Disir
Platinum Member
- Sep 30, 2011
- 28,003
- 9,615
- 910
IMAGINE if you will, and I daresay some people would like to, a massive violent mob rampaging through Central London and attacking Parliament, the Bank of England and the Prime Minister’s residence in Downing Street.
Imagine the mob destroying prisons and freeing inmates, and assaulting members of the House of Lords. Imagine, too, the leaders of the British state meeting in fear and dread and ordering the army on to the streets to fire at will at unarmed people, killing and wounding hundreds.
You do not have to imagine all of these things, you just need to know your history, for such events have already happened in this benighted United Kingdom, and they bear the name of a Scot – the Gordon Riots.
www.thenational.scot
It was thus perhaps inevitable that when, on 2 June 1780, Gordon led a crowd of 60,000 people to Parliament to present a petition against the act, violence would ensue. While Gordon and the Protestant Association desperately attempted to put the genie of anti-Catholicism they had unleashed back in the bottle, London saw days of rioting, disorder and unrest. Catholics were attacked and their homes, schools and chapels looted and destroyed. Newgate and other prisons were stormed and the Bank of England came under assault. As troops attempted to restore order, more than 200 people were killed.
Gordon was taken to the Tower and tried for high treason. A jury, however, took a mere half an hour to find him not guilty on the grounds that he had tried to quell the violence and that, as his defence team put it, he had not “wickedly and traitorously preconcerted [sic] and designed it”.
Gordon’s parliamentary career was over but his combination of erraticism and outspokenness was sooner or later liable to land him in trouble with the law once again. In 1787, he was convicted of libelling the French envoy in London, Queen Marie Antoinette and the English judicial system, and sentenced to five years in prison. His conviction came in the same year that he converted to Judaism, taking the name Israel Abraham George Gordon.
Incites an anti-Catholic riot and that kills people and walks away for a bit.
Imagine the mob destroying prisons and freeing inmates, and assaulting members of the House of Lords. Imagine, too, the leaders of the British state meeting in fear and dread and ordering the army on to the streets to fire at will at unarmed people, killing and wounding hundreds.
You do not have to imagine all of these things, you just need to know your history, for such events have already happened in this benighted United Kingdom, and they bear the name of a Scot – the Gordon Riots.
The story behind the riots that made a Scots lord into a legend
IMAGINE if you will, and I daresay some people would like to, a massive violent mob rampaging through Central London and attacking Parliament, the…
www.thenational.scot
It was thus perhaps inevitable that when, on 2 June 1780, Gordon led a crowd of 60,000 people to Parliament to present a petition against the act, violence would ensue. While Gordon and the Protestant Association desperately attempted to put the genie of anti-Catholicism they had unleashed back in the bottle, London saw days of rioting, disorder and unrest. Catholics were attacked and their homes, schools and chapels looted and destroyed. Newgate and other prisons were stormed and the Bank of England came under assault. As troops attempted to restore order, more than 200 people were killed.
Gordon was taken to the Tower and tried for high treason. A jury, however, took a mere half an hour to find him not guilty on the grounds that he had tried to quell the violence and that, as his defence team put it, he had not “wickedly and traitorously preconcerted [sic] and designed it”.
Gordon’s parliamentary career was over but his combination of erraticism and outspokenness was sooner or later liable to land him in trouble with the law once again. In 1787, he was convicted of libelling the French envoy in London, Queen Marie Antoinette and the English judicial system, and sentenced to five years in prison. His conviction came in the same year that he converted to Judaism, taking the name Israel Abraham George Gordon.
Incites an anti-Catholic riot and that kills people and walks away for a bit.
