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Who, exactly, were the Luddites? · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Love the show. We are today talking about a very
2:17
Speaker 1: specific type of resentment that comes along with feeling as
2:21
Speaker 1: though you were being replaced. Uh. We're sort of in
2:24
Speaker 1: a situation with that right now in in the country,
2:26
Speaker 1: in the world where technology is starting to creep in
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Speaker 1: and replace jobs that were once you know, largely occupied
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Speaker 1: by human people, things like check out kiosks at stores,
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Speaker 1: and you know, even the idea of AI coming in
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Speaker 1: and replacing the work of graphic designers, you know, with
2:43
Speaker 1: some of these open you know, uh Dolly AI kind
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Speaker 1: of images or mid journey. You know, there's a lot
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Speaker 1: of um unease in the art community around the idea
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Speaker 1: of being able to just enter some text and generate
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Speaker 1: an image that technically is plumbing the depths of the
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Speaker 1: work other artists that is available on the internet to
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Speaker 1: kind of create this similacrum of art. Um. But we're
3:06
Speaker 1: talking about kind of the earliest days of this concept,
3:10
Speaker 1: the idea of skilled workers feeling not just feeling, you know, scared,
3:16
Speaker 1: but but genuinely being sacked because they their jobs are
3:21
Speaker 1: no longer required due to advancements in technology during the
3:25
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution. Yeah. Now this one is of a special
3:30
Speaker 1: interest to me, uh and to you, I believe, as
3:33
Speaker 1: well as our research associate, uh, the one and only
3:36
Speaker 1: Zach Williams, who again you'll meet very soon in an
3:38
Speaker 1: upcoming episode. You may have heard someone call someone else
3:43
Speaker 1: a luddite, like or you may hear someone explain, um, uh,
3:49
Speaker 1: their relationship with the technology they don't get right, like, hey, guys, sorry,
3:53
Speaker 1: I had a tough time with this Adobe product or
3:56
Speaker 1: this DOCU sign. I'm kind of a luddite. But it's
4:00
Speaker 1: use Uh it's weird because it's kind of like those
4:02
Speaker 1: same way people say you're a philistine. There's a story
4:06
Speaker 1: behind these terms, and it's a story that, um, we
4:09
Speaker 1: think a lot of people don't fully realize. Uh. The Luddites,
4:13
Speaker 1: as you so beautifully set us up here to explordinal there.
4:18
Speaker 1: They were a real people. And when I said people,
4:21
Speaker 1: I don't mean like a a nation. It's a real
4:25
Speaker 1: community of people. And around the turn of eighteen hundred
4:31
Speaker 1: our story begins the textile industry in the United Kingdom.
4:36
Speaker 1: It's a huge, huge deal. As a matter of fact,
4:40
Speaker 1: in the north of the UK around this time, a
4:44
Speaker 1: ton of people, in one way or another worked in
4:47
Speaker 1: the textile industry. And it was partially still a cottage industry, right.
4:51
Speaker 1: People were working from home literally in their cottages, and
4:55
Speaker 1: they were doing time intensive labor by hand. They were
4:59
Speaker 1: making style suckings. Cotton spinners were creating yard and I
5:04
Speaker 1: think one group that's particularly interesting to us today would
5:09
Speaker 1: be the croppers. Uh. They take these large sheets of
5:13
Speaker 1: of this woven wool fabric and then they clean it up.
5:18
Speaker 1: They trim off the rough surface so it's all nice
5:21
Speaker 1: and smooth. Yeah, like a nice soft, cozy blanking to
5:25
Speaker 1: back up one half inch bed. Where at what point
5:29
Speaker 1: do you think the concept of spinning a yarn became
5:33
Speaker 1: a euphemism for telling the story. Oh, that's a great question,
5:37
Speaker 1: and we see this pretty often not just in English,
5:40
Speaker 1: but in other other languages. A description of a physical
5:46
Speaker 1: act becomes a figurative thing. It becomes an idiom or
5:52
Speaker 1: return of phrase, right, like, uh, we'll we'll cross that
5:56
Speaker 1: bridge where we get there? You know, I don't know,
6:00
Speaker 1: I guess it would say, um, I had heard weirdly
6:05
Speaker 1: enough that it came from nautical slang. Well. It also
6:09
Speaker 1: reminds me of the idea of spinning a story from
6:12
Speaker 1: whole cloth, the idea of making something up from scratch,
6:16
Speaker 1: you know, or that would you know, telling a lie,
6:18
Speaker 1: which sometimes a story can just be a very theatrical lie.
6:22
Speaker 1: But I love the idea of your taking what essentially
6:25
Speaker 1: is raw material and you're turning it into something of beauty,
6:28
Speaker 1: which I think is a very appropriate, you know, a
6:31
Speaker 1: metaphor for telling the story. But uh, sorry, I just
6:33
Speaker 1: wanted to get out of the way. You know, I'm
6:35
Speaker 1: always hung up on these little things. So this was
6:38
Speaker 1: a very important job. These croppers, the ones that we
6:41
Speaker 1: were describing as kind of trimming the fabric and making
6:45
Speaker 1: it really really smooth and soft. Um, they had to
6:48
Speaker 1: be muscular folks because they had to, like, you know,
6:52
Speaker 1: use these big, kind of heavy pieces of machinery to
6:56
Speaker 1: guide them across the fabric to get these you know,
6:58
Speaker 1: these trimmings. And they also were incredibly well paid because
7:04
Speaker 1: they didn't have to have a special set of skills
7:06
Speaker 1: like Liam Neeson style. Um. Therefore, they commanded a significant
7:11
Speaker 1: amount of control over their work life. There was something
7:16
Speaker 1: that we have completely come to take for granted, or
7:20
Speaker 1: take for not granted because we don't have it is
7:23
Speaker 1: the work life balance. This is a very important thing.
