The Cato Street Conspiracy - a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and the entire Cabinet as they attended a private dinner party - was foiled on February 23rd, 1820.  Thwarted by an informant within their ranks, the conspirators were exposed, and either deported or executed.

Arthur Thistlewood and his cohorts had planned a ruthless assault, complete with grenades, firearms, and symbolic decapitations. Their ideology fused Marxist principles with revolutionary fervour, aiming to redistribute land and provoke a proletarian uprising. Yet their vision faltered, as their violent ambitions clashed with the realities of British governance.

In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly consider the turbulent period of British radicalism after the Napoleonic Wars; explain why the Coldstream Guards were considerably less effective at the scene of the crime bust than they might have been; and discover one of Thistlewood’s prior Dick Dastardly-style schemes to destabilise the government…

Further Reading: 

• ‘History Matters - The Cato Street Conspiracy, 1820’ (University of Sheffield, 2020): https://historymatters.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/blog-archive/2020/the-cato-street-conspiracy-1820
• ‘The Cato Street Conspiracy - Plotting, Counter-intelligence and the Revolutionary Tradition in Britain and Ireland, eds. Jason McElligott, Martin Conboy’ (Manchester University Press, 2019): https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Cato_Street_Conspiracy.html?id=E7zEDwAAQBAJ

‘Cato Street Conspiracy: the rebel and the spy’ (Museum of London, 2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-apjYCejsac

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The Retrospectors are Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina & Arion McNicoll, with Matt Hill.

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