A cause for commonality

Huddersfield's novel anniversary celebrations were organised by the Luddites 200 group. The weekend included theatre, music, poetry readings, debates and The Noisy Frame, a compilation of song and testimony  telling the lives of  the cloth makers who from 1780 to 1840 fought against what was "hurtful to commonality."

There was also a guided walk in the Spen valley to where the Luddites planned and attacked Cartwright's Mill on April 11 1812 and where retribution followed.

Just a few miles away, at the Colne Valley Museum, the Luddite Re-enactment Weekend included the play Last Rites of the Luddites, performed by the  Slubbing Billys, a 10-strong side of Morris dancers.

In Huddersfield, from the august Town Hall  to local pubs and bars,  there were songs of  justice and right, ironically just off  that major site of alienated consumption, a shopping precinct beset by bleak squalls. 

It was all the more potent because so many of the places named  in song were locally familiar.

The "Enochs" mentioned in one were the sledgehammers made by Enoch Taylor, a  blacksmith in nearby Marsden.

He also built the first automatic croppers. The Luddites' slogan as they smashed them was "Enoch made them and Enoch shall break them."

A recurrent connection in the talks and debates was made between  the  Luddites' critiques of new technology  with issues caused by today's innovations.

A key question was how to make the transition from the injustices brought by the industrial society that the Luddites sought to oppose  towards an economically just society with appropriate technology.

For many participants the Luddites were seen  as inspirational figures who understood that the quality of life matters - to enjoy, for example,  three hours a day gardening, not standing endlessly in a factory.  

Following the ongoing phone-hacking revelations and protests against bankers' pay rises, participants weren't only thinking of history when they sang the very triumphant chorus of the Luddite song: "You tyrants of England/ Your race may soon be run/ You may be brought into account/ for what you've surely done."

That's a sentiment which will probably be aired again next weekend, when Huddersfield University hosts a seminar on the Luddites and other early 19th-century protest movements.

In the coming months there's a whole number of cultural and other events to mark this still-relevant struggle against forces "hurtful to commonality."

For details of the Huddersfield University seminar on May 12 and other events nationally, visit ludditebicentenary.blogspot.co.uk

The Luddite Rebellion

The Luddite Rebellion of 1811-13 began in Arnold, near Nottingham, with the sabotage of stocking-making machines.

 Many areas followed suit, including the cities of Leeds and Manchester.

In early spring 1812 unrest erupted  in West Yorkshire, where wool shearers started attacking the new shearing machines.

Weavers opposed the steam looms that wove cotton, replacing  the cottage-based hand-loom lifestyle.

Government retribution was fierce. In Lancashire and Yorkshire troops arrested 64 people, of whom 17 were hanged and many transported to Australia.

Their revolt is viewed by some as one by privileged craft workers attacking changes that would enable lower-paid workers to get jobs.

Yet far from being reactionary technophobic vandals, the Luddites were far-seeing workers protesting at being dispossessed by the mechanising of what were once skilled jobs.