7:26
Speaker 1: They had holidays built in. They even took Monday's off
7:29
Speaker 1: so they could get drunk. They called it Saint Monday.
7:32
Speaker 1: It was yeah, bizarre. And then this is all that
7:35
Speaker 1: kind of they were able to demand this even before
7:37
Speaker 1: the time of unions. Then there may have been, you know,
7:40
Speaker 1: a guild which would have probably had some kind of
7:43
Speaker 1: collective bargaining power, you know, or at least what would
7:46
Speaker 1: kind of be the equivalent of that back in those days.
7:48
Speaker 1: But they were able to really get a lot of
7:51
Speaker 1: of of perks. Yeah, yeah, and they were they were
7:56
Speaker 1: known throughout the industry and the country as being the
8:01
Speaker 1: least manageable of any employed people. Uh. This started to
8:07
Speaker 1: become a problem in the first ten years of the
8:11
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, the textile industry was in trouble. There was
8:15
Speaker 1: a decade of war with Napoleon that had halted trade,
8:20
Speaker 1: and again an interesting parallel to today and the looming
8:24
Speaker 1: supply chain crisis, the cost of food and everything you
8:28
Speaker 1: could buy, the cost of living in general is going
8:31
Speaker 1: up pretty significantly. Also, the textile industry is inherently part
8:36
Speaker 1: of the fashion industry, and fashion, as we know is fickle.
8:40
Speaker 1: Check out our episodes on fashions of yesteryear. Uh Men
8:45
Speaker 1: began wearing a different type of clothing. They started rocking
8:50
Speaker 1: these things called trousers, which were spelled t r o
8:55
Speaker 1: w S e r s at the time, which meant
8:57
Speaker 1: demand for stockings plummeted, and the merchant class, the folks
9:04
Speaker 1: who you know, make their big off of paying hosiers
9:09
Speaker 1: and croppers and then weavers and then selling the finished product.
9:14
Speaker 1: They had to figure out a way to contain these
9:17
Speaker 1: rising costs. So the first thing they did was attempt
9:22
Speaker 1: to reduce wages while at the same time bringing in
9:28
Speaker 1: ding ding ding, new improved technology, new new kinds of
9:35
Speaker 1: new kinds of rigs, new processes, in particular what one
9:39
Speaker 1: thing called a gig mill and a gig mill would
9:42
Speaker 1: let a single person crop wool much much more quickly
9:48
Speaker 1: than the old methods. You know. It reminds me of
9:50
Speaker 1: this great Mitchell and Web sketch about the what is
9:53
Speaker 1: it the Stone Age entering the Bronze Age? Did you
9:58
Speaker 1: ever see that? When I don't think I saw that
9:59
Speaker 1: one I of those guys, but uh, definitely haven't seen
10:02
Speaker 1: every every bit of their show. I'll send it to
10:04
Speaker 1: you after this. Also, sometimes folks peaked by the ridiculous curtain.
10:09
Speaker 1: It is not uncommon for us to pause recording and
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Speaker 1: watch things that we sent to each other. But we're
10:16
Speaker 1: we're being pros today, so we're gonna We're gonna. I'll
10:19
Speaker 1: just send it to you after work, but but it
10:21
Speaker 1: will be worth it solid. Yes, So this this other
10:25
Speaker 1: stuff they do, man, they these the merchant class. They
10:30
Speaker 1: have these new frames, wide stocking frames, and these stocking
10:35
Speaker 1: frames will let a weaver produce stockings six times faster
10:40
Speaker 1: than before to meet There's a question for me here though.
10:44
Speaker 1: If stockings are already going out of fashion, I guess
10:49
Speaker 1: there's still some sort of demand, but it seems like
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Speaker 1: maybe not the most productive thing to make the product
10:57
Speaker 1: people don't want six times faster. Yeah, I guess it
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Speaker 1: would have been what they would have referred to as
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Speaker 1: their woolens, you know, like, um, I think possibly a
11:08
Speaker 1: combination of defenses against the cold, but also I think
11:13
Speaker 1: they were probably really popular, um and puritanical sets. You know,
11:17
Speaker 1: the idea of making sure that your your legs were
11:19
Speaker 1: covered and all of that good stuff. Um, you know
11:22
Speaker 1: you're a woman. Um. But yeah, it was veering out
11:27
Speaker 1: of that more puritanical territory and into the Enlightenment essentially, right,
11:32
Speaker 1: I mean that's where we were heading. Well, they did this,
11:35
Speaker 1: you know, they did something that really lays down the
11:39
Speaker 1: precedent for a lot of worker employer tensions in the
11:45
Speaker 1: modern day with If we look at the specifics here
11:49
Speaker 1: of this stocking change, then what would happen is instead
11:54
Speaker 1: of weaving an entire stocking arounds by hand, you produced
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Speaker 1: this big sheet of hosiery basically stocking material. You cut
12:03
Speaker 1: it up and then you would put it together. The
12:07
Speaker 1: problem was the quality just wasn't there. These cut up
12:11
Speaker 1: stockings will fall apart quickly, but you didn't need highly skilled,
12:17
Speaker 1: highly trained workers to make them, and the merchants don't care.
