Where does the Cato Street conspiracy stand in the history of an English radical tradition during the Age of Revolution? Jason McElligott and Martin Conboy have called on an impressive assortment of scholars to work through this question. The resulting volume, The Cato Street Conspiracy: Plotting, Counter-intelligence and the Revolutionary Tradition in Britain and Ireland, explores what an assassination attempt of cabinet ministers in 1820 reveals about early nineteenth century British history. Broadly, while the history of English radicalism is not as violent and visible as that which occurs in Ireland, the drumming of radicalism beat through the period nonetheless, most evidently in cities like London and Manchester. But was it enough to inspire revolution? Historical memory during the early nineteenth century centers on the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, when fifteen peaceful protesters in Manchester, calling for parliamentary reform, were killed by a cavalry charge ordered by the British government. This occasion, and the Six Acts that were enacted to deter radical meetings following Peterloo, are remembered much more keenly than Cato Street. However, the contributors to this collection of essays stress that a radical revolutionary tendency exists in British history, informed by but also out of the shadow of Ireland. What together they show is the potential for revolution that existed after the Napoleonic Wars in Britain, but which, according to these authors, never fully arrived.

This collection begins with Richard Gaunt's “When Did They Know? The Cabinet, Informers and Cato Street,” which outlines how deep the British government's knowledge of the plot ran, and especially how George Edwards, the second in command to Arthur Thistlewood, had been funneling information to British officials for two years prior to the attempted coup. In the second chapter, “Joining Up the Dots: Contingency, Hindsight and the British Insurrectionary Tradition,” John Stevenson stresses the radical potential of a British revolutionary tradition. Sounding an optimistic tone, Stevenson stresses that the conditions were always there for revolution, but never aligned in such a way to produce rebellion or revolution as in other countries, like France and Ireland. McElligott's chapter, “The Men They Couldn't Hang: ‘Sensible’ Radicals and the Cato Street Conspiracy,” serves to compliment Stevenson's argument by presenting a hitherto unknown note from Thomas Wooler, editor of the Black Dwarf, which McElligott situates as likely from 1820. McElligott stresses through meticulous use of source material that there were a number of radicals, including William Cobbett, on the fringes of the conspiracy who must have known about it and were desperate to concoct an alibi through which to shield themselves. Cobbett's history, especially his rejection of Jacobinism, leaves me skeptical of his advocacy for, but perhaps not his knowledge of, the Cato Street conspiracy. In “Cato Street in International Perspective,” Malcolm Chase deftly examines how Cato Street was imagined by international radicals, especially its prominence in the French radical imagination. For French radicals, Cato Street was remembered much more vividly than was Peterloo, according to Chase.

One chapter that stands out is “Cato Street and the Caribbean,” in which Ryan Hanley describes the fascinating linkages between the Cato Street conspiracy and the Black Atlantic in an essay that foregrounds how race and empire inflect the events of 1820. Hanley follows the lives of two Black men, William Davidson, and Robert Wedderburn, who both aligned themselves with Spencean ideals. Wedderburn in particular linked the radicalism of Cato with the struggle against slavery through the British Empire. Both were from Jamaica, and the continuity of slavery in British colonies “graphically underlined for them limited and conditional nature of Britain's constitutional commitment to ‘liberty’” (82).

In the subsequent chapter, “Cato Street and the Spencean Politics of Transnational Insurrection,” Ajmal Waqif details the genesis of Thomas Spence's political ideology, which inspired the Cato Street conspirators, and the role that violence played in it. Martyn Powell writes in “State Witnesses and Spies in Irish Political Trials, 1794–1803,” that British officials had learned how to infiltrate radical organizations from their experiences with the United Irishmen in the 1790s. In his fascinating essay, “The Shadow of the Pikeman: Irish Craftsmen and British Radicalism, 1803–20,” Timothy Murtagh situates exiled United Irishmen in Britain during the early nineteenth century. Histories of the exiled United Irishmen generally focus on the United States and France, so his essay is a welcome addition to the field. Similarly, Kieran Hannon's “The Fate of the Transported Cato Street Conspirators,” traces the transportation of five Cato conspirators to Australia. Much like the United Irishmen, Indian Tamils, and Jamaican Maroons, transportation served as a useful tool for the British Empire to diffuse radicalism in local communities. Finally, John Gardner's “Scripted by Whom? 1820 and Theatres of Rebellion,” maps the connections between rebellion and theater, exploring how Cato Street and two Scottish rebellions in 1820 were often scripted by the British government, creating the conditions to flush out radicals before rebellion occurred and in turn projecting the power of government. Moreover, Gardner importantly notes that later retellings of Cato Street moved from class analyses to depictions that foregrounded nationalism, gender, and race as central motifs. In their afterword, Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid and Colin Reid excellently emphasize that revolutionary traditions are invented often, and in contrast to Ireland, “there was no concerted attempt to craft a British revolutionary canon” (187). Revealing histories such as Cato Street emphasize how radicalism existed but was never incorporated into the historical memory of the period.

Collectively, this body of essays is successful in giving the Cato Street conspiracy a much more prominent place in the history of British radicalism. And yet, the Cato Street conspiracy appears as the action of a small number of radicals who likely did not represent the politics of a broad swathe of the population. Peterloo exists so prominently in the historical memory of the period in part because of how reformists commandeered its legacy, but also because it was witness to a broad coalition of protesters who were intent on demanding greater access to the vote. What this collection of essays does show is that there was continued commitment to violent politics among a radical portion of the British population, but without the contours of imperialism that shaped and made popular groups like the United Irishmen, or without a radicalized population to realize it, outright rebellion was rarely possible in England, especially after the passage of the Six Acts. Cato Street was then a last gasp for British violent radicalism. Its history, though, is an important one, and its reinvigoration in this book serves an important function in the history of British radicalism.