Paul Dawson, The Battle Against the Luddites (Pen & Sword, 2023)
I have been called a Luddite, someone who cannot accept technological progress and would rather break the machine than adopt it. It is quite a common insult, but it doesn’t mean historically what most people think it does. Paul Dawson’s latest book surveys the Luddites and paints a far different picture than most would expect. They were not reactionary thugs, but revolutionaries, or perhaps counter-revolutionaries, seeking to find their place in the industrial revolution sweeping England during the Napoleonic Wars.
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Dawson opens in 1803 with Britain divided along class and religious grounds. Luddism’s epicentre lay in the woollen industry in Yorkshire, which was transforming from a cottage industry to a factory system based on machines. From the late 18th Century, the Luddites smashed machines and terrorised the emerging capitalist class in unrest that extended to rural areas as the Enclosure system took hold. These protests, Dawson argues, were underpinned by Jacobin ideology and non-conformist religion. An emerging social and economic crisis in the 1790s, capped by a terrible harvest in 1799, led to the nascent working class becoming organised, causing fears of a French-style revolution amongst the ruling class. Luddites, according to Dawson, were part of this broader class struggle. In 1802, they burned mills and formed illegal trade unions. The Tory government, argues Dawson, backed capital over labour, however, using threats of force and prison to make their case. The Whigs, on the other hand, often sided with the workers. All this was set against an economy struggling through the often unpopular Napoleonic wars. Peace petitions to the government failed though, prompting increased working class resistance through violence.
We move forward to Nottingham in 1811 with targeted attacks on machine owners and general unrest. Then came the loss of American trade, making matters worse through increased unemployment and inflation. More violence erupted in 1812, some of it armed and organised with military precision. Disturbances spread into Lancashire. Then came food riots. A thoroughly alarmed Government deployed Dragoons to quell the violence by using violence, but the Luddite outbreak evolved into a revolutionary movement, argues Dawson, with many believing that the French would assist. The government reacted by mustering an army near Manchester that embarked on a wave of ‘military pacification’. Nevertheless, the assassination of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, in May 1812, met with open celebrations in Luddite supporting territories. Throughout the summer, the Luddites conducted raids to collect arms. The Government responded with repressive tactics on the ground while adopting legislation designed to support coercion while alleviating some of the economic conditions underlying the Luddite cause. The government’s carrot and stick tactics weakened the Luddites, and the movement was all but routed by November 1812. Show trials then executions followed in 1813 literally killing Luddite support. The Luddites may have been defeated, notes Dawson, but Luddism was not as resurgent violence in 1816 and 1817 demonstrated. Dawson concludes by reinserting the Luddites into the broader class struggle against those exploiting the emerging working class in a time of severe disruption.
The Battle Against the Luddites is a misleading title for this book, which focuses primarily on the rise and fall of the Luddites with government action a necessary but secondary part of the story. Dawson’s quite orthodox Marxist interpretation of the Luddites might also be questioned, particularly when he makes comparisons to the Miners’ strikes of the 1980s, though he just about steers clear of allowing his argument to become a polemic. Neither of those issues make this a bad book, however. Dawson’s detailed narrative is a valuable contribution to the literature on the Luddites. Moreover, Dawson’s inclusion of contemporary quotes adds to our understanding of this highly influential movement for the foundations of the English working class. After reading this, you certainly could not dismiss the Luddites as just machine breaking thugs.
