Meet The Luddites

0:00Have you ever heard the story of the flight from New York to Minneapolis that vanished over Lake Michigan in 1950, or the group of hikers who died under mysterious circumstances, and incident that became known as the Diathlon Pass incident in 1959? Well, on the expedition unknown podcast from Discovery, host Josh Gates travels the world to investigate history's greatest unsolved mysteries, like the stolen objects taken by Nazis during World War II, or the final resting place of the Gryphon, the very first ship to explore the Great Lakes. Travel the globe with Josh Gates to see investigate some of humanity's greatest feet and most iconic legends. And because we know you retrospective love history, we know you'll love this, history, we're the bit of mystery. So travel the world with Josh as he investigates these legendary tales, listen to expedition unknown, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Colaguard. Do you know what's really scary? Not screening for colon cancer when you turn 45. The Colaguard test is non-invasive, requires no special proper time off work, and ships right to

1:05your door. In just three simple steps, Colaguard takes the scare out of colon cancer screening. If you're 45 or older and at average risk, ask your healthcare provider about the Colaguard test. Colaguard is available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription today at colaguard.com slash screen. It's March 11, 1811, and another remarkable event is about to be uncovered by Arya, Rebecca and Ali, the retro specters. When a party of irate textile workers broke into a factory just outside Nottingham today in history in 1811 and destroyed 63 knitting machines under the cover of darkness, they didn't have a name for the movement they were starting. But before the year was out, they had attracted a label which has survived to this day, the Luddites. Yes, so after enough smashing had gone on, British troops dispersed the crowd of protesters, who were there, basically advocating for improved work opportunities and better wages. But that wasn't the end of it because the disgruntled workers then went on to

2:08vandalize textile machinery in a nearby village that same night, and then subsequent attacks occurred initially on a nightly basis, and then a bit more intermittently, and eventually in waves spreading across this whole 70-mile region of northern England, from Loughborough in the south to Wakefield in the north, and basically concerned about the possibility of this becoming a whole nationwide movement. The government then deployed thousands of soldiers to safeguard factories, and parliament enacted a law saying that breaking machines was a capital event, you could be killed for it. Yeah, I mean, you can see why the authorities became scared of this seeming epidemic of machine smashing that was spreading across Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire, because to them it sort of came out of nothing. These machines weren't new, the things that they were upset about. The stocking frame, which was a knitting machine, had been invented 200 years earlier. But it had always been controversial. Actually, Elizabeth I denied the creator of the

3:09stocking frame, William Lee, a patent, because it might lead to the end of hand knitting. And she'd sort of recognise what eventually came to pass, which was that if the political circumstances and the economic circumstances coalesce so that people feel impoverished and their jobs are being taken by machines, they're going to be angry. And as we noted in our episode a few weeks ago on the Kato Street conspiracy, we're in 1811 now. This decade in particular was a really difficult one for the British government because it was a really difficult one for the working classes. Soldiers are coming home from the Napoleonic Wars and their families don't have anything to eat. You have the Peter Lume massacre in this decade. This is the background to this burgeoning sense among workers that they need to demand more. Yeah, and this is particularly the case for Nottinghamshire, which depended on the stocking trade. That was the industry of the town. And you know, the Napoleonic War had had a big impact on the economy because it cut off the continental markets. But also the hostry industry in particular had to contend with the fact that trousers were beginning to become an acceptable alternative to stocking. So the whole industry

4:13was very tightly stretched. And as you mentioned, the stocking frame had been around for a long time. But what had changed in more recent years was that initially the knitting of the stockings was done by individual workers at home working on their own stocking frames. They were self-employed artisans. They were proud of their skill, protective of the craft, which required a seven-year apprenticeship. And the gradual transplantation of this work into factories in the late 18th century had made those previously independent craftsmen into, you know, drones. Their comings and goings were now dictated by bosses. Those factory bosses were looking to cut corners. And increasingly, the skilled knitters who had been making one-piece stockings before were being undercut by what were called cut-ups. These were big pieces of fabric woven on wide frames from which the shapes of the stockings would be cut out and stitched together. And as you can imagine, those lower quality mass-made stockings could be turned out by non-skilled workers. You know, the master knitters derisively called them cults. They hadn't served their apprenticeship. They were almost like scabs. You know, they were undercutting the skilled workers. And it was all of this that was coming to a head with the more recent factor of the Napoleonic Wars, which was driving down wages. It was

5:17suppressing the economy. And the contemporary chronicler John Blackner here at History of Nottingham Share, he described how the protesters who ended up destroying the stocking frames on this day were complaining about the factory owners for, quote, reducing the established prices for making stockings at a time, too, when every principle of humanity dictated their involvement. IE, people were suffering. Well, the latter, it's got a really bad rap. You know, the authorities obviously painted them as being really violent and destructive. Well, they were violent and destructive. It's destructive, yes. I mean, that's, let's be even handed here. They were doing violent and destructive things. Is that okay? So they were definitely smashing up machines, but they weren't actually hurting too many people. And in fact, the violence tended to be focused on them. There was a particularly bad incident in April 1812 when approximately 2,000 protesters besieged a meal near Manchester and the meal's owner just ordered his men to open fire on the crowd. And that led to the deaths of at least three people and another 18 people were injured really