12:23
Speaker 1: We're also we owe a shout out to Clive Thompson
12:26
Speaker 1: over the Smithsonian because he wrote a fantastic article about this. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: with a really great headline too. When robots take all
12:33
Speaker 1: of our jobs remember the Luddites, as we were talking
12:35
Speaker 1: about kind of at the top of the show, this
12:37
Speaker 1: is not in a brand new concept, this concern of
12:41
Speaker 1: of being replaced, you know, by a machine. And certainly
12:44
Speaker 1: these were not quote unquote smart machines, but technology in
12:48
Speaker 1: and of itself. Ben as as you often like to say,
12:51
Speaker 1: remember who exactly the quote is from. But Arthur C. Clark, Um,
12:56
Speaker 1: you know, in a certain context, is indistinguishable from magic. So, um,
13:01
Speaker 1: you have this very powerful force, um, let's call it,
13:05
Speaker 1: you know, technological magic that's sweeping in and replacing the
13:09
Speaker 1: job of several individuals. Um. And this is not this
13:13
Speaker 1: is not this is not going unnoticed. I mean this
13:15
Speaker 1: is you know again, we had these these these croppers
13:18
Speaker 1: that were occupying a very kind of privileged position in
13:21
Speaker 1: the workforce. Um, they were able to get these demands mets,
13:25
Speaker 1: you know, all their vacation time and then their perks
13:28
Speaker 1: in their pay and now all of a sudden, well
13:30
Speaker 1: we don't need you anymore or at least we don't
13:32
Speaker 1: need as many of you. Yeah, no longer in the
13:35
Speaker 1: catbird seat. Uh. The merchant's cost cutting gambit actually works
13:41
Speaker 1: out for them, or appears to for a time. We
13:44
Speaker 1: owe a nod of thanks to Kevin Binfield, an English
13:48
Speaker 1: professor at Murray State University. Uh and a guy who
13:51
Speaker 1: actually is the editor of Writings of the Luddites, which
13:56
Speaker 1: is an excellent work on this time period in this movement.
14:00
Speaker 1: So Professor Benfield notes that the lace workers, the knitters,
14:05
Speaker 1: the you name it's of the textile industry realize things
14:10
Speaker 1: are in decline, in big part because of the supply
14:13
Speaker 1: chain problems and inflation due to the war. But they
14:19
Speaker 1: also see that people aren't worried as much about quality.
14:24
Speaker 1: These folks, who are experts in their field have been Uh.
14:27
Speaker 1: This might sound familiar to some of our fellow friends
14:31
Speaker 1: who worked from home during the pandemic. These individuals watched
14:36
Speaker 1: as their work was moved from the houses where they
14:40
Speaker 1: lived to these big factories that would house cotton weaving machines,
14:46
Speaker 1: and the workers started to protest. Rabble rabble, rabble, grumble, grumble, grumble,
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Speaker 1: And they said, you know what you guys are making
14:54
Speaker 1: lower quality stuff, and several of them said, you know what,
14:59
Speaker 1: I am down the clown as long as I make
15:02
Speaker 1: a little bit of this profit too. But not only
15:05
Speaker 1: I get the feeling. History will show us they weren't
15:09
Speaker 1: getting profit sharing from this. Of course they weren't, because
15:12
Speaker 1: that's that's how you know, scaling and and industrialization works.
15:17
Speaker 1: You know, you take what was once a cottage industry,
15:20
Speaker 1: perhaps a skill passed down from generations, you know, from
15:24
Speaker 1: from mother to daughter. You know, the the art of
15:26
Speaker 1: lace making, very very subtle and bespoke kind of work
15:31
Speaker 1: that goes into that, and then all of a sudden,
15:34
Speaker 1: you're you're doing it on and on this grand scale,
15:37
Speaker 1: in this massive factory with unskilled workers. And understandably, you
15:41
Speaker 1: know you would see that, Uh if you were one
15:43
Speaker 1: of those skilled workers and this was a very important
15:46
Speaker 1: part of your upbringing and your family heritage or whatever
15:49
Speaker 1: it might be. Uh, you're gonna take that really personally. Um,
15:53
Speaker 1: it's the same as you know, the kind of commodification
15:55
Speaker 1: of any art form. It takes the magic out of it.
15:58
Speaker 1: It kind of takes the heart and soul out of it.
16:01
Speaker 1: And sure industrialists and you know, um, corporate big wigs
16:06
Speaker 1: they're not so concerned about the quality as they are
16:09
Speaker 1: about the quantity. Yeah, and so these artisans try to
16:17
Speaker 1: head things off at the past another phrase that was
16:21
Speaker 1: literal and became figurative or you know, they say, maybe
16:25
Speaker 1: we can slow it, maybe we can make this a
16:27
Speaker 1: smooth transition over time. So they looked for stuff like
16:31
Speaker 1: workers pensions, a new step in the world of workers rights,
16:36
Speaker 1: and the factory owners didn't want to play ball. So
16:41
Speaker 1: kind of like unions that have been in pretty tense,
16:45
Speaker 1: sometimes hostile negotiations with companies in the US today, the
16:50
Speaker 1: factory owners said, no, we're not doing it. And that's
16:54
Speaker 1: where the Luddite movement emerges. These attempts at negotiation fail.
17:06
Speaker 1: The workers aren't being listened to, their concerns aren't being addressed.
