Last week marked the 214th anniversary of the execution of John Bellingham, the man who a week before had fatally shot Spencer Perceval – the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated.
It is ironic that the merry month of May today should also witness the prolonged political assassination of another PM, Sir Keir Starmer, by ungrateful members of his own party, who, like the rest of the country, have finally lost patience with their catastrophically unpopular and incompetent leader.
Spencer Perceval was also extremely unpopular in the country. During his Premiership (1809-1812) Britain was fighting for its life against the tyranny of Napoleon’s European empire, and the harsh wartime economy enforced by Perceval had caused a severe crisis and provoked the violent Luddite riots which had been ruthlessly and efficiently suppressed. In modern terms the country was enduring a cost of living emergency.
An evangelical Christian, and the happily married father of thirteen children, Perceval was also an aristocratic High Tory apostle of fiscal rectitude and responsibility whatever the social cost.
It wasn’t only the working class who resented Perceval’s austerity policies: the mercantile middle classes were also upset by being asked to tighten their belts and make sacrifices in the patriotic cause. There is evidence that two such merchants from Liverpool who were facing ruin because of wartime trade barriers with Napoleonic controlled continental Europe, financed the bankrupt Bellingham and encouraged his plan to kill Perceval.
The assassin was ostensibly motivated to the point of obsession by a private grievance against the government. Years before, in 1804, while living in Russia as a wealthy trader, Bellingham had been unjustly accused of trying to leave the country without a permit and twice imprisoned for several years, losing his entire substantial fortune as a result.
He was finally freed, and returned to England a ruined and embittered man. Bellingham devoted the rest of his life to attempting in vain to get the government to compensate him financially for his treatment in Russia. He petitioned ministers, sought a meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and attended a Parliamentary debate in order to identify the Prime Minister, who he blamed as the principal author of his woes.
Failing in all his efforts, Bellingham next purchased a pair of pistols which he hid inside a specially tailored ‘ poacher’s pocket’ inside his coat so he could gain access to the Palace of Westminster undetected. He accosted Perceval in the lobby and shot him in the heart at point blank range, killing him instantly.
Arrested on the spot, as word spread of his deed, Bellingham was hailed as a hero by the London mob who almost tore the coach taking him to jail to pieces in an effort to rescue him. The authorities panicked at the very real threat of revolution, and decided to get Bellingham underground as soon as possible. Within a week he was tried, condemned, and hanged for his crime. (His skull can still be seen in the Pathology museum at St Bartholemew’s hospital.)
It is in fact remarkable and a tribute to the previously pacific and law abiding nature of our society that no other British Prime Minister has ever shared Perceval’s fate. Considering that four US Presidents have fallen to assassins’ bullets, and there have been numerous serious attempts to kill others, (including three on the life of the current incumbent of the White House), and bearing in mind that several Prime Ministers and Presidents of our European neighbours France and Spain have also perished violently, all subsequent PMs can consider themselves very lucky to have died in their beds.
We do things differently here.
When Prime Ministers become terminally unpopular, they are removed by political manoeuvres rather than the gun. In recent times it happened to Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and now it is happening to Sir Keir Starmer.
Our intensely disliked PM cannot show his face in public -(unless before an audience of specially selected stooges)- without being booed and hissed, or having to listen to a ribald song alleging that he is an anchor (if I have heard the words aright). When a PM has to endure those levels of detestation and disdain, he should acknowledge that his time is up, and that his own dignity and self respect, (along with issues of personal security), demand that he should go, and go quickly and voluntarily.
It is ironic that the merry month of May today should also witness the prolonged political assassination of another PM, Sir Keir Starmer, by ungrateful members of his own party, who, like the rest of the country, have finally lost patience with their catastrophically unpopular and incompetent leader.
Spencer Perceval was also extremely unpopular in the country. During his Premiership (1809-1812) Britain was fighting for its life against the tyranny of Napoleon’s European empire, and the harsh wartime economy enforced by Perceval had caused a severe crisis and provoked the violent Luddite riots which had been ruthlessly and efficiently suppressed. In modern terms the country was enduring a cost of living emergency.
An evangelical Christian, and the happily married father of thirteen children, Perceval was also an aristocratic High Tory apostle of fiscal rectitude and responsibility whatever the social cost.
It wasn’t only the working class who resented Perceval’s austerity policies: the mercantile middle classes were also upset by being asked to tighten their belts and make sacrifices in the patriotic cause. There is evidence that two such merchants from Liverpool who were facing ruin because of wartime trade barriers with Napoleonic controlled continental Europe, financed the bankrupt Bellingham and encouraged his plan to kill Perceval.
The assassin was ostensibly motivated to the point of obsession by a private grievance against the government. Years before, in 1804, while living in Russia as a wealthy trader, Bellingham had been unjustly accused of trying to leave the country without a permit and twice imprisoned for several years, losing his entire substantial fortune as a result.
He was finally freed, and returned to England a ruined and embittered man. Bellingham devoted the rest of his life to attempting in vain to get the government to compensate him financially for his treatment in Russia. He petitioned ministers, sought a meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and attended a Parliamentary debate in order to identify the Prime Minister, who he blamed as the principal author of his woes.
Failing in all his efforts, Bellingham next purchased a pair of pistols which he hid inside a specially tailored ‘ poacher’s pocket’ inside his coat so he could gain access to the Palace of Westminster undetected. He accosted Perceval in the lobby and shot him in the heart at point blank range, killing him instantly.
Arrested on the spot, as word spread of his deed, Bellingham was hailed as a hero by the London mob who almost tore the coach taking him to jail to pieces in an effort to rescue him. The authorities panicked at the very real threat of revolution, and decided to get Bellingham underground as soon as possible. Within a week he was tried, condemned, and hanged for his crime. (His skull can still be seen in the Pathology museum at St Bartholemew’s hospital.)
It is in fact remarkable and a tribute to the previously pacific and law abiding nature of our society that no other British Prime Minister has ever shared Perceval’s fate. Considering that four US Presidents have fallen to assassins’ bullets, and there have been numerous serious attempts to kill others, (including three on the life of the current incumbent of the White House), and bearing in mind that several Prime Ministers and Presidents of our European neighbours France and Spain have also perished violently, all subsequent PMs can consider themselves very lucky to have died in their beds.
We do things differently here.
When Prime Ministers become terminally unpopular, they are removed by political manoeuvres rather than the gun. In recent times it happened to Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and now it is happening to Sir Keir Starmer.
Our intensely disliked PM cannot show his face in public -(unless before an audience of specially selected stooges)- without being booed and hissed, or having to listen to a ribald song alleging that he is an anchor (if I have heard the words aright). When a PM has to endure those levels of detestation and disdain, he should acknowledge that his time is up, and that his own dignity and self respect, (along with issues of personal security), demand that he should go, and go quickly and voluntarily.