March 20, 2024 • 49 mins
In part two, Margaret talks with Robert Evans one more time about the English rebels who threw on dresses, declared a fake person their leader, and set about fighting the Industrial Revolution.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Do Cool Stuff. Your podcast,
it's yours, You belongs to you because it's part of
the commons. You see what I did there. If you
didn't listen to part one, you have no idea what
I'm talking about. But you might know my guest, Robert Evans,
that's right in the bastards.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yes, uh, and I legally own all podcasts. Actually, I
came up with the idea. Before me, no one had
ever had the idea to steal the human voice and
imprison it in an audio file. You know I invented that.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, uh, the first wax cylinder Robert Evans special.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
That's right, that's right, it's audio Drunken Try to Pizza Hut.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Our producer is Sophie.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Robert says is a lie. Everything Margaret says is the truth.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Oh, you know, market guards getting at that.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
If podcasting, ever doesn't work out, you and I could
get get a gig doing that guarding some rich guys. Dungeon.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I look good in the suit of full plate armor
of a Halbert just saying now they have the like
every now and then the Internet figures out that some
Victorian rich people had had like hermits that they hired
to like little in the property. The new one should
be the the ominous Guards.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
The harminous Guards, one of whom tells only lies and
the other speaks the truth.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
And honestly guarding our legal liability by cutting out when
we say things we shouldn't. Is our audio engineer, Daniel Hi, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, Dannel, Robert fucking say it?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Hi, Daniel, Okay good?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
And our theme musical was written for us by n women.
And this is part two in a two parter about
the Luddites. And I wonder if there's people who actually
only listen a part two of mine because they know
the first part is contact. But you're gonna miss so
much and you won't understand why it's cool if you
don't go back and listen to part one. There's poetry
and fire. So the Ladites. I mentioned that there was
(02:15):
a war going on in Europe, the Napoleonic Wars, and
this was fucking everything up as war tends to do.
It was fucking up industry and the economy and food
and all of that shit. It didn't help that you
also get like four years of bad harvest in a
row and there's a fucking comet in the sky and
everyone you know is dying in Europe fighting a Napoleon,
(02:38):
and trade embargoes are cutting off entire markets for textile exports,
which is ten percent of what the British people do
for work. Food prices are rising dramatically. People are living
literally starving in a lot of these working class towns,
and all of these fucking factories are suddenly popping up everywhere,
and trade unionism is out, And we do and don't
(03:03):
know a lot about the Luddites. There are endless well
researched books written about them, and there are plenty of
primary sources because they weren't afraid to write. But they
were also a secret society and they took it their
vow of secrecy really seriously. A lot of what we
know only came out decades later as old Luddites approached
the end of their lives, and it's like the eighteen
(03:24):
sixties and they're like, I fine, I guess I could
fucking talk about that shit. You know, so not the
best way to get super accurate information. They are also
such mythic figures that everyone tries to write a story
onto them. I'm honestly doing it too. I'm trying not
to write, but it's impossible. But we do know a
(03:46):
lot of their actions. The Ludites weren't all over England.
They were in what gets called the Luddite Triangle, which
should have been called the Ludic triangle if you ask me,
but no one did because I wasn't born and might
have a different etymological route. There was a triangle formed
by Yorkshire in the north west to Lancashire and down
(04:08):
to Leicestershire.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Leicester. I know that because I've pronounced it wrong on
the show and everyone in England is like, how did
you not guess that? It's pronounced completely differently from how
it's spelled.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
But it's Leicester.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
You have wester.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Leicester because they're the different The bigger areas have the
Shire at the end, and then the towns look like
there's like nottingham and then it's in Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire. Get
your shit together, England, come on, I know, I know.