17:11
Speaker 1: We can also give you a little bit of political context,
17:15
Speaker 1: larger context, just you know how bad things are at
17:18
Speaker 1: this time. Thousands of people in the UK, not just
17:21
Speaker 1: in this industry, or suffering from chronic hunger what we
17:25
Speaker 1: call food and security today. And there were these laws
17:29
Speaker 1: passed by Parliament called combination laws. Combination laws were directly
17:35
Speaker 1: aimed against collective action by textile workers. It's kind of
17:40
Speaker 1: like if Congress passed the law specifically aimed at um,
17:45
Speaker 1: I don't know, podcasters or something like that. It's weirdly specific. Yeah,
17:51
Speaker 1: And it's just a backtrack on something that I said earlier. Um,
17:54
Speaker 1: you know, in in terms of the croppers being able
17:57
Speaker 1: to get all of these demands met, all of these
18:00
Speaker 1: you know, privileges in terms of their vacation and they're
18:03
Speaker 1: pay and all that. Um. The first A lot of
18:05
Speaker 1: stuff was happening around this time. In eighteen sixty the
18:09
Speaker 1: first union, the first recorded union trade union was established,
18:14
Speaker 1: the London Trades Counts in the UK and the London
18:16
Speaker 1: Trades Council which was founded in eighteen sixteen, and then um,
18:20
Speaker 1: a little bit later, the Trades Union Congress in eighteen
18:25
Speaker 1: sixty eight. But Ben, when was this combination law passed?
18:28
Speaker 1: Because I'm trying to there's a lot of like upheaval,
18:31
Speaker 1: you know. Um, the French Revolution was not far off
18:34
Speaker 1: from from here. The Industrial Revolution encompasses a lot of
18:37
Speaker 1: this and the Enlightenment period. There's a lot of overlap here,
18:40
Speaker 1: the combination. So there's a series of combination laws I believe. UM.
18:44
Speaker 1: For example, one is the Combination Act of seventeen ninety
18:48
Speaker 1: nine that explicitly outlaws unions. And obviously that doesn't stick
18:53
Speaker 1: around forever because as you said that, this union forms
18:57
Speaker 1: in UH in this eighteen sixties later, so Luodites go underground,
19:04
Speaker 1: they go clandestine, they start organizing in secret. This is
19:09
Speaker 1: one of the most cool work meetings you can imagine,
19:13
Speaker 1: but it's also a very desperate series of meetings. People
19:18
Speaker 1: are unable to feed their families and we we this
19:22
Speaker 1: is not meant is that convenient term that politicians UH
19:27
Speaker 1: trot out every election day. They're literally not able to
19:31
Speaker 1: feed their families, and they say, you know what, this
19:34
Speaker 1: is gonna take everybody if you we are not a
19:37
Speaker 1: male only organization. Women workers get involved, child laborers which
19:42
Speaker 1: were still very much a thing. You're part of this
19:45
Speaker 1: movement to eventually women and children formed something around of
19:53
Speaker 1: the Luddite membership, which was very progressive for its time,
19:56
Speaker 1: despite you know, child labor. Yeah, highly recommend a cool
19:59
Speaker 1: article called the few chur Encyclopedia of Luttism by Miriam H. Cherry.
20:03
Speaker 1: You find out on the reader dot m I T
20:05
Speaker 1: Press dot m I T dot e d u um.
20:08
Speaker 1: Really really great resource for all kinds of fantastic historical
20:13
Speaker 1: I guess journalism. M yeah, and and this is okay.
20:17
Speaker 1: So what they're doing now is not the same stuff
20:21
Speaker 1: that you would see a group of workers do in
20:23
Speaker 1: a more ostensibly democratic society. They're not necessarily just doing protests,
20:30
Speaker 1: you know. What I mean is starting in eighteen eleven,
20:34
Speaker 1: which is the first year some really intense Luod Eye activity.
20:39
Speaker 1: So they do have a peaceful gathering near the Exchange
20:42
Speaker 1: Hall in Nottingham, and that doesn't stay peaceful because later
20:48
Speaker 1: they attack these wide knitting frames in a nearby shop
20:51
Speaker 1: in a a village called Arnold, and the month before that,
20:56
Speaker 1: Stocking Urse, which were framework knitters, broke into shops and
21:01
Speaker 1: removed various components of knitting frames that made them useless
21:08
Speaker 1: and incredibly dangerous to use if you tried this attack.
21:13
Speaker 1: On March eleventh, eighteen eleven, is as far as we
21:17
Speaker 1: can tell, the first time the name Blood was used. Right,
21:22
Speaker 1: so I would be follower of Luod that's right, Yeah,
21:26
Speaker 1: like it was. It was this kind of symbolic figure,
21:30
Speaker 1: this this idea of of a general uh someone leading
21:33
Speaker 1: the charge, but I don't think it was actually a
21:35
Speaker 1: real person, right, It's okay, So it's still kind of
21:40
Speaker 1: dodgy today. In two as we record, the movement was
21:45
Speaker 1: said pretty often to be named after a guy named
21:48
Speaker 1: ned Lud, an imprentice who smashed some stocking frames in
21:54
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy nine. So people associated this figure with the
21:58
Speaker 1: destruction of machines. But later it turned out that ned
22:04
Speaker 1: Lud was a totally fictional character. He was a story
22:08
Speaker 1: people told themselves. And then as you pointed out later,
22:13
Speaker 1: this develops into a more uh fleshed out kind of
22:17
Speaker 1: character synonymous with the cause. General Lud or King Lud
22:21
Speaker 1: is sort of like the Uncle Sam of this movement.
