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Kindle Notes & Highlights
True enough, much of this paternalist legislation had been in origin not only restrictive, but, for the working man, punitive. Nevertheless, there was within it the shadowy image of a benevolent corporate state, in which there were legislative as well as moral sanctions against the unscrupulous manufacturer or the unjust employer, and in which the journeymen were a recognised “estate”, however low, in the realm.
These ideals may never have been much more than ideals; by the end of the 18th century they may have been threadbare. But they had a powerful reality, none the less, in the notion of what ought to be, to which artisans, journeymen, and many small masters appealed.
Moreover, it is sometimes forgotten how rapid the abrogation of paternalist legislation was.
Thereafter, in the space of ten years, almost the entire paternalist code was swept away.
During the same ten years workers, penalised under the Combination Acts for any direct trade union action, increasingly had recourse to the courts in attempts to enforce obsolescent legislation.
The great majority of these cases were unsuccessful. The few which succeeded exhausted the funds of the unions and brought derisory damages.
They were caught squarely between two fires. On the one hand, they faced the fire of established order.
On the other hand, the men faced the fire of their employers, who gained every day fresh reinforcements from the disciples of laissez faire
The gap in status between a “servant”, a hired wage-labourer subject to the orders and discipline of the master, and an artisan, who might “come and go” as he pleased, was wide enough for men to shed blood rather than allow themselves to be pushed from one side to the other.
And, in the value-system of the community, those who resisted degradation were in the right.
It is easy to forget how evil a reputation the new cotton-mills had acquired. They were centres of exploitation, monstrous prisons in which children were confined,
centres of immorality and of industrial conflict;2 above all, they reduced the industrious artisan to “a dependant State.
picture of the Luddism of these years as a blind opposition to machinery as such becomes less and less tenable. What was at issue was the “freedom” of the capitalist to destroy the customs of the trade, whether by new machinery, by the factory-system, or by unrestricted competition, beating-down wages, undercutting his rivals,
and undermining standards of craftsmanship.
All these demands looked forwards, as much as backwards; and they contained within them a shadowy image, not so much of a paternalist, but of a democratic community, in which industrial growth should be regulated according to ethical priorities and the pursuit of profit be subordinated to human needs.
Such methods were sometimes aimed at machinery held to be obnoxious as such. More often they were a means of enforcing customary conditions, intimidating blacklegs, “illegal” men, or masters, or were (often effective) ancillary means to strike or other “trade union” action.
while finding its origin in particular industrial grievances, Luddism was a quasi-insurrectionary movement
this first outbreak of March and April created no sensation. Riots of one kind or another were endemic in the manufacturing districts, and aroused little comment. But early in November 1811, Luddism appeared in a much more disciplined form. Frame-breaking was no longer the work of “rioters” but of smaller, disciplined bands, who moved rapidly from village to village at night.
In the first week of February 1812, this—the major phase of Midlands Luddism—died away. There were three reasons. First, the Luddites were partially successful—the majority of hosiers had agreed to pay better prices, and wages had generally risen by as much as 2s. a week. Second, there were now several thousand troops in the area, supplemented by special constables and local watch
parties. Third, the Bill to make frame-breaking a capital offence was now before Parliament, and (as we have seen) Luddism gave way suddenly to constitutional agitation
Thus Luddism not only brought magistrate and mill-owner together, it also made inevitable concessions by the
administration to the manufacturing interest. And these concessions were received with triumph, with the repeal of the Orders in Council in June 1812.2 Luddism perhaps hastened this event as much as the constitutional agitation of Attwood and Brougham. But repeal took place against an even more threatening background, for by this time serious disorders in Lancashire had been added to the Luddism of Yorkshire and the Midlands.
In these years, moreover, the Government was hated by the working people and actively disliked by many in the middle class. Even if, on the basis of such depositions as that of Broughton, the law officers had advised that a prosecution for treason might be instituted, it was not in the interest of the authorities to proceed in this manner. Suspicion that they were acting mainly out of political motives would have inflamed public opinion.
Thus, if it is asked why no charge of treason was advanced, the answer is that such a charge would have been unpopular, doubtful in law, and might (as in the Manchester case) have resulted in an acquittal.
At York, the “injured laws” and the values of order were appeased once it was certain that Horsfall’s murderers were condemned, that several men were to be transported for oath-taking, and that fourteen others should go to the scaffold for robbery of arms and night attacks.
