Who were the Luddites?

Who exactly were the Luddites? And what did being a Luddite mean? Click the headings below to find out more...

What is a Luddite?

THE Luddites, armed with hammers, pistols and a desperation to protect their livelihoods, seized the imagination of the British public in the early-nineteenth century. And they have held on to it. Two centuries later, the word 'Luddite' is still familiar all round the English-speaking world, even if not fully understood.

Were the Luddites simply a band of destructive men who seriously thought that by smashing the new machines in the factories of the early 1800s they could 'uninvent' the technology that threatened to take away their jobs and their social status as elite craftsmen? That is how they are often seen today, and the word 'Luddite' is used for anybody who is reluctant to use a computer or a mobile phone!

But there was more to the original Luddites. Perhaps violent protest was the only way they could exert any control over the changes taking place in their industries. Perhaps Luddism should be seen as a drastic form of collective bargaining. Perhaps some Luddites were fired by the radical ideas thrown up in the wake of the French Revolution. And what role was played by the economic hardships that accompanied Britain’s long war with Napoleonic France?

These are some of the issues that commentators and historians have debated for 200 years. And the bicentenary of the central drama in the Luddite saga is an ideal time for a fresh appraisal.

Did You Know?

Did You Know?

Some accounts of Luddite raids have the men dressing as women, to disguise themselves. Later in the century, the 'Rebecca Riots' in Wales, protesting against turnpike gates, also featured cross-dressing men.

When 64 Luddites were placed in the dock at York in 1813, there were 24 men from the Huddersfield area, all of them croppers, with an average age of 27.

Luddites who avoided arrest dare not speak about their involvement, but in the 1870s, when they would have been very old men, they began to whisper some of their secrets to local historians. This is sometimes called 'the hidden history of Luddism'.

George Walker's well-known illustrated book 'The Costume of Yorkshire', published in 1814, has a picture showing croppers in their workshop and the text makes reference to 'the late unhappy disturbances' and 'the prompt execution of some of the ringleaders'.

The dramatic events of 1812-1813 in Yorkshire have been the basis of many novels, since Charlotte Bronte's 'Shirley' in 1848. An unlikely entry into the sequence was 'Through the Fray', written in 1885 by G.A. Henty, best known for his tales of derring-do in the overseas Empire.

Twentieth-century Halifax author Phyllis Bentley's epic novel of 1931, 'Inheritance', begins with the Luddite riots. It was made into a 10-episode ITV drama in 1967. Among the stars were John Thaw and James Bolam.

Croppers worked hard, manipulating their enormous shears, but they also played hard and often gained a bad reputation. In 1814 George Walker wrote that 'the majority are idle and dissolute, owing perhaps partly to the laborious nature of their occupation, which too often induces habits of drunkenness...'

Wellington's army in the Peninsular was smaller in number than the 12,000 troops assigned to deal with Luddite disturbances in 1812. In Huddersfield alone, 1,000 troops were stationed.

Lord Byron was the Luddites' friend! For his maiden speech in the House in of Lords, in February 1812, he denounced a new law to make frame-breaking punishable by death and urged greater understanding of the plight of people thrown out of work by new machinery. His speech caused a sensation but he failed to halt the legislation.

As a young man, George Mellor - sometimes called the General Ludd of Yorkshire - might have visited Russia and brought back with him the long-barrelled pistol that he used to gun down the mill owner William Horsfall.

The 1830s saw a rural equivalent to Luddism, when agricultural workers in the South of England smashed threshing machines and torched haystacks. Their answer to General Ludd was the mythical Captain Swing.

In the late-1990s there was a neo-Luddite movement in the USA, opposed to globalisation. In 1996 a 'Second Luddite Congress' was held in Ohio.

Joseph Radcliffe, the Milnsbridge magistrate who was energetic in the pursuit and interrogation of Luddites, earned a baronetcy for his efforts but he was deeply unpopular on his home patch.