22:24
Speaker 1: We need you to join the croppers, um. And that's
22:30
Speaker 1: essentially what happened. It was this kind of concerted effort
22:34
Speaker 1: to organize and almost create what we might today consider
22:41
Speaker 1: um acts of industrial sabotage. Right. I mean, this is
22:47
Speaker 1: bigger than just people that don't like machines or cannot computer.
22:52
Speaker 1: These are people who are resentful to the point of
22:56
Speaker 1: you know, violence of these new developments, uh, because they
23:00
Speaker 1: are directly impacting their ability to feed their families. Yeah. Yeah.
23:05
Speaker 1: They said, look, you're making crappy material, and secondly, you're
23:11
Speaker 1: employing people who have not completed their seven year apprenticeship. Uh.
23:16
Speaker 1: This those folks that you might call scaps today, we're
23:20
Speaker 1: called cults back then ce l t s. And so
23:25
Speaker 1: there are more and more attacks. There were several weeks
23:29
Speaker 1: of almost nightly attacks. They were all successful. No one
23:34
Speaker 1: was caught or arrested, and that kind of implies that
23:37
Speaker 1: the common person was on the side of the Luddites.
23:41
Speaker 1: Things go a little quiet in summer, but then there's
23:46
Speaker 1: a bad harvest in November, and this is where we see, Um,
23:54
Speaker 1: I don't know, this is where it gets it gets
23:56
Speaker 1: sticky because we've established the general lud is sort of
23:59
Speaker 1: a a semi fictional character, right, so this is where
24:03
Speaker 1: we go back to. Uh the article cited earlier by
24:07
Speaker 1: Miriam A. Cherry. They started in November of eighteen eleven,
24:14
Speaker 1: surrounding and holding factories throughout the textile district of nottingham Shire.
24:22
Speaker 1: And I'm so sorry, Uh, fellow UK friends and ridiculous historians.
24:28
Speaker 1: My tongue is tripping over Nottinghamshire. Is it Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire? Well,
24:33
Speaker 1: I think it's I think the shire. You could say
24:35
Speaker 1: it as just nottingham or nottingham Shire. Uh. The and
24:39
Speaker 1: I only say sheer because that's how they say it.
24:41
Speaker 1: In a Day on the Life of the Beatles song,
24:43
Speaker 1: they say ten thousand holes in Blackford, Lancashire, So I
24:47
Speaker 1: think that might be a colloquial pronunciation. But I think
24:50
Speaker 1: Nottingham and nottingham Shire are the same thing. I think
24:53
Speaker 1: it's just like a a little extra. But I think
24:56
Speaker 1: it's no accident that they are. All these all touristic
25:00
Speaker 1: terms being used. You know, we do know that there
25:03
Speaker 1: was a real person named George Miller who took on
25:07
Speaker 1: the you know, military leadership title of lieutenant and was
25:12
Speaker 1: described as being General Lud's right hand man. But but again,
25:15
Speaker 1: like you said, a lot of the details around Lud
25:18
Speaker 1: and his identity are a little bit sketchy. But this
25:23
Speaker 1: was war ben. They they surrounded a textile district and
25:28
Speaker 1: they literally held position in these factories. Um, and they won.
25:35
Speaker 1: At Cartwright Mill at Raffolds is now to this day
25:39
Speaker 1: the site of the Miller Memorial Museum, where you can
25:42
Speaker 1: see lots of documentation pertaining to the Luddite movement. Again,
25:46
Speaker 1: read this article by A Cherry in the n T Press.
25:49
Speaker 1: It's fantastic you ever find yourself there I'm sure this
25:51
Speaker 1: would be a great visit um. But essentially, you know,
25:56
Speaker 1: while the Luddites do get a bit of a rap
26:00
Speaker 1: as being these kind of almost deadly terrorists, in a
26:04
Speaker 1: sense at least, you know, again, one person's freedom fighters
26:06
Speaker 1: and the person's terrorists. It started off as a peaceful movement.
26:12
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And a lot of the early campaigns were
26:17
Speaker 1: successful because of that pacifist nature. They were largely a
26:22
Speaker 1: peaceful movement. And when the press, which was owned by
26:29
Speaker 1: the powers that be, when the press was describing these
26:33
Speaker 1: factory occupations, they were trying to make it seem more
26:37
Speaker 1: militaristic and perhaps violence than it actually was. But we
26:42
Speaker 1: see that things did escalate. Uh, the common people are
26:46
Speaker 1: with them, the presses against them, the ownership classes certainly
26:50
Speaker 1: against them. Some of these attacks used sledge hammers, and
26:57
Speaker 1: the factory owners, as far as we could tell, were
27:00
Speaker 1: the first to produce firearms and fire upon protesters. The
27:05
Speaker 1: workers were hoping that they could essentially create such a
27:10
Speaker 1: stink that there would be a ban on weaving machines,
27:14
Speaker 1: but the British government doubled down. Instead, they made breaking
27:20
Speaker 1: machines a crime punishable by death. Dang, Yeah, I don't
27:27
Speaker 1: imagine the death penalty for uh, you know what, you
27:31
Speaker 1: would maybe consider just playing old vandalism. I mean, it
27:35
Speaker 1: doesn't remind me, It doesn't strike me as being too
27:38
Speaker 1: different from allowing uh, the idea of personhood to corporations,
27:45
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It really shows where our
27:47
Speaker 1: priorities are like in terms of like, you know, um
27:52
Speaker 1: commerce is that No, No, these machines are every bit
27:57
Speaker 1: as as valuable and uh and have have the as
28:00
Speaker 1: much of a right to live as human beings do.
