On 16 August 1819, a crowd of some 60,000 people from Manchester and surrounding towns gathered in St Peter's Fields to demand Parliamentary reform and an extension of voting rights.

At that time, Manchester had no members of parliament of its own while the whole of Lancashire was represented by two county MPs and middle and working class men and all women were denied voting rights.

The outcry led to the founding of the Manchester Guardian and played a significant role in the passage through Parliament of the Great Reform Act[8] which extended the franchise to 'head of household' middle-class men.

After the Battle of Waterloo, Joseph returns home from service in the Duke of Wellington's army to Manchester and his close-knit working class family headed by parents Joshua and Nellie.

The family is sympathetic to the campaigns for equal civil and political rights for all men and against the Corn Laws that prevent them from buying cheaper imported grain.

Richards, a Home Office spy, is able to provoke Bagguley and fellow activists Drummond and Johnston into publicly calling for armed insurrection, leading to their arrest and imprisonment.

The magistrates plan to disperse Hunt's meeting and make an example of the attendees using the local mounted militia, the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry and a regular army detachment led by General John Byng.

On the day of the meeting, thousands of people walk into Manchester from the surrounding towns to hear Hunt speak at St Peter's Fields, including Nellie and Joshua and their family.

[11] Production shot the interior of the Tarred Yarn Store in Plymouth, Devon, and the exterior of the Ropery at the Chatham Historic Dockyard in Kent to double as a cotton mill in Manchester.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Peterloo proves writer-director Mike Leigh's populist anger remains undimmed – but that righteous fury occasionally overpowers the narrative.