The Other Side of England

England's last revolution... ...when early in the Nineteenth Century thousands of agricultural labourers, near to starving, living in abject poverty, without bread, without work and without hope, subject to the most draconian laws in Europe and ruled by an unsympathetic Parliament of land-owning gentry, hoisted the black flag of anarchy and the 'Tricolour' of revolution and marched across the southern counties of England, destroying farm machinery, burning barns and straw stacks and terrorising the rich. 'Bread or blood ' they chanted and the Government, fearing a revolution akin to France, were swift and brutal in their response. Mass arrests were made and mass trials conducted at special assize courts, followed by hangings and imprisonment and wholesale transportation to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land...