In 1812 the luddites rose up in Yorkshire. The response of the British government was almost unprecedented in scale and less than a year later sixty four men were on trial for their involvement in the luddite cause.
How and why did it come to pass that the state reacted so strongly? What was it about these men protesting the loss of their jobs which so worried not just the local establishment but the central government in Westminster, and how did the state set about investigating and repressing the luddite movement in Yorkshire?
To begin, we must set the scene. It was a year of conflict for the British, with the French emperor Napoleon keeping our military occupied on the continent. States in the Rhine had gone over to the French, and there were signs that Napoleon intended to draw his strength into an attack through Constantinople with the ultimate aim of displacing the British in India. Britain was at war too with America over a perceived threat to Canada.
The British government saw agents of republicanism and revolution everywhere. In 1798 there had been serious rioting and rebellion in Wexford, Ireland, predominantly intent on the overthrow of the British and the establishment of a French-style republic. So too was the American War of Independence within the memory of figures within the state, and the struggles against the northern Jacobites were only just outside living memory.
The Napoleonic wars affected trade, and Britain found itself short of wheat and barley. Riots and discontent spread, particularly in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Something, it seemed, was fermenting and it wasn’t the barley; the state could taste the wet tang of rebellion in the air.
In short, the British government was concerned and concerned deeply.
Luddism spread to Yorkshire from Nottinghamshire and was taken up by croppers, who sheared the cloth in the textile-making process. It then seemed to take on new and radical dimensions. We asked the historian David Pinder for his view on how the changes to the Luddite movement affected the state’s response.
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The state first turned to the militia for its response to the luddite activity. The militia had its officer corps comprised primarily of the sons of local millowners and industrialists who were eager to avoid a posting overseas with the regular army. Their discipline and training were poor, and attendance by the privates to drill under their major William Horsfall was unreliable at best.
To avoid the chance of them sympathising with the neighbours they were meant to be policing, militia units were summoned from counties as far away as Devon. However, this put them at a disadvantage as they were in unfamiliar terrain and tended to exert either too heavy or too light a touch. Some mill owners complained to the local magistrate Joseph Radcliffe as they felt no impact was being made. Radcliffe himself writes:
“Guns are fired every night in various parts of the country by the Luddites to alarm and mislead”
The luddites developed an increasing affinity for guns. It seems likely that they had recruited a number of former soldiers, as not only were they proficient with firearms they also organised into squads and were led by sergeants wearing white arm bands, in an echo of a military unit. However, it is important not to view the use and availability of firearms from today’s perspective. David Pinder explains.
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Then came the two events which changed everything. The first happened on the 11th of April 1812, when a band of luddites led an attack on Rawfolds Mill in Cleckheaton, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The mill owner, William Cartwright, had been expecting their attack, perhaps due to government spies within the luddite movement, and laid in wait along with armed men. The two sides fought a brief but bloody battle.
FIGHTING SOUNDS
The luddites were driven off, but things had now escalated dangerously. William Horsfall, the major of the local militia, was heard declaring how he would like to see the luddites dead. Seven days after the events at Rawfolds Mill, Horsfall set out across the moors in the dark.
He was ambushed, and ended up shot in the groin and dead. This escalated the importance of luddism in the eyes of the state. Now people were being assassinated. Now it looked like open rebellion. Now the state had to respond.
And respond it did. General Maitland was put in charge of the response in Yorkshire, and brought in troops from the regular army to help him subdue the county. It seems hard to believe, but at one point more troops were active in Yorkshire and Lancashire than Wellington had on the continent with him to fight Napoleon. Six times more troops were used to quash luddism than had ever been used before against domestic dissent.