The media.
Welcome, Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Andrew Sage from YouTube channel Andrewism, joined today by James.
Hi.
Sorry, I'm doing my own track, Hi Andrew. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to hear about something. I don't know what yet, so it should be a fun adventure.
Yes, Well, today we are doing a little bit of time traveling. We're gonna embark on a journey to explode movements of about two hundred years ago that I think is still quite relevant even today, particularly in our very technological, fast paced world. So when we put a new James in the early nineteenth century in England, Great which you know is a time of great change, of evil, disease or that jazz.
Yeah, I think I have thrived as a person with diabetes would have made it approximately a couple of weeks.
Yeah. The Industrial Revolution was in full swinging. It hadn't quite reached that point yet as far as I know, but it was transforming the way that people lived and worked. It was a time of innovation, was also a time of great uncertainty, and amidst the class and looms and rise of organization, a group of workers emerged to became
known as the Lerites. They were, you know, some early adopters ah yes, of resistance, Yes, resistance to the changes of the Industrial Revolution, and you know for that cardinal sin they've been missing too preted ever since. So today we're going to be explaining exactly who the the rights were and why the actions resonate with us today in the twenty first century. We'll talk about their history and their motivations and their bravestand against the relentless march of
capitalist progress. We're also such on some figures, some of their tactics and the lasting impact they left on history. But most importantly we'll be covering why they struggle somatters today. So here we are. You know, in the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution and soeping through England, British working families were going through some very tough times as the economy was in turmoil and unemployment was spreading like wildfire. It really wasn't a good situation to be in. There was this
never ending war with Napoleon's France. There was Drian resources and causing what Yorkshire historian Frank Peel described as the hard pinch of poverty, and to make matters worse, food was in short supply and prices were shooting up. Not only were jobs hard to come by, but even putting basic food on the table was becoming a serious challenge. So it was a really tough period for these families and they were feeling that squeeze in every way possible.
So the Lights emerged as a response to these seismic shifts as a moosely organized group of textile workers and weavers who healed primarily but not exclusively, from the nottingham Shire region of England. At the heart of their struggle was the mechanization of the textile industry. Factories powered by steam engines and intricate machinery were replacing traditional cottage industries,
leading to unemployment and a decline in working conditions. In the place of a cottage industry where cloth workers could work as many or as few hours and days suited them, the factory had a reseren where workers would work long hours at dangerous machinery, be fed meager meals, and submit to the punitive authority of the foremant factory owners were winning.
As I alluded to earlier, the Dites were not blindly opposed to this idea of progress, as they've been misinterpreted, but they were seeking to protect their livelihoods and the quality of their craftsmanship. Many of the original rights were
actually quite savvy when it came to technology. In fact, some were highly skilled machine operators that ended up smashing the very machines that they were accustomed to use in They had no issue with welcoming innovations that made their lives and their jobs easier, but they had an issue with the way that the new machinery is being used by the factory owners to reduce them to mare cogs
in the industrial machine. And they didn't like that factory owners were using the machinery to kick out They trained and skilled cloth workers in fear of child laborers and other lower skilled workers would be easier to exploit. Yeah, the cloth for these machines produced was of lower quality, but because it was so cheap to churn out and there was so much of it, the factory owners were still toner profit and so that you know, that sucks for them, which is why the rights to resist these
changes embraced a distinctive form of protest. At the time, label organizing was label organizing as illegal, so they chose a suppose even more drastic method of targets in the newly introduced machines for destruction. Yeah, they were.
Is it E. P. Thompson who called it collective bargaining by riot? Yes, yes, I believe so. Yeah, I think that's an excellent way to understand it. I'm sure we'll get there. But it's Yeah, it's a means of labor organizing when labor organizing is illegal.
Indeed, indeed, I mean, if no other options are available to you, you know, you're pressed against the wall. They have no other choice.
Yeah.
