when revolution became a public duty • International Socialism
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on January 15, 2023
A review of Conspiracy on Cato Street: A Tale of Liberty and Revolution in Regency London, Vic Gatrell (Cambridge University Press, 2022), £25
On the night of 23 February 1820, 25 impoverished craftsmen assembled in an obscure stable in Cato Street, London, with a plan to massacre the whole British cabinet as they enjoyed their lavish monthly dinner. The Cato Street conspiracy was the most sensational of all plots aimed at the British state since Guy Fawkes’s Gunpowder Plot in 1605. It ended in betrayal, arrest and trial, with five conspirators publicly hanged and . . .
