LUDDITES? US?

I couldn’t help but inwardly groan when I read the first paragraph of Dr Godfrey’s letter in last week’s Chronicle. This was because he chose to use the historically specific term ‘Luddite’ to refer to people concerned about fracking, in the sense of a slur (i.e. backward-looking, with an irrational fear of change). 

This common usage is not only an incorrect and inaccurate mis-use, but it’s also an insult to working people from 200 years ago who paid a high price for simply wanting control over their own destiny. 

As someone who has spent a great deal of the last 5 years researching and writing about the Luddites, I have to tell Dr Godfrey that the Luddite opposition to technology was extended only to those forms of it which they perceived as ‘hurtful to commonality’ (i.e. the common good). They had to foresight – correct as it turns out – that their way of life, skills, income and family life would be destroyed by the needs of a small, rich class

of manufacturers (and their allies in local and national government) whose principle reasons for introducing new forms of technology in the cloth trade at that time was to cheapen production costs and accumulate larger profits. The change they feared was that they would be left destitute and their children and future generations would work 60 hour weeks in factories for a pittance, which is exactly what happened. 

The political and economic background to those times is not unfamiliar to us now: a hugely
unpopular Tory government carrying out unpopular wars abroad, trying to enforce economic austerity, whilst doing its best to curtail workers’ organisations at a time of rapid technological change. But if the opponents to fracking were truly Luddites in the mould of those from 200 years ago, then it’s likely the rigs erected at Barton Moss and Balcombe would have been successfully destroyed in the dead of night by now, with the full backing and support of local people I might add.

Things have not quite come to that yet, but Dr Godfrey should be mindful of history, and the fact it took the military occupation of the North and Midlands to quell the Luddites, along with mass executions and deportations.

I am one of those who, with this knowledge, would be proud to be labelled a Luddite, whether it was meant in kindness or as an insult. Furthermore, I’d like to pay tribute to William Greenhough from Mottram-in-Longdendale, John Heywood from Hollingworth & James Crossland from Padfield, all sentenced to transportation to Australia in May 1812 for having the courage of their convictions. To be compared to them would be an honour. 

Richard Holland
Luddite Bicentenary 
ludditebicentenary.blogspot.com