So, these these Loodites would gather together in the dead of the night, usually in secluded areas like forests or hillsides, to plan their actions. To maintain their secrecy, Blodites adopted a strict code of silence, making it very difficult for
authorities to infiltrate their ranks. That secrecy was crucial to their survival and their ability to outwind the authorities, and so under this code they'd go on and break into the factories and smash the machinery and occasionally leave an etching of the infamous ned Lud as a mark of their presence. Ned Luod, by the way, was a symbol not their actual leader. He was a legendary weaver who was said to have been whipped for idleness, so he smashed two knit in frames in a fit of passion.
More likely, Nedlood didn't exist. He was more of like a folkloric character, but the Laites named themselves after him and would call them King Lood and General Luod. Funny enough, the authorities actually thought he was the ringleader of the whole operation, so they tried to hunt him down. Meanwhile, of course the Luddites are jokingly referring to Lud's office and Sheerwood Forest, and some of the Bloodites would actually cross dress as Lud's wives during their protests.
Yeah, I do like every time you find an instance of like cross dressing in history. So it's just amusing to note that. I guess some people have decided that like either either like cross dressing or trans people were invented in like twenty sixteen, not that those two things are the same, but like we can find literally thousands of instances of of course trans people and also crossdressing like as a form of like deliberate sometimes it's transgression.
Sometimes the thing that just people did. But yeah, you can see it in depictions of the Ladyites like people even took the time to paint it into their paintings exactly exactly.
Yeah, but yees, so, I mean the leader wasn't ned a lot. The leader, well, it really was Earl the Last movement. The real instigators were just regular on the ground weavers and craftsmen, folks like, for example, George Mellow, a weaver from Huddersfield who played a pivotal rule in organizing the right actions in the West Riding of Yorkshire, best known for the time that he fatally shot a mill owner in the balls. Yeah chat move indeed, indeed.
But these actions were not just you know, random acts of vandalism and violence. They were a desperate plea for change. In fact, they mainly confined their attacks to manufacturers who specifically use machines in what they called a fraudulent and seitful manner to get around standard labor practices. The Lights wanted machines that made high quality goods, and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone
through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were really their main concerns, and besides the raids, and the smashing. They also had a couple other tricks up their sleeves. They organized public demonstrations, They sent out letters to look industrialists and government officials to lay out their reasons for wrecking the machinery. They weren't just smashing for the reason
with no messaging. Yeah, and in different parts of England, you know, you had different approaches, different stances and different material conditions. So, for example, in the Midlands of England, to the rights had the Company of Framework Knitters, which was this recognized public body that could talk to the capitalists through named representatives, and so they used that legitimacy
as a recognized institution to back up their demands. But up in the northwest of England, textile workers didn't have these established trade institutions, so they used their letters to push for official recognition as a united group of trades people. You know, it's like an early union. The demands went just of course about smashing machines. They also wanted high min own wages and again an end to childwait labor. They were playing the long game. And in Yorkshire, you know,
the tone shifts a bit. They were going from letter writingto making more direct and violent threats against local authorities who they saw supports in these nasty machines that messed with the job market the Yorkshire Writes meant business. In fact, they carried around these sledgehammers that they call the Great Enoch, named after local blacksmith who had manufactured both the hammers and also many of the machines they intended to destroy.
As they declared Enoch made them, Enoch shall break them, which I think is just the division that gives me. Is like, you know, God of War style, you know, swinging around this sledgehammer smash of the machines.
Yeah, yeah, like, I mean, they broke some big things, right, like they weren't. This wasn't like, I know, like some sort of trivial sabotage like frame breaking is. It's still a capital crime in the UK, but it's also a serious feet of strength.
Yes, and I'm going to get into that.
Excellent. Yeah. I love coming from a country with normal laws.
There's so many. Don't even get me started on strange laws around the world. I mean, yeah, uring that there are some really strange strange laws, but yeah, yeah, I'm sure that could be a whole topic for a whole episode.
It could be you could suggest that they're not connected to morality. Perhaps maybe maybe the law and right and wrong is not the same thing.
Hm, you might be onto something there, Yeah, ponder something to think about for sure.
Yeah.