Well they're still fighting giants, so it's hard, you know.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Did you just say get your shit together, England?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
The one thing we don't want them to do.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
You're right the last time that happened.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
It went badly for a lot of people when Albion
Rises were all in trouble.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Keep your ship apart.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, some of us. Actually, that's the next line of
my script. Some of us don't know a lot about England. Say,
for example, all you know about England is that King
Uther Pendragon once died while his air was missing, and
his son Arthur was discovered by pulling a sword out
of a stone. And the same thing is about to
happen now, because get it, there's a I'm trying to
make a reference to things that are happening in the
(05:21):
modern world and in the news.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Sophia, are you talking about the fact that nobody's seen
Printess Kate Middleton in many months and the photoshop fail
and that the royal family is not explaining why?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yes, which I knew about because of you.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
You're welcome, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Whereas if you want to know about kings who either
never existed or have been dead for five hundred years,
I'm your girl. But things that actually impact our lives
now so versed with.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
This does not impact our lives.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
But that's good.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Kate Middleton may not be a live which she's not.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Good unless By the time you're hearing this, she has
returned with Excalibur and has Warwiz gone to the Isle
of Avalon and talked to the ladies there to get
a sword from the lady in the lake.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Or if you follow conspiracy theories with.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
A brand new face, ooh, I hope there's still a sword.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Me too, should always be a sword.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
The other thing that you might know about England is
that there was a fox named Robin Hood who hung
out in a forest called Sherwood, robbing people alongside his buddy,
who was a bear named Little John. For those of
us who don't know anything beyond that, the ludic triangle
including not in Him and nottingham Shire and therefore Sherwood Forest.
(06:46):
In fact, our story starts in Noddingham. Okay it started.
I'm going to claim it started in November eighteen eleven.
Other people are like, oh, it was in March, but
there was like some specific characteristics that made it. Some
people did some cool shit in March. But I'm gonna
start at in October. In November, sure, because this is
(07:06):
when it is more self consciously. The Luodites on November fourth,
eighteen eleven, on a night lit by the comet in
Nodingham a small band of men. More women are involved
later or were written out of this earlier part because
everything keeps being like and then these men did things,
and like later in the story they're like, oh, there's
some women.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
You're like, really they're all along? Yeah, who's to know?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
You know?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
But a small group of people gathered and disguised themselves.
Some of them blackened their faces with coal, others covered
their faces with scarves. They are armed with hammers, axes
and pistols. They make their way to a weaver studio,
not quite a factory, but a place where machines for
knitting hoseery are being worked. And they go in and
they only smash up not all the frames, but the
(07:53):
wide frames. These are the frames that make cheap, inferior
product at like greater speeds. A week at the first
November raid, they went at it again. This time the
owner was ready. One ludite died and he shouted out, proceeed,
my brave fellows, I die with a willing heart. This
(08:13):
might be one of those things where we have it
fifty years later, but who knows. I'll give it to him.
He became their first martyr, and his body was displayed
for all to see, for everyone to get mad at
the murder. It wasn't like I put his head on
a pike so everyone doesn't want to fight.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
They did, our boy.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah exactly in the Marge Simpson voice.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
The lud eight smashed their way into the building. The
defenders fled, and the Luddites went and smashed everything up.
I suspect that after they had just seen their friends shot,
they probably were a little less particular in what they
chose to sabotage. That same night, other Luddites attacked another
shop and smashed up frames and revenge for that shop,
hiring what are called colts, which were young men who
(08:58):
hadn't been apprenticed, basically like old timey scabbing or strike breaking.
A few days later, a cart full of looms was
bandited by men who disguise their faces along the road,
and then they smashed up the looms. That same day,
a thousand people poured into the town of Sutton, armed
to the teeth and smashed up all the machines in town.
(09:20):
The militia came in. There's like no cops basically at
this time. It's soldiers and militia that are doing all
the law enforcement at scale. They came in and arrested
about twelve people the next day, and this is actually
one of the bigger arrests in the movement. But it
didn't stop or slow down the movement any appreciable way.
It's at this point, it's November nineteen eleven that they
(09:43):
started sending letters out communicate as if you will. All
of them invoked Edward Lud or ned Lud. Sometimes it
was King Lud, sometimes it was General Lud, sometimes it
was Captain and Chief ned Lud. And these letters are threats.
The letters are stop treating workers as disposable, or will
destroy your property or maybe just kill you. It was
(10:06):
quite literally terrorism. Yeah, they had no structural power over
their bosses or the owning class, and they had no
other means of recourse, but they had numbers, organization, secrecy,
and the ability to instill fear. So that's what they did.
They picked a leader, a fictitious one, and the first
(10:27):
written version of that ned Lud kid I talked about
last time comes from eighteen eleven, which was like thirty
years after it supposedly it happened, So we don't know
if this is actually the origin. One historian Kirkpatrick's Sale
makes the case that it could be derived from local
slang that sent all of a lud meant to smash
something into a heap, or that it could derive from
(10:50):
an actual king from eighteen twenty five named King Lud
or you'll be shocked to know this as my favorite.