The headquarters of West Riding Luddism was said to be the finishing, or cropping shop of John Wood at Longroyd Bridge, near Huddersfield, although the proprietor claimed ignorance of any plots being laid. One of the employees was his stepson, George Mellor, alias the General Ludd of Yorkshire.

How to spot a cropper and a potential Luddite: The painful process of learning to manipulate the heavy shears led to the wrists becoming calloused, or "hooved."

When a man took the Luddite oath, the process was known as "twisting in." The fearsome language of the oath stated that the penalty for giving away Luddite secrets would be "sent out of the world by the first brother who shall meet me, and my name and character blotted out of existence and never to be remembered but with contempt and abhorrence."

A Yorkshire legend had it that croppers were such a wild, drunken bunch that when they all ended up in hell the Devil was desperate to get rid of them. So he opened the gates again and shouted "Ale! Ale!". The croppers rushed out and the Devil bolted the gates of hell after them...

The St Crispin Inn in Halifax was the meeting place for radicals who made common cause with the Luddites. They included the elderly John Baines who would be sentenced to seven years transportation for administering an illegal oath. The folk museum at Shibden Hall, Halifax, has a reconstruction of the St Crispin Inn which is open to visitors.

Who is General Ned?

In the early months of 1811 the first threatening letters from General Ned Ludd and the Army of Redressers, were sent to employers in Nottingham. Workers, upset by wage reductions and the use of unapprenticed workmen, began to break into factories at night to destroy the new machines that the employers were using. In a three-week period over two hundred stocking frames were destroyed. In March, 1811, several attacks were taking place every night and theNottingham authorities had to enroll four hundred special constables to protect the factories. To help catch the culprits, the Prince Regent offered £50 to anyone "giving information on any person or persons wickedly breaking the frames".

Luddism gradually spread to Yorkshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire. In Yorkshire, croppers, a small and highly skilled group of cloth finishers, turned their anger on the new shearing frame that they feared would put them out of work. In February and March, 1812, factories were attacked by Luddites in Huddersfield, Halifax, Wakefield and Leeds.

In February 1812 the government of Spencer Perceval proposed that machine-breaking should become a capital offence. Despite a passionate speech by Lord Byron in the House of Lords, Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act that enabled people convicted of machine-breaking to be sentenced to death. As a further precaution, the government ordered 12,000 troops into the areas where the Luddites were active.

On of the most serious Luddite attacks took place at Rawfolds Mill near Brighouse in Yorkshire. William Cartwright, the owner of Rawfolds Mill, had been using cloth-finishing machinery since 1811. Local croppers began losing their jobs and after a meeting at Saint Crispin public house, they decided to try and destroy the cloth-finishing machinery at Rawfolds Mill. Cartwright was suspecting trouble and arranged for the mill to be protected by armed guards.

Led by George Mellor, a young cropper from Huddersfield, the attack on Rawfolds Mill took place on 11th April, 1812. The Luddites failed in gain entry and by the time they left, two of the croppers had been mortally wounded. Seven days later the Luddites killed William Horsfall, another large mill-owner in the area. The authorities rounded up over a hundred suspects. Of these, sixty-four were indicted. Three men were executed for the murder of Horsfall and another fourteen were hung for the attack on Rawfolds Mill.

Throughout 1812 there were attacks on Lancashire cotton mills. Local handloom weavers objected to the introduction of power looms. On 20th March, 1812 the warehouse of William Radcliffe, one of the first manufacturers to use the power-loom, was attacked in Stockport.

Wheat prices soared in 1812. Unable to feed their families, workers became desperate. There were food riots in Manchester, Oldham, Ashton, Rochdale, Stockport and Macclesfield. On 20th April several thousand men attacked Burton's Mill at Middleton near Manchester. Emanuel Burton, who knew that his policy of buying power-looms had upset local handloom weavers, had recruited armed guards and three members of the crowd were killed by musket-fire. The following day the men returned and after failing to break-in to the mill, they burnt down Emanuel Burton's house. The military arrived and another seven men were killed.