28:03
Speaker 1: In fact, I would argue more of a right to
28:05
Speaker 1: live because the machines themselves are causing the death, the
28:08
Speaker 1: deaths and starvation and and displacement of actual human people.
28:13
Speaker 1: So you can almost argue that the government is assigning
28:16
Speaker 1: more value um to the machines than they are too
28:19
Speaker 1: to the human beings themselves by you know, making the
28:22
Speaker 1: destruction of these machines a crime worthy of the death penalty.
28:27
Speaker 1: It's nuts, It's nuts. I don't even think it's an argument.
28:31
Speaker 1: That's totally what they're doing, and there's a profits over
28:33
Speaker 1: people kind of situation. And then you know, from the
28:36
Speaker 1: other side of this argument, the business owners would probably say, well,
28:43
Speaker 1: why are you restricting my freedom to make a more
28:45
Speaker 1: successful business. The economy is tough. It's a tale as
28:48
Speaker 1: old as time, so it might be strange to realize,
28:52
Speaker 1: after all the stuff we're describing folks that in the
28:55
Speaker 1: first two years of the Leadye campaign, you know, when
28:59
Speaker 1: things really pop in eighteen eleven to eighteen twelve, there's
29:02
Speaker 1: only one serious injury we know of, and that is
29:05
Speaker 1: a guy named William horse Full or horse Fall. He's
29:09
Speaker 1: the owner of the Ottawell's mill. He refuses to stand
29:13
Speaker 1: down when a crowd of protesters gathers outside his factory,
29:17
Speaker 1: and then he's he says, it's not funny because you
29:21
Speaker 1: know it's people's lives. But you know, in response to
29:25
Speaker 1: their demands and protests. Uh, horse Fall says, I planned
29:30
Speaker 1: to swim in bloody blood. And he fires his rifle
29:34
Speaker 1: out into the crowd, which is mostly unarmed. Uh. And
29:38
Speaker 1: she's composed again of a lot of child workers. Uh.
29:43
Speaker 1: This guy that we introduced earlier, Lieutenant Mellor, he fires
29:46
Speaker 1: a single shot and he's thinking, I'm gonna wing this
29:49
Speaker 1: guy on the arm, but instead he shoots him in
29:52
Speaker 1: his junk's right and they're growing not on purpose, no, no,
29:57
Speaker 1: he really was just trying to wing him, but instead
29:59
Speaker 1: he debinged him. Yeah, there we go. So at this point,
30:09
Speaker 1: essentially there was something of a surrender, right, Yeah. Yeah,
30:13
Speaker 1: they take over the factory without further incident. Um. There
30:18
Speaker 1: were some people in the ruling class who are on
30:20
Speaker 1: board with the Luddites. Lord Byron wrote a poem about
30:23
Speaker 1: it called Song for the Luddites, and he mentions the
30:27
Speaker 1: character of King Blood or General Luod or ned Lud
30:32
Speaker 1: and this is again this kind of the Uncle Sam
30:35
Speaker 1: for them. Uh, this is the leader who exists as
30:39
Speaker 1: a man of mystery, right, His powers are as pervasive
30:43
Speaker 1: as his enigmatic nature. No one really knows who he is.
30:47
Speaker 1: No one knows where he's at or where he'll strike.
30:51
Speaker 1: Maybe this is propaganda. I believe you could make a
30:53
Speaker 1: strong case that it is. But no, all of this
30:56
Speaker 1: propaganda works. The forces of law and order a kind
31:00
Speaker 1: of spooked by this guy, and they start obsessing over
31:04
Speaker 1: finding ned Luod. And well, like we we kind of
31:11
Speaker 1: spoiled the lead. There was no Ned Luod. This was
31:16
Speaker 1: a made up thing. We talked about the story. He
31:19
Speaker 1: became a symbolic leader, He became a folk hero in
31:23
Speaker 1: Nottingham which you know has it passed with folk leaders
31:28
Speaker 1: shout out Robin Hood. Uh. And there's there's actually a
31:32
Speaker 1: verse we found that compares the two. Uh. How do
31:37
Speaker 1: you feel about a dramatic reading? Mr? Brown? Absolutely, I
31:40
Speaker 1: just wanted to add to it. Really reminds me of
31:42
Speaker 1: vif for Vendetta, the idea you can't kill an idea,
31:46
Speaker 1: you can't kill, you know, something that's bigger than a
31:48
Speaker 1: man or you know, shot, you're only killing a man.
31:53
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And and this is this is how
31:55
Speaker 1: these kind of movements really do get into the hearts
31:58
Speaker 1: and minds of people. And uh and can actually, you know,
32:02
Speaker 1: potentially overturn the status quo. It's not through violence, through
32:05
Speaker 1: the spread of ideas and you know, kind of changing
32:08
Speaker 1: people's minds. But yeah, let's let's do this dramatic reading.
