Nights of Fire: The Gordon Riots of 1780 and the Politics of War

Abstract

The Gordon riots were the most dramatic of London’s history, paralysing the forces of law and order for almost a week in early June 1780. Erupting at a time of imperial crisis and new reformist movements, the disturbances resonated with the resentments of war; they were the platform on which bitter political differences — about Catholics, about America, about the sovereignty of parliament — were played out. The riots also sorely tested the relationship between street politics and radical associations, prompting the question as to whether crowds and ‘people’ were interdependent or mutually exclusive; part of the same vector of popular remonstrance or wildly divergent. For these reasons, the riots were the most complex the eighteenth century had witnessed. They posed serious questions about the shape and future of popular politics in the decades to come.