Luddites

Luddites name given to bands of workingmen in the industrial centers of England who rioted between 1811 and 1816. The uprisings began in Nottinghamshire, where groups of textile workers, in the name of a mythical figure called Ned Ludd, or King Ludd, destroyed knitting machines, to which they attributed the prevailing unemployment and low wages. In 1812 workers in Lancashire, Cheshire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire began to wreck cotton power looms and wool shearing machines. There was no political aim involved and no cohesion in the movement. Outbreaks of Luddism were very harshly suppressed by the government.

Luddites, a band of English craftsmen and labourers, organized 1811–16, who felt their livelihoods threatened by machinery and set about its destruction. The name is said to have come from Ned Ludd, who lived about 1779. Luddites appear in Shirley by C. Brontë, and Byron wrote ‘A Song for the Luddites’. The term is now commonly applied to any person who resists technological change.

Luddites Machine‐breakers, so called after a mythical leader, General Ludd. In 1811–16 textile workers in the east midlands, south Lancashire, and west Yorkshire met secretly in public houses or on the moors, took oaths, and smashed the machinery of mill‐owners who refused their demands. At a time when trade unions were illegal, Luddism may be interpreted as collective bargaining by riot: frame‐breaking in the east midlands was an attempt to coerce employers rather than hostility to machines as such. Eventually the Luddite bands were tracked down and the reputed leaders executed or transported.