It could also be connected to a King Lund of
the first century BC, who is connected to the Celtic
god Lud. That oh, and King Lund might be where
the name London comes from. It might come from Lundstown,
but other people make the etymology is out people.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yeah, when you're getting shit that old, it's usually like
this is one of our better guesses.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, and it used to be the best I can tell.
It used to be a little bit more like, oh, yeah,
it's Lundstown totally, it's from King Lund. And then like
now people are a little bit it's like, oh, it's
from the Proto Indo European word for like a low
lying area or whatever. I don't know, but I like
it when the Ludites get their name from the Celtic
(11:40):
god lude that obviously is my favorite. All over they
are you could say soliciting financial support for their movement.
Other people could say they're extorting it. I think both
would be perfectly accurate representations. They would leave notes around
that said things like, gentlemen, all he had Lud's compliments
(12:01):
and hopes you will give a trifle towards supporting his army,
as he well understands the art of breaking obnoxious frames.
If you comply with this it will be well. If not,
I shall call upon you myself.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I love that again, very classy.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
And meanwhile they're starting to robin Hood shit too. They
are raiding wealthy farms for food and money, and they
were They decided that they were better than robin Hood.
Soon enough, an unknown author coined a famous rhyme about them.
Chance know more your old rhymes about bold robin Hood
his feats. I but little admire, I will sing the
(12:41):
achievements of General Leude, now the hero of Nottinghamshire. Sometimes
they worked alone, sometimes they worked in huge formations. And
there's one problem with running around doing terrorism?
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Oh is there really? Now? This is something new. I've
never heard of any problems with terrorism, magpie.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah. Well, it turns out that Britain is a particularly
law and order focused country only at the time.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Interesting at I may have to change some of my
vacation plans.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, it's a good idea. There are about two hundred
capital offenses on the books in eighteen eleven, including like
stealing cheap boots or writing threatening letters, also being a
guy who has sex with another guy capital crime. At
the time. Ten percent of all criminals who were sentenced
(13:38):
in England in eighteen ten were sentenced to death.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Like, Texas, get your shit together, you got to catch up.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
The rest of Europe was like the rest of Europe
wasn't really I mean, they had the death penalty, but
they were like looking over at England being like, y'all right,
fucking the fuck is happening here?
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So England responded to the Ladites by basically being like
fuck this, fuck them, fuck are on peasants. Let's just
kill the lot of them. They pulled thousands of troops
out of the Napoleonic Wars to put down the revolt,
and this is the largest force used to put down
a disturbance in English history up to that point. Although
I've read that in multiple places, I would argue the
English Civil War was like probably bigger and as many
(14:29):
disturbance but whatever, I guess since the Civil War like won,
it's like different, I don't know whatever. Yeah, Nottingham was
under siege by troops. Anyone who turned informant would be
pardoned and massive rewards were offered for information. Supposed ring
leaders were rounded up and a dozen people were arrested,
but no one turned informant. None of the arrested turned snitch.
(14:54):
Almost everyone was released for lack of evidence, and none
of it stopped the raids because they hadn't actually caught.
It's the thing that we keep running over time and
time again. The hierarchical organization is like, Haha, we have
cut off the head of the snake, and then they're like,
oh shit, it's a jellyfish.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah, no one's in charge, we're all just pissed.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah. In the end, a few people did come forward
to claim the reward for information. All of them were
scamming the government. None of their lives held up in
any court case. They just showed up with random ass
information based which is a sketchy tactic that could get
people hanged, but it worked, so fuck it. The government
(15:38):
at the time wrote basically being like, oh, they must
have an absolute hierarchy in order to have this much organization.
Historians are pretty sure that they had the opposite thing
working in their advantage. In some ways, they are quite formal.
They're drilling out on the moors at night, and they
are sending representatives back and forth to coordinate between different
groups sometimes and soon enough they'll be taking oaths of
secrecy into the society. It was very decentralized, and there's
(16:01):
no evidence of any kind of any kind of steering committee.
Some owners started to give in to the Luddites and
started promising to stop wage cuts and stop churning out
mediocre hosiery. And this time period sometimes gets called collective
bargaining by rioty.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Now, now that sounds like they're onto something here, I
can get on board.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
It worked and didn't you know. It's like one of
those things where it's like everything does or doesn't work.
