This plaque, in Park Street, near Borough market, commemorates an incident in 1850 when a group of brewery workers set upon General Haynau, the 'Butcher of Austria', who was notorious at the time for the brutality with which he had put down rebellions in Hungary and Italy.
'The Hyena of Brescia', as the General was known, was visiting Barclay and Perkins, which was then London's largest brewery, when the workers recognised his name in the visitors' book and attacked him with brooms and stones. They chased him down to the George Tavern on Borough High Street, where the police had to rescue him by ferrying him across the river by boat.
Despite an outraged reaction from the Austrian Embassy, the Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston rather impressively sided with the brewery men, saying they were just 'expressing their feelings at what they considered inhuman conduct' by a man who 'was looked upon as a great moral criminal'. Although Queen Victoria eventually intervened and a conciliatory letter was sent, the Austrians still snubbed the Duke of Wellington's funeral in protest. The draymen had the support of the public though, with a number of folk ballads appearing in their honour. One of these included the line "Make his back and sides to swell, till he roars aloud with dreadful yell, the fellow that flogged the women" (in Brescia, Haynau had ordered his troops to strip and flog women suspected of espionage).
There was also international support for the workers - on a trip to England in 1864, for example, the Italian revolutionary Giusseppe Garibaldi made a point of visiting the brewery to thank 'the men who flogged Haynau'.
How times have changed, eh? It's a shame that there wasn't a similar incident during Pinochet's recent sojourn in Britain. What would have been the chances of a plaque being erected to that?
No comments:
Post a Comment