So a lot of these change differences and approaches like I mentioned, really depend on their material conditions. It also depended on the background of the workers. Some of them were frameworkers, some of them are weavers, some of them were spinners, and so they took on different tactics and styles depending on what they were experienced with and where
you found them. Of course, they were sending out death threats to some industrialists as well, and in fact, some of these industrialists were so worried about let light attacks that they had secret chambers built into their buildings as escape plans in case things went south during an attack.
Yeah.
I could imagine them cowering in their holes. Yeah, just like as were outside.
Imagine being like, yeah, I'm making excellent choices in life. I employ hundreds of people, and I've built a secret hole to hiding when they'll never be trying and kill me because I've made their lives so shit.
Yes, Like I am going to create conditions that are so terrible. These people are going to get so angry at me and then I'm just going to make a place to hide, you know. Yeah, so actually rectifying the reasons they're angry.
Yeah, exactly. Like you could simply take the money you spent on your secret escape patch and distributed to people who are literally strung link to put food in their children's mouths. But I guess that's not the logic of capitalism, is it.
Yeah, that'll be too it'll be too humane.
Yes, yeah, yeah, you can't let them get you know, realize that you're afraid of them.
Indeed, for all these tactics, the rights were truly fights, not only for their own jobs, but also for us, say in the future of their industry and their communities. Like regular people of today, they were just trying to provide for their families and defend themselves against the ever expanding incursions of the capitalists. I don't know, James, how do you think the government and factor and has responded to these ordinary people and their desperate and fair please
for change. Yeah, surely it was a human response right.
From Yeah, that's what I would expect as a British person. Throughout history of our government has really shown a lot of humanity and compassion for people, so I'd expected did something similar here. That's what I learned into.
They're so compassionate that they created an empire that the sun would never set on.
Hm.
The reason so considerate, you know, for people who are afraid of the dark.
Yes, yeah, yeah, that's the real reason.
Yeah.
And of course they were doing it to uplift, civilize and christianize the other peoples of the world. And for the other reasons.
Such philanthropists, such philanthropists.
Kind people who bought tea and scones to the rest of the world. The British Empire and the British government. Yeah, never am I going to learn something bad about them?
Yeah, I hate it at you down. But the government and the factory and has responded with, you know, deploying troops to quell the light uprisings and firing against the protesters. In one of the bloodiest incidents in April eighteen twelve, some two thousand protesters marbed a mill there Manchester, and the owner ordered his men because in addition to soldiers, you also have these you know, private militias that capitalists
would hire. So the owner ordered his men to fire into the crowd, killing at least three and wound in eighteen, and then soldiers killed at least five more the next day.
Okay, yeah, that's that's not quite what we'd hope for, is it.
Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Many of the Lights were arrested, many were tortured, some even faced execution or even worse, exile to Australia.
Yeah, they're ultimately the ultimate crime, the ultimate penalty. Rather, yeah, it's sent to the land of kangaroos and where they put mashed potatoes inside their pies. What Yeah, have you not seen this? This is it's terrible. But unfortunately, are you talking about like Shepherd's pie or no. They'll they'll take a meat pie like a normal meat pie, and then they'll cut a bit and then put mashed potatoes like into in the top of it, just to what is called. I have to look now, like I've seen
it on YouTube meat hie mashed potato Australia. You can get it like it in like you know, like like it's like instead of having fish and chips. You can get it at a van like someone will bring it to you.
I think I'm seeing it.
You found it and then they put like gravy as well. Oh man, Yeah, it's uh like I've come from a country that does terrible things to food, but yeah, it's this one is really something else. You can see why people why it was the word.
I have to say though, I do admire that it seems to be a very balanced you know, you get in the cobs, the fats and the proteins in it.
You know, it's like, yeah, and its all in one.
That's that's the gym bro and meats talking, of course, but it seems like a very efficient meal.
Yeah, it's like, it's not that the Cornish pasty is the truly the most efficient working man's power bar because you can you can hold onto the crust and eat the pasty and even if you have like dirty hands from working in a factory, you still get your lunch.
Hmm. Yeah. But we're getting a little bit side.
Yeah, yeah we have. We've traveled a long way.