You know, people are like, oh, this one thing didn't
work that one time, and you're like, yeah, you know,
what doesn't work most of the time most things. Yeah,
but the New Year eighteen twelve donned. Nottingham is under
martial law, and this doesn't stop the antics. A man
(16:48):
in a goat skin mask with a beard down to
his waist like waylays a cart full of frames in
broad daylight and gets away with it and no one
can track him down.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
The magic of goats, which.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Is impressed because I mean, yeah, like the godpan has
now robbed you. But how do you disc the man
had a beard down to his waist?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
That was a lot I've been. I've been some places
in the world where it's like, well, that has not
narrowed it down at all. Okay, We're in this village
in like rural Iraq. There's a lot of men with
beards down to their waists.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Fair enough, fair enough, And I want to know what
the goat's skin mask was. I want to know more
about that. Did it look like a goat or was
it just a bandana? Or was it? Who knows? On
Valentine's Day eighteen twelve, the government, as a love letter
to the common people, passed a new law death penalty
(17:39):
for anyone who's caught breaking a frame. Okay, during the
debates in the House of Lords, a young new baron
in the House of Lords went up and gave a speech,
and it is his first speech before the House and
it is a defense of the Luddites. He is the
lone voice speaking out in defense of the Ludites. And
his name is Lord Byron, the first vanik Go.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yes, he is.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
More famous as a romantic poet than being the first vampire,
and for being friends with the Shelleys and the father
of Ada Lovelace, who is probably the first computer programmer.
But I'm gonna tell you about how he's the first vampire.
Have you heard this story? Yeah, bits of it? Yes, Okay,
we I'm gonna tell it to you again. Anyway. There's
this famous ghost story competition that happens in Switzerland where
(18:28):
Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron are the only
three people there that person not true and they have
a ghost story competition, And this is where Frankenstein comes from, right,
And Percy Shelley and Lord Byron wrote some forgettable stuff.
What Lord Byron told was like not technically a vampire story,
(18:48):
but not not a vampire story, like could have been
a vampire story, but there was another person there. There's
probably a bunch more people there. There's probably servants there
all over the place, but there's this like hanger on,
who is it in the employee of Lord Byron, John Polardori,
and the two men. The two men might have been fucking.
(19:08):
Lord Byron was absolutely bisexual, which is actually part of
why he left England is that that was a capital crime.
Whether just as friend or employer or lover. Lord Byron
was a shit to John Polodori. He's like constantly like
making fun of him and shit, And it's basically like, Ah,
(19:29):
this drag of a guy, I gotta keep around me.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
It's like the pickup artists always say, negging is the
best way to hit on someone.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I know, Lord Byron is the expert at this.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
It works great on him.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Yeah. But the other thing is that every single historian
is like John Polardari sucked and was annoying as hell.
But I'm like, was he or was he in an
abusive relationship with Lord Byron? I don't know whatever happened.
John wrote a story called The Vampire, and this is
this is the creation of the vampire as a romantic
(20:02):
character in Western literature prior to this. The vampire is
an Eastern European folklore creature that is like not incredibly
distinct from a zombie or a ghost or something, you know,
it's like someone has come back from the dead, but
it's not an aristocratic romantic character. So Lord Ruthven the
(20:27):
vampire in the story The Vampire is absolutely a parody
of Lord Byron, and it is this heartbreaking story about
kind of being attached to and traveling with this guy
who's just seducing women everywhere and sucks and to make
things worse. So Lord Byron is the first vampire, and
(20:48):
John Polodaria is like, Oh, I wish I could like
have my own career, but I'm attached to this rich
man or whatever. Right, A magazine found his story and
published it under the name Lord Byron, and so he
just like can't exist in his own way.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Yeah. We talked about this during our Dracula episodes. Oh
shit o yeah, but without this much detail, I didn't
really get into anything about like their relationship, yeah, which
is such a fucked up thing to have happened.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah. And then like a couple of years after this,
John Pulladari probably kills himself at a pretty young age.
It's like he died of accidental poisoning. But most people
are like, yeah, he killed himself. That is like more
the gay love affair thing is like conjecture, right, But
it's funny to me to realize that the modern vampire
might exist because of a salty gay love affair. Yeah,
(21:40):
So what I'm telling you is that the ludd It's
primary supporter and government. Actually, before that, I should do
an ad.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Our primary supporter is.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Not is all of these ads these guys. Yeah, and
we're back. The Lunnight's primary supporter and government was the
first vampire. And his speech went hard. I don't know.
(22:10):
We might have been a terrible person. He might have
been a perfectly fine person. And John sucked. I don't know,
but he was a good writer. He wrote or said,
is there not blood enough upon your penal code? That
more must be poured forth to ascend to heaven and
testify against you? How will you carry the bill into effect?
