“Rise like lions after slumber. In unvanquishable number!” The famous lines were written by Percy Shelley in his poem The Masque of Anarchy in 1819 following the Peterloo Massacre. Tomorrow, Unison North West will march to St Peter’s Square in Manchester to commemorate the bicentenary of the famous march and the state-sanctioned butchery which followed.

On August 16 1819, more than 60,000 people assembled at a patch of empty ground known as St Peter’s Field. They gathered to protest against tyrants who held undue influence over their lives and did nothing to improve the standards of living for working people. We may see a similar scene here in Manchester on September 29 as we protest against Boris Johnson’s unelected Tory government.

Peterloo was a defining moment in British political history, paving the way in the long struggle for democratic representation of the disenfranchised working classes. Eighteen men, women and children were killed and over 650 were injured when cavalry brutally charged at pro-democracy protesters. It took place only a few generations ago. Much has changed since then but we have plenty still to fight for. Our civil liberties and democratic rights remain under threat today.

The protesters we will commemorate tomorrow stood up to the full force of the state with considerably less resources than we have at our disposal. They did not achieve their demands for parliamentary representation and improved living standards overnight. The government of the day responded with the Six Acts which suppressed radical meetings and the free press.

Henry Hunt and eight others were tried and charged with sedition. John Jenkins, a former marine, was jailed for five weeks for touring the country with a hand-coloured print of Peterloo which showed that the slaughter was committed by the cavalry. When we remember Peterloo, we are remembering not just state-orchestrated police brutality, but also an abdication of responsibility and yet another Establishment cover-up.

Peterloo also serves as a reminder that there will be times when we rise up against injustice, and the law of the state is not on our side, but history will be. History remembers Peterloo as a massacre of working-class people who gathered together to demand that decision-making power was in the hands of the many, and not of the few.

The Peterloo Massacre set off a chain of events which led to universal suffrage. The huge rally in Manchester led to the emergence of the Chartist movement and eventually of the suffragettes. Over one hundred years after Peterloo, the Equal Franchise Act gave the vote to all women over the age of 21.

No words could adequately commemorate the contribution of the men, women and children who died during the Peterloo Massacre at the hands of the state. It is the duty of all of us to dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work of those who protested in Manchester 200 years ago.

The system which existed 200 years ago was wrong and wretched, it was squalid and brutal. It was laced with injustice and misery and division. It is a system which some members of the Prime Minister’s cabinet would happily see restored. And sadly they are doing a good job of turning the clock back. Tory Britain is becoming an increasingly divided, deprived and dilapidated place.

We’re living through a time of great disruption. As Johnson cosies up to Trump’s America, it’s easy to feel like we’re going backwards. But as it has done for the last two centuries, progress will come in fits and starts.

The one constant has been that whenever change has come, it has been driven by ordinary people. They may take away our rights, but they can never take away our solidarity and our unity.

The Peterloo protesters had liberated their own minds from apathy and fear. Even under the most crushing state oppression, courage rises up again and again.

The protesters had hoped that despite the balance of forces and all the evidence to the contrary, something better awaited them so long as they had the courage to stand together, to protest and to fight for it. We have them to thank for the improvements in rights and freedoms we’ve witnessed in the last two centuries. It is our duty to hold on to their hope and fight for a better future.

Peterloo is evidence, if ever it were needed that this country’s establishment only care when they’re cornered. The time is now for us to unite, like our brothers and sisters who stood here two centuries ago, and to bravely demand a free, democratic and socialist future which is worthy of the sacrifice made at Peterloo in 1819.