From the latter exiles Australia. I shut out the thought, but some of them, despite that, kept their fighting spirit to the bitter end, like for example, John Booth and no offense to James, but you know a lot of the names I read like British history are the most generic sound in names. You just casually find someone in British named like John Doe.
Yeah, we do. We're choosing from a limit palette. Like until very recently, we were really pretty pretty, like pretty stodgy on the names, you know, like I mean, I.
Mean, it's it's iconic, but at the same time it's also hilarious that you like everybody from like regular people to like some of the movers and shapers, the leaders in the military and you know, politicians and stuff, just all of them.
Yeah, yeah, it's like they had yeah, yeah, yeah, just some guy. Occasionally you'll get like a Cornelius or a Marmaduke or just some absolute nons with like a really posh name, but yeah, otherwise yeah, it's.
Well apparently like an Enoch, you know.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta respect Enoch. Like once you go outside of England you get some good names. But like, yeah, we were moving with a pretty pretty pretty playing with a playing with a small deck. I guess when it came to names for a while, for I mean.
I can't even talk. My name is Andrews, so I.
Think my name is the most popular name for boys born in the year I was born, So I can't really, I can't really say much.
Oh God, we're going off track again, right John Booth? Right? So John Booth was this nineteen year old apprentice who joined one of the light attacks. He was injured, detained, and died after being tortured to give up the identity of his fellow thelites. A local priest was in the room when he was passing, and his dying words became legendary. So John was like, can you keep a secret? And the priest was like, yes, my child, and then Booth was like, so can I and then he died.
There you go, what a hear?
Yeah? Iconic? Iconic?
Yeah.
So yeah. Government officials by eighteen thirteen were trying to quash the light movement and by any means necessary, so they organize this massive trial in York after the attack on Cartwright's mill, A Rawford's near Clakheaton.
I've got to write, yeah, clak Heaton. I think that seems about right. Where are we in the Yeah, yeah, we're in. I'm signing it on the map, Okay, in the leads. Yeah yeah, Bradford. I've not actually spent much time in that part of the world, but if I had to guess raw folds something like that. We do like one of our another. Another great tradition in Britain is having names which don't bear any relation to the
way they're spelled. We just write them like that. Actually can tell if you're local or not.
Yeah, yeah, I mean we primarily use British spelling conventions Internet in English, so I know all about your center with the R and then the E.
Yeah, defense and yeah, I'm working on a book at the moment and my American Microsoft word is fighting me every step of the way on my spelling.
Yeah, I mean, can't they see that the U is absolutely essential in the word color?
Oh yeah, and without it we wouldn't know what it meant. And that's what language does.
So yeah. So after this attack on Cartwright's mill, Ruffles mayor clak Eaton, the government accused over sixty men, including Mellow and his associates, of various crimes related to the rights activities. It's important to note that not all of these charged men were actually the right Some had no connection to the movement, and while these trials were technically legitimateury trials, many were abandoned due to a lack of evidence. They didn't the acquittal of thirty of those sixty men.
And it's evident that these trials were primarily intended as show trials to discourage others from continuing the activities. And then here's here's where we get to the important bit. Parliament went on to make a machine breaking at eat industrial sabotage a capital crime with the Frame Breaking Act of eighteen twelve.
Yeah, what a normal thing. And they've never repealed it, is that right?
Yeah? I believe I don't think so. Ye're still in the books.
Yeah, listen if you're listening since it was Yeah, I was going to say, if someone's listening in the UK, just give it a try to see what happens. Stake stakes are quite high, but yeah, you know, you never know, they might be might be able to get the Machine Breaking Act struck down a frame branking.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if you know, since it was established in eighteen twelve, if by now a lot of the British colonies you know, might still have it in their books as well. Yeah, yeah, herited that common law and stuff. Yeah, and I'm not like a legal score. I don't know all the deeds on that.
No, I can see Liz trust incorporating it into her platform to return to our leadership position. It's like a very insane kind of Tory position. Like there's there's still this bizarre British like any time we have a protest movement in the streets in the UK, you can like log onto like meta Facebook or whatever and see like a certain type of British person being like sending the army.
