Luddites
NAME: Luddites
ALTERNATIVE NAME: None
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 1811 – 1813
LOCATION: Industrial centres in the Midlands and North of England
CATEGORY: Violent Protest Movement
DISCIPLINE Textile workers
ASSOCIATION: Textile Industry
SHORT DESCRIPTION:
Gangs of men who broke machinery that was replacing their craft skills and putting them out of work
DESCRIPTION:
Luddism arose during a time when many rural workers were living in desperate poverty. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, over 3,000,000 acres of land were fenced off (“enclosed”) by landowners. This resulted in the removal of common land from the workers who relied on working the land for their subsistence, both as income from produce or for their own food.
At the beginning of the century most of the population were employed in agriculture but enclosures meant less job availability and many had to find other employment. The population was rising fast and England increasingly relied on foreign imports. When the price of imports rose, so did the price of food and many working people could not afford to buy enough to feed their families.
With nowhere to keep a cow or a pig, and nowhere to grow corn or potatoes, they were increasingly dependent on buying their food at the market price. Large numbers of rural people worked in the textile industry, mainly centered in the provinces. Local manufacturers had traditionally employed outworkers in rural villages to spin, weave and knit in their cottages. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, more and more manufacturers started to take advantage of new technology to buy labor-saving machines.
Adding insult to injury, many workers were expected to rent machines so that their output of work was high although when markets were slow their rent was still demanded. War with France and a trade war with America severely affected British exports and trade fell drastically.
All these circumstances combined to create high unemployment at a time when the cost of living was rising. The laissez-faire economic doctrines being developed by economists like <related to> Ricardo* encouraged the government not to intervene in the market and bad harvests from 1809-1812 pushed up the price of bread. It was this which eventually triggered a reaction from men whose livelihood was already threatened by loss of jobs on the land, unemployment in industry, low wages and high food prices.
Groups of men began to make night raids and break up the machinery which had put them out of a job. They were known as Luddites, allegedly after a boy called Ned Ludd who broke the machine he was working on after being chastised for laziness.
The first machine-breakers operated in Nottingham, the center for stocking and lace manufacture. They signed their proclamations “Ned Ludd” and gave Sherwood Forest, the home of the legendary <related to> Robin Hood*, as their address.
The first raid took place in March 1811 and protests quickly spread to neighboring counties of Derbyshire and Leicestershire where the main employment was in the hosiery and lace trades. The local militia was called in but the Luddites became confident enough to operate by day and to destroy cattle and set hayricks alight as a warning to local landowners and magistrates not to interfere. They also operated a benefit system for unemployed men with starving families, sometimes using force to raise the money.
By February 1812 there were large numbers of government troops in the Nottingham area and in Parliament at Westminster a bill was passed which condemned frame-breakers (normally sentenced to transportation to Australia) to death. By now some of the public were in sympathy in Parliament <defended by> Byron* spoke against the introduction of the death penalty for frame-breakers.
In Lancashire and Cheshire the cotton workers turned to Luddism but the movement fizzled out after a notorious trial in 1812 which resulted in executions and transportations.
In Yorkshire, the hand croppers in the woolen trade who had been put out of work by new shearing frames led the Luddite raids and engaged in violent intimidation. In April 1812 they attacked the premises of a local mill owner. A week later, a Yorkshire manufacturer was shot dead as he rode over the moors. In 1813 after trials of Luddites in Yorkshire, more men were executed and transported.
Luddism then faded out in out as military pressure grew greater and manufacturer’ resistance became better organized. The workers turned to building up trade unions, petitioning Parliament, and strikes. They had not achieved their immediate aims but they focused public opinion on their plight and showed Parliament the danger of ignoring their grievances.
Later in the century, Factory Acts brought in better conditions, and legal status was granted to trade unions.
ONELINER: Luddites, the original machine-breakers
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Liversidge, Douglas, The Luddites, Machine-breakers of the Early Nineteenth Century, Franklin Watts, London and New York, 1972.
Multimedia:
Connections 3, Episode 5. "Life is No Picnic"