6:20badly. And then the following day soldiers killed at least five more of the Luddite protesters. Again, earlier that month, around 150 protesters got into an exchange of gunfire. So yes, there was a little bit of violence going on with defenders of another meal in Yorkshire. And that resulted in the deaths of two Luddites. And in response, the Luddites in that region then killed a mill owner who amid the protests had allegedly boasted that he would wade through Luddite blood up to his britches. Yeah, that was William Horstful there, the guy who was murdered. Who, yes, was an outspoken anti-Luddite, but was killed in cold blood one day as he went about to inspect some cloth. And that murder shocked the Parliament, shocked the country. It was described in pretty vivid detail this from the Leeds Mercury. Four men inflicted four wounds in the left side of their victim who instantly fell from his horse and the blood flowed from the wounds in Torrance. So there was suddenly a sense that even if you understood what the grievances were of these

7:25artisan workers who, as you were saying, wanted to work from home. It's funny, isn't it, when you think about what Luddism has come to mean that actually we're now thinking about this 200 years ago as a debate about whether you should work from home or not. But even if you agreed with where they were coming from and you agreed that their product was being undervalued and their artisan skills were being disregarded, this had become something that just felt fundamentally un-English, I guess. It's just not the sort of thing we do. Yeah, and it's a mistake to assume that Luddites were ideologically opposed to the use of machines. As we mentioned, many of these technologies had been around for decades at this point. What they wanted was what we would call a living wage. They didn't mind whether factories were using machines or not. They destroyed the frames as a symbolic gesture, yes, but also because in an era when you've got to recall that at this time, striking, forming a union, collective bargaining were all outlawed. This was one of the only ways that you could communicate your disgruntlement to your boss. You couldn't form a union, you couldn't go and strike. You'd end up

8:29being transported to Australia or clapped inions in prison. So it really is a mistake to look at this as a symbolic gesture against technology. That's not what it was at all. In fact, that use of the term of Luddites to mean a group of people who were anti-technology and anti-progress doesn't emerge until the 1970s. And actually, the origins of the term Luddite are quite interesting. So Ned Ludd, who was alternatively known as Captain, General, or even King Ludd, made his first appearance during a Nottingham protest in November 1811 and quickly became a figurehead of the movement. His supposed command of unseen armies became the thing that the government was sort of concerned about and authorities really were consumed with the task of locating this Ned Ludd himself. He was a completely fictional figure. Yeah, he was a completely fictional character who had derived from an incident that supposedly occurred 22 years earlier in Leicester, where according to the tale, a young apprentice named

9:31Ludd or Luddam, while he was working at a stocking frame, was reprimanded by a superior for knitting too closely. And instead of complying with the order to square his needles, the enraged young apprentice took a hammer and flattened the entire mechanism. And this whole story reached Nottingham where protesters adopted Ned Ludd as their symbolic leader. And in some cases, his address is given as Sherwood Forest, which is obviously a tribute to Robin Hood. And I do wonder if the reason that Lord Ludd turns up in a lot of folk songs at the time and became the emblem of their protest is simply because in a Midlands accent, it rhymes with Robin Hood. The unrest spread across the industrial north in Midlands. And the action took different forms in different locations, depending on what the local industry was. You know, Luddites might target steam-powered looms in cotton towns, in wool towns. They targeted gig mills, a type of machinery that was used in finishing wool. And there was kind of a military precision to the operations. Gangs would smash their way in with their faces covered, break up all the frames of sledgehammers and flee all with their speed and expertise. You know,

10:34they had this name Luddites by now. And there was a real fear that especially with the memory of the French Revolution still pretty fresh in the British aristocracy's mind, this element in particular needed to be cracked down on. And a lot of them couldn't read or write, obviously. So there must have been a feeling of like, how are they doing this? They're not educated. How are they distributing these messages to each other? How are they organising? And the answer was partly things like oral tradition and folk music, which is why General Ludd becomes the thing they're all looking for, because that's what they're singing about. Anyway, as you said, this led ultimately to February 1812 and the Frame Breaking Act, which went a step further than previous acts that had made frame-breaking a criminal offence. It now carried the death penalty. And ultimately, that is what ended this first wave of Luddism, because however committed you were to the cause, you didn't want to die for it. Yeah, and it passed in the House of Parliament, despite the protest of Lord Byron, who used his maiden speech in the House of Lords to oppose the bill. He said that it put the lives of human beings below the value of factory machinery. No, it's funny. I never

11:34think of Lord Byron as actually talking in the House of Lords. It just feels like, because he's a poet, you just think, oh yeah, he was a Lord, but everyone was a Lord back then. I just think, featuring him, he's like making the speech lying on the benches of the House of Lords like an opium pipe in a velvet dressing gown. Like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along, which is why you should try Zip Recruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash zip. Zip Recruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. It's powerful technology identifies people with the right

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