Luddite The Luddites were 19th-century English textile
artisans who protested against newly developed labour-saving machinery from 1811 to 1817.
The stocking frames, spinning frames and power looms introduced during the Industrial Revolution
threatened to replace the artisans with less-skilled, low-wage labourers, leaving them without work.
Although the origin of the name Luddite (/ˈlʌd.aɪt/) is uncertain, a popular theory is that the
movement was named after Ned Ludd, a youth who allegedly smashed two stocking frames
in 1779, and whose name had become emblematic of machine destroyers.
The name evolved into the imaginary General Ludd or King Ludd, a figure who, like Robin
Hood, was reputed to live in Sherwood Forest.
Background The movement can be seen as part of a rising
tide of English working-class discontent in the early 19th century.
An agricultural variant of Luddism, centering on the breaking of threshing machines, occurred
during the widespread Swing Riots of 1830 in southern and eastern England.
Spasmodic rises in food prices provoked Keelmen in the port of Tyne to riot in 1710 and tin
miners to plunder granaries at Falmouth in 1727.
There was a rebellion in Northumberland and Durham in 1740, and manhandling of Quaker
corn dealers in 1756.
More peaceably, skilled artisans in the cloth, building, shipbuilding, printing and cutlery
trades organised friendly societies to insure themselves against unemployment and sickness
and sometimes, similar to guilds, against intrusion of 'foreign' labour into their trades.
The Luddite movement emerged during the harsh economic climate of the Napoleonic Wars, which
saw a rise in difficult working conditions in the new textile factories.
The movement began in Nottingham on 11 March 1811 and spread rapidly throughout England
over the following two years.
Handloom weavers burned mills and pieces of factory machinery.
History Luddite acts 1811-1813
The Luddites met at night on the moors surrounding industrial towns, where they would practise
drills and manoeuvres.
Their main areas of operation were Nottinghamshire in November 1811, followed by the West Riding
of Yorkshire in early 1812 and Lancashire by March 1813.
Luddites battled the British Army at Burton's Mill in Middleton and at Westhoughton Mill,
both in Lancashire.
Rumours abounded at the time that local magistrates employed agents provocateur to instigate the
attacks.
Using the pseudonym King Ludd, the Luddites and their supporters anonymously sent death
threats to—and even attacked—magistrates and food merchants.
Isolated incidents post 1814 Activists smashed Heathcote's lacemaking machine
in Loughborough in 1816.
He and other industrialists had secret chambers constructed in their buildings that could
be used as hiding places during an attack.
In 1817, an unemployed Nottingham stockinger and probable ex-Luddite named Jeremiah Brandreth
led the Pentrich Rising, which was a general uprising unrelated to machinery, but which
could be viewed as the last major Luddite act.
Government response The British Army clashed with the Luddites
on several occasions.
At one time, more British soldiers were fighting the Luddites than were fighting Napoleon on
the Iberian Peninsula.
Three Luddites, led by George Mellor, ambushed and assassinated a mill owner named William
Horsfall from Ottiwells Mill at Crosland Moor in Marsden, West Yorkshire.
Horsfall had remarked that he would "Ride up to his saddle in Luddite blood."
Mellor fired the fatal shot to Horsfall's groin, and all three men were arrested.
The British government sought to suppress the Luddite movement with a mass trial at
York in January 1813, following the attack on Cartwrights mill at Rawfolds near Cleckheaton.
The government charged over sixty men, including Mellor and his companions, with various crimes
in connection with Luddite activities.
While some of those charged were actual Luddites, many had no connection to the movement.
These trials were not legitimate judicial reckonings of each defendant's guilt, but
show trials intended to deter other Luddites from continuing their activities.
By meting out harsh consequences, including, in many cases, execution and penal transportation,
the trials quickly ended the movement.
Parliament subsequently made "machine breaking" (i.e. industrial sabotage) a capital crime
with the Frame Breaking Act and the Malicious Damage Act.
Lord Byron opposed this legislation, becoming one of the few prominent defenders of the
Luddites after the treatment of the defendants at the York trials.
In contemporary thought The title Luddite developed a secondary meaning:
a "Luddite" is a term describing those opposed to, or slow to adopt or incorporate into their
lifestyle, industrialisation, automation, computerisation or new technologies in general.
In 1956, there is a parliamentary speech that said 'Organised workers were by no means wedded
to a Luddite Philosophy'.
Economists use the term Luddite fallacy to explain that: The notion of technological
unemployment leading to structural unemployment (and being macroeconomically injurious).
If a technological innovation results in a reduction of necessary labour inputs, then
the industry-wide cost of production falls, which lowers the competitive price and increases
the equilibrium supply point, which will require an increase in aggregate labour inputs to
reach, theoretically.).