32:10
Speaker 1: It's so good chance, no more your old rhymes about
32:20
Speaker 1: bold Robin Hood his feet side, but little admire I
32:24
Speaker 1: will seeing the achievements of General Luod now the hero
32:31
Speaker 1: of nottingham Shire. See now this this tells us how
32:34
Speaker 1: you pronounce it is the rhyme shire and Shire. There
32:39
Speaker 1: we go, We solved it. Do do uh? Shout out
32:42
Speaker 1: to Casey on the case I miss you. So this
32:47
Speaker 1: Ludite revolt, which we can call it now spreads to
32:51
Speaker 1: Yorkshire during eighteen twelve, then to Lancashire, and as this
32:58
Speaker 1: movement expands, it starts to fragment a little bit. Differing
33:04
Speaker 1: trades join in with differing priorities, right uh. And you
33:08
Speaker 1: may find that the tenants of the Ldite movement in
33:12
Speaker 1: one part of the country are different from the tenants
33:17
Speaker 1: of the movement in another region. It also became more
33:21
Speaker 1: violent as it grew in size and picked up momentum.
33:25
Speaker 1: They started setting mills on fire, so we went from
33:29
Speaker 1: occupation to arson. Uh. And then they started firing back
33:34
Speaker 1: at the guards of factories and mills and at the
33:38
Speaker 1: at the law that was set upon them. In eighteen twelve,
33:43
Speaker 1: four Lettites die and this this sort of changes the
33:48
Speaker 1: tenor So I want to step back when clarify the
33:51
Speaker 1: the initial parts of the movement, the initial phases and
33:54
Speaker 1: that year eighteen eleven, those were largely peaceful, are real
33:59
Speaker 1: in Flychin Point is around this time of April twelve. Yeah,
34:04
Speaker 1: and you know, it just goes to show how history
34:08
Speaker 1: remembers things. You know, the term luddite typically conjures images
34:13
Speaker 1: of people smashing stuff up, you know, if you're even
34:17
Speaker 1: remotely familiar with the actual history of it. If you're not,
34:20
Speaker 1: it's just typically like you said, thrown around just to
34:22
Speaker 1: describe someone that isn't very good at using technology. It
34:25
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily hate it or want it to be exploded,
34:30
Speaker 1: but it usually it is like like Philistines describing someone
34:32
Speaker 1: that doesn't have much taste or is culturally like not
34:35
Speaker 1: very refined. But again, the actual history of that is
34:38
Speaker 1: much more complex than what it is ultimately kind of
34:41
Speaker 1: boiled down to over time, maybe we do, you know what,
34:44
Speaker 1: We're just gonna have to do an atomology show at
34:46
Speaker 1: some point at for the people, no adiomatic for the people.
34:51
Speaker 1: For the people, we need them back. Kind of the same. So,
34:55
Speaker 1: as we said, things are getting violent. The factory owners
35:01
Speaker 1: are much more influential in the government because they have
35:05
Speaker 1: much more money, and eventually the government sends fourteen thousand
35:10
Speaker 1: soldiers into areas with a lot of luod eye activity.
35:14
Speaker 1: The Luddites have to battle the British Army. Uh. The
35:17
Speaker 1: government also tries to suppress things and infiltrate the group
35:21
Speaker 1: with spies there's this terrible crackdown. Um. We mentioned the
35:28
Speaker 1: death penalty for breaking specific types of weaving machines, and
35:35
Speaker 1: by winter of eighteen twelve, the government is winning. The
35:39
Speaker 1: organization has been infiltrated in just fifteen months. Twenty four
35:45
Speaker 1: different members of the Luddite movement are hanged as public examples,
35:50
Speaker 1: including a sixteen year old boy who cried out for
35:56
Speaker 1: his mom just before he was hanged. In case you're
36:00
Speaker 1: wondering who I think the bad guys are in this story, Yeah,
36:04
Speaker 1: making an example you know of them, Um, after putting
36:09
Speaker 1: them in the position where they needed to organize in
36:12
Speaker 1: this way, they they what what what else do they have?
36:14
Speaker 1: At this point? You know, they were not allowed to unionize.
36:16
Speaker 1: They were completely robbed of the only you know, skill
36:19
Speaker 1: set they have, which that is an investment of time
36:23
Speaker 1: and and and history, you know, and and just generational knowledge.
36:28
Speaker 1: And to all of a sudden just have that like
36:30
Speaker 1: totally yanked out from under you and then to not
36:34
Speaker 1: have any what what are you supposed to do? Just starve? Die?
36:39
Speaker 1: I don't wander. I mean, it's just it's cruel history.
36:42
Speaker 1: In the history of industrialization and uh and and commerce,
36:47
Speaker 1: it's gonna be so cruel, Yeah yeah, and it's hard work.
36:51
Speaker 1: Not for nothing is it called the labor movement. These
36:54
Speaker 1: hangings are the result of some real kangaroo court type
36:58
Speaker 1: show trials, actually not to be two on the nose.
37:02
Speaker 1: Two dozen folks were sent up the river in the
37:06
Speaker 1: UK to prison, and then fifty one were given the
37:09
Speaker 1: sentence of transportation, meaning after their kangaroo court they were
37:14
Speaker 1: physically shipped to Australia. This is effective. This is some
37:19
Speaker 1: real scorched earth stuff the British government is doing. By
37:22
Speaker 1: eighteen thirteen the looks like the heyday of the Luddites
37:28
Speaker 1: is on the way out. A few years later the
37:31
Speaker 1: group essentially vanished. And this doesn't mean it's the end
37:35
Speaker 1: of conflict between workers and owner classes. Very much not
37:40
Speaker 1: the case. You can hear about the Luddites today. You
37:44
Speaker 1: hear echoes of the fight against being replaced by machines
37:50
Speaker 1: in um in labor movements today and threats of union
37:54
Speaker 1: strikes like right now the nation the United States is
38:00
Speaker 1: rightly concerned about a possible industry wide rail strike, and
38:07
Speaker 1: right now, if nobody, if if you don't think trains
38:10
Speaker 1: are that important, folks, and you haven't checked out stuff.