Like it's like a like there are people who have not reconstructed their opinions on labor organizing since the LA that period.
Yeah, indeed, indeed they are the Conservative Party canally picture them like smoking cigars with top hats, except you know, they were not capitalists. A lot of them are just like regular workers, just like what are you even doing?
Yeah yeah, yeah, like you've like don't you understand that your economic interest line up these people and not with the Boris Johnson's of this world? And you're so social interest too of course, but.
I mean speaking of of you know, interests aligning, there was actually a politician who did stand against that legislation, and that is you know, the well known English poet Lord Byron. Yeah, he was actually one of the few prominent defenders of that's especially after witnessing how the defendants were treated during the York Child.
I mean, ahead, bar Byron has some surprisingly like good and then he was part of this romantic movement, right, like the idea that the industrial revolution spoiled the innocence of the rural working people, which it's it's paternalist at its core, but like when at least he's not paying for their blood.
Yeah yeah, yeah, it actually that that attitude reminds me of Van go He was another all of his art was very obsessed with the peasants because he just saw it like a better way of life. Yeah, real romanticization of the peasantry.
Yeah, it was. I think it was a thing that sort of spread around Europe in the late nineteenth early twentieth century. Maybe like in the eighteenth centuries, no they yeah, nineteen to twentieth century, like this idea that yeah, like the innocence of the rural peasants have been broken, and like it's just so reflected in so much art from that period.
That is that's literally just like the revolusion of nostalgia. Yeah, fully think about it. You know, it's like it's kind of like our people today are like, oh the nineties was so much better. Oh the two thousands were so much better. Oh the eighties or the seventies. It's just that but with peasants. Yeah yeah, like disco whatever. Yeah, yeah, you're right, Like, yeah, it is.
It's like doing like doing a ironic wearing a fanny pack, but with a peasant or.
Not even just in fashion. It's also like the angel like material reasons, people feel nostalgic. Nostalgic as well. Yeah, like we think about you know, safety, when you think about the ways that our cities have changed, think about you know, the material realities that have changed in these decades, and it makes sense. But just like I wished for the simpler life of the present, our people now wish, you know, go back to the simpler times of.
You have the minus strike when the.
Media posts Jim Crow and colonial independent experience.
Yeah yeah, I mean it's uh, I think also we forget the hardships, but yeah, like it's a way. And change accelerates so much quicker now because we've rarely fucked the whole planet, and climate change accelerating and obviously technological change accelerating, so our nostalgia cycles are much shorter. But yeah, this is just like when I had an estate and I could direct the peasants to trim my trees in
a certain shape, life is better for them. Kind of no, but like in a meaningful sense, right, Like the lives
of working class people were not improved. Right we see like the like GDP, which is a useless metric, but like the amount of of like value of goods the country producers in industrial revolution goes up and up and up, but the quality of life and even life expectancy does not, right, like people are dying earlier and certainly like and chiefly life expectancy is dropping because children are dying, right, either from the industrial conditions or conditions in cities, and so like,
in a meaningful sense, those people's life was not improved. The life of the bourgeoisie was improved, and like we see that later in Britain with things like the Britain's forced to incorporate the bourgeoisie into it into its politics. Right, so that doesn't have a bigger revolution, that's what it does in the Great Reform Act. But like the working class people, it continues to suppress with like after this you know, we look, we say it with the chartists
and like the violent oppression of chartism. But yeah, this nostalgia isn't it helps them, But I guess it's not really invested in their agency. It's more of a paternalist like it's I guess not dissimilar to the way Britain treated its colonies in many ways.