No account of Luddism is satisfactory which is confined to a limited industrial interpretation, or which dismisses its insurrectionary undertones with talk of a few “hotheads”
It commenced (1811) in Nottingham as a form of direct “trade union” enforcement, endorsed by the working community. As such it at once incurred outlawry, and its very situation drove it in a more insurrectionary direction. By the winter of 1811–12 it is likely that “delegates”, whether official or unofficial, did travel to other parts of the north.2 Yorkshire Luddism (February 1812) commenced in a more insurrectionary temper. On the one hand, the
long-rankling grievances of the croppers were blown into flame by the Nottingham example. On the other hand, small groups of democrats or Painites saw in Luddism a more general revolutionary opportunity.
whatever shadowy links the weavers’ union, the “Knights of the Needle”, or travelling Irish delegates provided, it is certain that Luddism was a movement without national leadership or centre, and with scarcely any national objectives beyond common distress and the desire to overturn the Government.
at present the whole of these Revolutionary Movements are limited to the lowest orders of the people generally; to the places where they show themselves; and that no concert exists, nor no plan is laid, further than is manifested in the open acts of violence that are daily committed.
Luddism may be seen as the nearest thing to a “peasant’s revolt” of industrial workers; instead of sacking the chateaux, the most immediate object which symbolised their oppression—the gig-mill or power-loom mill—was attacked.
Only in mid-summer 1812 does it appear that a serious conspiratorial organisation was coming into existence, which had detached itself from limited industrial grievances and was extending into new districts. By August (in Captain Raynes’ view) the Luddites must either “make a desperate effort to rise in a body”, or else the movement
must collapse.1 Two causes brought it to an end. First, the repeal of the Orders in Council, and a rapid improvement in trade. Second, the increasing pressure of the authorities: more troops, more spies, more arrests, and the executions at Chester and Lancaster.
One can see Luddism as a manifestation of a working-class culture of greater independence and complexity than any known to the 18th century.
the agitation for parliamentary reform commenced at exactly the point where Luddism was defeated.
After 1815 the claims of Rights of Man had little
novelty; they were now assumed
the shift in the sub-political attitudes of the masses in the provinces, and especially in the Midlands and the north during the war years.
England, in 1792, had been governed by consent and deference, supplemented by the gallows and the “Church-and-King” mob. In 1816 the
English people were held down by force.
(This tour—and Oliver’s tours in 1817—remind us that we are too ready to emphasise the difficulties of communication before the coming of the railways.) At each of these centres there was a nucleus of reformers who had undertaken arrangements for the meeting. Cartwright placed himself at their service, no matter whether they were gentlemen, small tradesmen, artisans or weavers; and he presented a correct cold shoulder to the tepid gentry and large Whig employers who were scandalised at the rabble with which he associated.
But the consistent thrust behind the reform movement came from “the industrious classes”—stockingers, hand-loom weavers, cotton-spinners, artisans, and, in association with these, a widespread scattering of small masters, tradesmen, publicans, booksellers and professional men, from among which groups the officers of local political societies were sometimes drawn.
The complexion of the reform movement differed from one region to another, and this had its bearing upon strategy and emphasis.
It is less easy to indicate an authentic London Radicalism deriving from its industrial structure or community patterns. Everyone who aspired to Radical
leadership or influence had a London following—Cobbett, Burdett, Carlile, Thistlewood, the Benthamites, Henry Hunt and many more. From the London presses there came a constant outpouring of Radical papers and books. But London itself rarely appeared as a national focus for popular reform organisation until the eve of 1832.
There is a sense of impermanence about the London leadership. Prominent national personalities, orators, wire-pullers, journalists or tavern demagogues, succeeded each other in favour, and often engaged in bitter internecine polemics in full public view.
Whenever a working man appeared to be rising “above himself” even in the reform movement he quickly drew the jealousy of many of his own class.
Next, there was that demagogic element, inevitable in a popular movement excluded from power or hope of power, which encouraged the wholly unconstructive rhetoric of denunciation.
The very frustrations of a popular movement, in which thousands of powerless men were pitted against an armed Establishment, were released in hyperbole; and Hunt, as the orator at the great reform assemblies, knew how to touch these responses. His style of oratory was given to him by the frustrations of those whom he addressed.
But many other factors contributed to the elevation of the demagogue. At the national level, Radicalism never knew the self-discipline of political organisation.