38:12
Speaker 1: They don't want you to to know another show. We do
38:15
Speaker 1: realize that in the modern day, thirty percent of everything
38:19
Speaker 1: you buy is transported on rail at some point, and
38:24
Speaker 1: that is gonna that when the stuff hits that fan,
38:28
Speaker 1: the stuff is gonna spread. You know what I mean.
38:30
Speaker 1: You've heard about this, right I have. I have? And
38:33
Speaker 1: it also you know, I think the bigger issue here
38:37
Speaker 1: too is that when you have these large scaled kind
38:41
Speaker 1: of operations that don't require specialized skills, Um, you're you're
38:47
Speaker 1: you're not gonna command as higher wage because they're gonna
38:51
Speaker 1: hire a lot of people for a low wage and
38:55
Speaker 1: they're technically replaceable, you know. And again this is no
38:59
Speaker 1: ding on any individual toll like Amazon warehouse worker or
39:03
Speaker 1: you know. Um, there's certainly are varying degrees of skills
39:06
Speaker 1: required for different kind of industrial type jobs, like you know,
39:09
Speaker 1: you couldn't just walk into a car plant to like
39:12
Speaker 1: an automotive plan and just know what you were doing.
39:14
Speaker 1: But there are certain jobs that are seen as being replaceable,
39:19
Speaker 1: like for example, Starbucks trying to unionize. Starbucks workers trying
39:23
Speaker 1: to unionize, and in the eyes of the management, they
39:25
Speaker 1: might say, well, you know that these are entry level jobs.
39:28
Speaker 1: These are jobs that are for you know, young people
39:30
Speaker 1: that anyone could come off the street and make a
39:32
Speaker 1: latte or whatever. I'm not saying that's the case, but
39:35
Speaker 1: that's the perception. And so the idea of unionizing when
39:41
Speaker 1: you are seen as replaceable as even more challenging. And
39:45
Speaker 1: the big wigs and the corporations are more interested in
39:49
Speaker 1: busting that now than they ever have been, you know,
39:52
Speaker 1: or at least as interested. Um. We we've seen all
39:55
Speaker 1: kinds of you know, union busting tactics employed by you know,
40:01
Speaker 1: Starbucks and Amazon and things like that. It's technically illegal
40:04
Speaker 1: to do that, but if you're wealthy and powerful enough,
40:08
Speaker 1: they're always ways around it. Yeah, well said. And it's
40:12
Speaker 1: a struggle that continues today. The idea of being caught
40:17
Speaker 1: beneath the thumb and powerful interests being swept away by
40:21
Speaker 1: the tide of technological innovation. It's a common theme and
40:25
Speaker 1: it's not going to go away in the future. Uh.
40:28
Speaker 1: Like we always point out, history is much closer than
40:31
Speaker 1: it might appear in your rear view mirror. And with that,
40:35
Speaker 1: I think we're going to call it a day. We've
40:37
Speaker 1: got some exciting stuff ahead. I don't want to spoil
40:40
Speaker 1: too much, but we do want to say very very
40:43
Speaker 1: special thanks to our guest super producer Tari Harrison. Uh, Tari, I,
40:49
Speaker 1: I'm sure you are frantically writing an email to Bill
40:53
Speaker 1: and Mark about their Uh they're they're egregious, egregious lack
40:59
Speaker 1: of treshon. Yeah yeah this, Uh what is it? Well,
41:03
Speaker 1: shall not stand this? Some suggression will not stand now. Yeah, yeah,
41:08
Speaker 1: it's okay, get get the show. Yeah. And uh also
41:13
Speaker 1: thanks of course to Max Williams, who was on a
41:17
Speaker 1: well deserved vacation. I've just been texting memes at times.
41:23
Speaker 1: We're waiting for some out of context pictures for Miss Journeys.
41:26
Speaker 1: He'll be returning soon. Uh, let's see who else? Who else?
41:29
Speaker 1: Who else? Oh, Chris Fresciota is obviously here in spirit
41:32
Speaker 1: soon can be here and the flesh. That's that's happening.
41:35
Speaker 1: I think we finally twist his arm to get that
41:37
Speaker 1: USB mic ordered. Yeah, that's true. We did kind of
41:41
Speaker 1: muscle in on the poor guy. We where they called
41:44
Speaker 1: button to hold him. But that is how we get
41:46
Speaker 1: things done. We make idle threads will find me on
41:51
Speaker 1: your podcast. Alight, will smash your loom. Yeah, and you know,
41:57
Speaker 1: we we've still got our vision board thing going on
41:59
Speaker 1: that's been making some progress. Yeah. Thanks of course to
42:04
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister, Thanks to Eve's
42:09
Speaker 1: Jeff Coach, Thanks to Anna Host, thanks to well now,
42:14
Speaker 1: I feel like we're just awards speeching. We got everythank
42:18
Speaker 1: God huh. I'll go to the dog Kanye. I'd like
42:22
Speaker 1: to thank me. Yeah, you did this, man, you did this.
42:27
Speaker 1: You did it, You did it. We'll see you next time, folks.
42:37
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
42:39
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to
42:42
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.