Yeah, And I think another aspect of it as well is, you know, when we look at this sort of nostalgia, whether it's talking about this romantic nostalgia for the simple life of the peasant, always talking about the nostalgia of well, for example, give you an example from Trinidad, the oil boom
period in the seventies and eighties. Right, Yeah, we gain independence nineteen sixty two, and in the seventies and eighties we got this oil boom and you know some other people who live in lavish But whether you talk either of those cases, when you look at the reality of the situation on the ground, it's like, oh, you actually go out to that time, it wasn't Also on Shina ruverses, you know, like it actually was not good to be
a peasant. Actually, I mean there are certain things that you know, a lot better than now in terms of perhaps the vibrants of culture or the ability to lean on a community for support and that sort of thing. But or take for example, this oil boom situation talking about with Trinidad. Yeah, like there was this massive influx of wealth and stuff, but there's also you know, a whole bunch of corruption and also we had the whole nineteen seventy Black Power revolution that was born out of
the frustration of the people at the time. There's all sunshine and rainbows, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's just always this sense like you see it in like nostalgia as well, right, like the nostalgia for East Germany that the German people will talk about, like you also had the starz e Like.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
I mean I guess at it when I look at some of the maps of like like they're talking about with Germany, some of the data related maps and the sociological data of things like religiosity or things. Yeah, current some other examples, but there's some like stark differences between the two sides of the country.
Yeah, yeah, very much.
So, so I completely understand people would feel like, oh, we feel so separate and distinct from you know, West Germany and all that stuff.
But yeah, and when you've become like they went from being like a I guess, like a nation within the USSR to like the often the less economically advantage parts of a nation which is near liberal and capitalist, and like neoliberal capitalism is not kind to the less economically
advance advantage people. It wasn't a great situation before either, to be clear, but like, I can see how suddenly being incorporated into like not not everyone's going through this, but you are are, and the state's not going to do fuck all to help you is like I can see how that might promote some nostalgia.
Definitely, definitely, and I mean speaking of states doing nothing. At this time, Byron is making his speech before the Lord's and in that speech, laced with sarcasm, of course, he was highlighting the benefits of automation, which he believe
led to the production of inferior goods and unemployment. He concluded that the proposed law, the Frame Breaking active eighteen twelve, was only missing two crucial elements to be effective twelve butchers for a jury and a Jeffries for a judge, which was a reference to George Jeffries an infamous hanging judge known for his very harsh judgments.
Yeah, it's also mad that, like, but also not uncommon in this period that you are seeing like the leftmost political opinion being advanced within Parliament being advanced in the hereditary chamber, like the House of Lord, Like.
Yeah, exactly as soon the that's the way the aristocratic Yeah, the aristocratic realm is still you know, having to deal with this.
Yeah, it's very much tied to like a paternalism and a sort of feudal attitude. But it's just it's just fascinating to see, like, and it does happen in the especially and I think also there's this a deep, deep disdain for new money that is a powerfully British vibe that that comes especially from the House of Lords, right, like like this like they don't identify with the bourgeoisie at all and fucking hate them because they're they're they're turning up at the country club or whatever.
Yeah, and it's so it's so funny without a lot of old money. And I'm gonna say this, and I'm gonna you know, give back contract. What's so funny about the old money, folks, is that a lot of other cases. They don't even have like as much money as the new money people. Yes, about money for them at this point, it's really just about linear and culture and whatever.
Yeah, Like Britain's class thing is like it's almost like a caste system, Like your cast is your class is inherited regardless of your actual financial means. Like they're like lord living in a castle that he can't afford to heat. It's like a it's like a it's a trope for a reason in Britain, I guess.
Indeed, indeed. Yeah, But the passing of that act, and in the years had followed, the Light movement came to an end. But the actions left a lasting mark on the labor movement. There's tactics of collective action. Even though Clandestine laid the groundwork for future labor unions, demonstrating the power of organized resistance, defenders of their way of life, reminders the technology wild transformative cano disrupt lives and communities.
The Lights experiences, the Lights experiences echo even today, you know, in an era with the fear of technological unemployment, with discussions and the impact of automation and AI.
Yeah, you know, before he.
Had said his infamous last words. John Booth also said that the new machinery might be man's chief blessing instead of his curse, if society were differently constituted. In other ways, technology can either help common food or harm them, depending on not just what the technology is, but also what society the technology develops within.
Yeah, that's very true.
So I'll leave you all with that for now, and next time we'll be shifting off focused to the present day and examining how Luddism's principles have been applied by movements of the twentieth and twenty first century.
Cool nice.
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