If the Cato Street Conspiracy had been successful, Britain would have been proclaimed a republic by tradesmen of English, Scots, Irish and black Jamaican backgrounds. This book explains the conspiracy, and why you have never heard of it.

On 23 February 1820 a group of radicals were arrested in Cato Street off the Edgware Road in London. They were within sixty minutes of setting out to assassinate the British cabinet. Five of the conspirators were subsequently executed and another five were transported for life to Australia.The plotters were a mixture of English, Scots and Irish tradesmen, and one was a black Jamaican. They were motivated by a desire to avenge the ‘Peterloo’ massacre and intended to declare a republic, which they believed would encourage popular risings in London and across Britain.This volume of essays uses contemporary reports by Home Office spies and informers to assess the seriousness of the conspiracy. It traces the practical and intellectual origins of the plotters’ willingness to use violence; describes the links between Irish and British radicals who were willing to take up arms; makes a contribution to early black history in Britain; examines the European context to events, and follows the lives and careers of those plotters exiled to Australia.A significant contribution to our understanding of a particularly turbulent period of British history, these well-written essays will find an appreciative audience among undergraduates, graduate students and scholars of British and Irish history and literature, black history, and the related fields of intelligence history and Strategic Studies.

Introduction ‘We only have to be lucky once’: Cato Street, insurrection and the revolutionary tradition
Jason McElligott and Martin Conboy

1. When did they know? The cabinet, informers and Cato Street
Richard A. Gaunt

2. Joining up the dots: contingency, hindsight and the British insurrectionary tradition
John Stevenson

3. The men they couldn't hang: 'sensible' radicals and the Cato Street Conspiracy
Jason McElligott

4. Cato Street in international perspective
Malcolm Chase

5. Cato Street and the Caribbean
Ryan Hanley

6. Cato Street and the Spencean politics of transnational insurrection
Ajmal Waqif

7. State witnesses and spies in Irish political trials, 1794-1803
Martyn J. Powell

8. The shadow of the Pikeman: Irish craftsmen and British radicalism, 1803-20
Timothy Murtagh

9. The fate of the transported Cato Street conspirators
Kieran Hannon

10. Scripted by whom? 1820 and theatres of rebellion
John Gardner

Afterword
Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid and Colin W. Reid

On 23 February 1820 a group of radicals were arrested in Cato Street off the Edgware Road in London. They were within sixty minutes of setting out to assassinate the British cabinet. Five of the conspirators were subsequently executed and another five were transported for life to Australia. The plotters were a mixture of English, Scots and Irish tradesmen, and one was a black Jamaican. They were motivated by a desire to avenge the ‘Peterloo’ massacre and intended to declare a republic, which they believed would encourage popular risings in London and across Britain. This volume of essays uses contemporary reports by Home Office spies and informers to assess the seriousness of the conspiracy. It traces the practical and intellectual origins of the plotters’ willingness to use violence; describes the links between Irish and British radicals who were willing to take up arms; makes a contribution to early black history in Britain; examines the European context to events, and follows the lives and careers of those plotters exiled to Australia. A significant contribution to our understanding of a particularly turbulent period of British history, these well-written essays will find an appreciative audience among undergraduates, graduate students and scholars of British and Irish history and literature, black history, and the related fields of intelligence history and Strategic Studies.