The leader was Lord George Gordon, head of the Protestant Association, who objected to the relaxing of laws against Catholics. At first the protest outside Parliament was peaceful but, when Gordon’s petition failed to persuade the Commons, rioting continued for days until the military started to shoot suspects in the street. It came as Britain was losing the war to hold on to colonies in North America.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Ian Haywood No other episodes
  Professor of English at the University of Roehampton
• Catriona Kennedy 2 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Modern British and Irish History and Director of the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York
• Mark Knights 3 episodes
  Professor of History at the University of Warwick

Reading list

• Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714-80: A Political and Social Study
  Colin Haydon (Manchester University Press, 1993) Google Books →
• The Gordon Riots. Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth Century Britain
  Ian Haywood and John Seed (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Google Books →
• King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the London Riots of 1780
  Christopher Hibbert (Longman, 1958) Google Books →
• London Lives: Poverty, Crime, and the Making of a Modern City, 1690-1800
  Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker (Cambridge University Press, 2015) Google Books →
• Pressure and Parliament: From Civil War to Civil Society
  Richard Huzzey (ed.) (John Wiley, 2018) Google Books →
• Representations of Revolution 1789-1820
  Ronald Paulson (Yale University Press, 1983) Google Books →
• Riotous Assemblies: Popular Protest in Hanoverian England
  Adrian Randall (Oxford University Press, 2006) Google Books →
• Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain
  Nicholas Rogers (Clarendon Press, 1998) Google Books →
• Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century: Studies in Popular Protest
  George Rude (Penguin Books, 1973) Google Books →
• The Crowd in History
  George Rude (Serif, 2005) Google Books →
• Popular Disturbances in England 1700-1870
  John Stevenson (Routledge, 1992) Google Books →
• The Making of the English Working Class
  E. P. Thompson (Penguin, 2013) Google Books →

Related episodes

• The Morant Bay Rebellion
  
  3 Nov, 2022 970 History of North America
• The Fire of London
  
  11 Dec, 2008 940 History of Europe
• 1848: Year of Revolution
  
  19 Jan, 2012 900 History
• The Peasants’ Revolt
  
  16 Nov, 2006 940 History of Europe
• The Irish Rebellion of 1798
  
  8 Dec, 2022 940 History of Europe
• The French Revolution’s reign of terror
  
  26 May, 2005 940 History of Europe
• The Peterloo Massacre
  
  15 Dec, 2005 940 History of Europe
• The Indian Mutiny
  
  18 Feb, 2010 950 History of Asia
• The Glorious Revolution
  
  19 Apr, 2001 940 History of Europe
• The Glencoe Massacre
  
  21 Jan, 2010 940 History of Europe
• The Treaty of Limerick
  
  7 Nov, 2019 940 History of Europe
• The Putney Debates
  
  18 Apr, 2013 320 Political science
• The Thirty Years War
  
  6 Dec, 2018 940 History of Europe
• The Trial of Charles I
  
  4 Jun, 2009 940 History of Europe
• The French Revolution’s Legacy
  
  14 Jun, 2001 940 History of Europe
• The Dissolution of the Monasteries
  
  27 Mar, 2008 940 History of Europe
• The Corn Laws
  
  24 Oct, 2013 330 Economics
• The Second Barons’ War
  
  6 May, 2021 940 History of Europe
• The Battle of Bannockburn
  
  3 Feb, 2011 940 History of Europe
• The Siege of Munster
  
  5 Nov, 2009 270 History of Christianity

---

Programme ID: m0004mbx

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004mbx

Auto-category: 941 (British history)