At their height, the Luddites had a force of 12,000 British soldiers after them. This was more than Britain had sent off to fight Napoleon in Spain at the time and half the amount of Redcoats that had been shipped across the Atlantic to the American Revolution or, later, across the Channel to Waterloo. What then were the Luddites that caused the British government to affectively declare war on them?
Weavers and textile workers, many of them now unemployed or on wages too low to meet the skyrocketing wheat prices, who swore an oath of secrecy and began smashing machinery with hammers. In contemporary vocabulary, those who are called Luddites are people who oppose industrialization, consumerism, or new technology such as computers or the internet. This, however, is a distortion of what the Luddites were actually fighting for; They did not oppose industrialization or the advancement of technology per se. Their favorite machine to destroy, the stocking frame, had already been invented 200 years ago by William Lee, though it was initially denied a patent By Queen Elizabeth I for fear that it would replace hand-knitting. Many Luddites had also been masters of operating this machinery, thus the assumption that their movement was one of technophobia must be dismissed.
In fact, their own mastery of the machinery was the cause of the riots. More than anything, the Luddite movement was a class war that would echo through the industrial era and on even today. The Luddites exclusively attacked the machines of owners who used the machines in a “fraudulent or deceitful manner” deemed contrary to the normal business practices. In other words, they were cutting corners. While many of the master weavers were out of work, these mills hired low-skill, low-wage workers to operate cheap machines producing cheap products (This may sound familiar to you). Thus the demands of moderate Luddites might reasonably have been: Higher quality-production, skilled workers that had gone through apprenticeships, and higher wages.
Nonetheless, while it is clear the primary concern of the Luddites was their mere livelihoods, there was a legitimate cultural concern that lends at least partial credibility to the reputation of the Luddites as technophobes. They could appreciate the obvious economic benefits of industrialization, but there was a prevalent fear that men were themselves becoming like the machines in heart and hand.
That the name of the Luddites is still remembered in spite of their apparent failure can be attributed to myth and capturing the symphony of the era’s great artists, such as Lord Byron and later Charlotte Bronte. The name of the Luddite movement derived from their mythical leader, General Ned Ludd, who dwelled in the forests of Nottinghamshire like Robin Hood before him. The comparison was no coincidence, as seen in the poem General Ludd’s Triumph:
Chant no more your old rhymes about bold Robin Hood, His feats I but little admire I will sing the Achievements of General Ludd Now the Hero of Nottinghamshire Brave Ludd was to measures of violence unused Till his sufferings became so severe That at last to defend his own Interest he rous'd And for the great work did prepare Now by force unsubdued, and by threats undismay'd Death itself can't his ardour repress The presence of Armies can't make him afraid Nor impede his career of success Whilst the news of his conquests is spread far and near How his Enemies take the alarm His courage, his fortitude, strikes them with fear For they dread his Omnipotent Arm!
Ledd, being a man who likely never existed at all, became an untouchable symbol to the Luddite Rebellion. After all, they could not hang a ring leader that could not be caught.
As I hinted at in the beginning of this piece, the British government responded harshly to the sabotage spree. At a time when almost 200 machines were being destroyed per month, Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act, making machine-smashing a capital offense. Many Luddites would be hanged until dead or worse: transported to Australia.
However harsh, this response was not unwarranted. For one, the Luddites were committing colossal destruction of private property. Even Lord Byron, who was sympathetic to their plight, said to the House of Lords, "During the short time I recently passed in Nottingham, not twelve hours elapsed without some fresh act of violence; and on that day I left the county I was informed that forty Frames had been broken the preceding evening, as usual, without resistance and without detection.” Even more importantly, the more extreme among them had taken to arson and assassination. One manufacturer, William Horsfall, was ambushed and murdered in 1812. Three of his four killers would receive the death penalty. Around the same time, Luddites fought with the British Army in the Battle of Rawfolds Mill, and the execution of over a dozen men in York that followed became a highlight of the rebellion.
The British people and government had reason to be afraid of such rebellions, however. For one thing, much of their army was oversees fighting Napoleon and the United States, and the phantom of revolutionary France loomed over Great Britain. For another, the decline in trade from these wars sent the country that Napoleon had referred to as a “nation of shopkeepers” into an economic depression. Radicals had to be made an example of to deter any wider revolution. Looking back now, we can say that this approach either worked or that the British were simply not a revolutionary people in general.
The Luddites did have their supporters, even in government. Most notably among them was the aforementioned poet and statesmen Lord Byron, who might reasonably be considered the first modern celebrity, and who gave a generous speech against the Frame Breaking Act:
But whilst these outrages must be admitted to exist to an alarming extent, it
cannot be denied that they have arisen from circumstances of the most
unparalleled distress: The perseverance of these miserable men in their
proceedings, tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a
large, and once honest and industrious, body of the people, into the commission
of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their families and the community. At the
time, to which I allude, the town and county were burthened with large
detachments of the military; the police was in motion, the magistrates assembled,
yet all the movements civil and military had led to—nothing… By the adoption of
one species of Frame in particular, one man performed the work of many, and
the superfluous labourers were thrown out of employment. Yet it is to be
observed, that the work thus executed was inferior in quality; not marketable at
home, and merely hurried over with a view to exportation. It was called in the
cant of the trade, by the name of 'Spider work.' The rejected workmen in the
blindness of their ignorance, instead of rejoicing at these improvements in arts
so beneficial to mankind, conceived themselves to be sacrificed to improvements
in mechanism. In the foolishness of their hearts they imagined, that the
maintenance and well doing of the industrious poor, were objects of greater
consequence than the enrichment of a few individuals by any improvement, in
the implements of trade, which threw the workmen out of employment, and
rendered the labourer unworthy of his hire.
Lord Byron, of course, was outvoted, and though smaller Luddite movements would reemerge throughout the next few years, the larger rebellion was affectively quelled.
Yet the Luddites were more successful than they are typically given credit for. In spite of their violent reputation, their cause was taken up by the Chartists of the Victorian Era and the labour unions. For better or for worse, a minimum wage is now standard law, although the quality of goods and production have not necessarily increased, and certainly by now apprenticeships are far fewer. The concerns of the Luddites were not much different than the concerns of those later on, today, and since the time industrialization specialized labor and took it out of the home. The infamous machine-smashing, therefore, was never an end. It was a means. A violent and unreasonable means born of poverty and war, but a means nonetheless.
Sources
Conniff, Richard. “What the Luddites Really Fought Against.” Smithsonian.com,
Smithsonian Institution, 1 Mar. 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what- the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/.
“FRAME WORK BILL.” FRAME WORK BILL. (Hansard, 27 February 1812), hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1812/feb/27/frame-work-bill.
“General Ludd's Triumph.” Romantic Circles, Romantic Circles, 1 May 2001, romantic-circles.org/praxis/interventionist/kipperman/ludd.html.
“Luddite Riots of 1812: Primary Sources.” Naomi Clifford, www.naomiclifford.com/luddite-riots-of-1812-primary-sources/.
The Luddites 1811-1816, www.victorianweb.org/history/riots/luddites.html.
Murder of William Horsfall by Luddites, 1812,
freepages.rootsweb.com/~maureenmitchell/genealogy/luddites/luddites_william_horsfall_murder.htm.
“The National Archives Learning Curve: Power, Politics and Protest: The Luddites.” The National Archives, www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/politics/g3/.
Vicki. “Frame-Breaking Act.” Historical Britain, 18 July 2013, historicalbritain.org/tag/frame-breaking-act/.