Can you commit a whole country to their own prisons?
(22:31):
Will you erect a gibbet in every field and hang
men up like scarecrows? And the answers like yes that,
They're like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yes, that's exactly what I'll do.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, we're England. He stood alone in the House of
Lords against the law, and it soon passed, and frankly
he stood alone against one of the greatest blows against
the world ever passed by law, because it was one
of the landmark laws in the Industrial Revolution, protecting the
Industrial Revolution from anyone who is discontented about the way
(23:03):
that revolution was going, the consequences of which have been
a disaster for the human race. The law was the
beginning of the end of the Luddites, but it didn't
stop them like the beginning of the end. It actually
was the beginning of them going like twice as hard. Honestly,
it hardened them. Many of them had thought the government
(23:26):
was there to protect them, like we were talking about earlier,
though the crowns on our side, even if the business
people aren't. This is when they're like, oh, the crown
existed pretic capital. So between martial law and occupation and
then soon a trial of some young Luddites happens. It
puts a damper on activities in Nodingham, so then it
just springs up in multiple other places. Immediately Lancashire and
(23:47):
Yorkshire are like, all right, let's fucking go, and they
went even harder. Raids become more and more frequent, despite
attempts to stop them. In Yorkshire, they're stockpiling arms that
they're like robbing from militias and from houses of rich people.
They're more violent, they're more disciplined, and they're more likely
to perceive themselves as a revolutionary force. They add a
(24:07):
solemn oath to the mix, and to join the movement
is to be twisted in because these are like wolf
spinners and shit, right. I like that, Yeah, as if
an individual fiber is spun into yarn.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
The oath was a far more poetic and long winded
way of saying if I snitch, someone should kill me.
They've got secret signals and like hand gestures. They have
a call in response, and the call in response is
what are you determined? What for free liberty? And the
government is like, hey, this is an insurrection and they're right.
(24:46):
They call themselves the army of redressers sometimes, and they
are genuinely building towards a revolution. At least many of
them saw themselves this way. Not necessarily everyone involved, but
this is manster of every revolution, honestly.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
They were in connection with with quote the Papists in Ireland.
They were building ties with Scotland and France. They're doing
what a lot of different people who are mad at
the English government do, which is like, yo, France, you
want to invade? Could you invade real quick?
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And they were putting out explicit calls to end the
monarchy and usher in or republic. At the core of it,
they're mad because they're starving, right, they are barely able
to find work. They're subsisting off of oatmeal and like
a scarce potato here and there, and they're watching people,
especially infants, die of malnutrition.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah. That would that would make me unhappy. I would be.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Miffed, Yeah, a little bit, a little bit upset.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
I might write a strongly worded letter.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Oh yeah, but I would be writing letters two or
three times a week.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah. And these people were too. They just the strong
words were a little stronger, and they had something behind them.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And I think one thing that's hard for the modern
European left to understand about the Luddites is that these
workers were fighting for tradition against the industrial revolution. They
were fighting for cultural lifeways. So they weren't revolutionaries in
a certain context, right. They were fighting for the preservation
of an existent or a previous way of life. There
(26:24):
were utopian dreamers among them, but it was a utopianism
based on the foundations of their actual lifeways and culture,
and as a vibe more familiar to leftist and radicals
who come from outside the imperial core, is what I
would argue.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
It also is part of why the right wing tries
to claim this kind of stuff. At this point, they
add arson to their toolbox. On January nineteenth, eighteen twelve,
they burn down a mill with no one inside, and
soon they burn an awful lot more. And at this point,
none of them, even when they're running around with axes
and swords and shit, none of them are killing people
on purpose at this point. And I think, actually they
(26:57):
haven't killed anyone at this point. A lot of them
have died. One of the more notable Luodites was of
the more militant variety, was this man named George Meller,
who is twenty four in eighteen twelve, and he was
a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. And Robert, I don't
know if you knew about this thing that I learned
about from you years ago from one of your podcasts,
(27:19):
about how when you go train soldiers to go fight
wars overseas, they can come back and become revolutionaries.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, it turns out if you make people really good
at fighting and then they get angry at you, you
have a problem.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, and that's the Luodites, especially once you get up
into Yorkshire. So this veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, he
and presumably other veterans, gave the Luddites their military structure
and tactics. And he was a cropper. Basically, he cut
cloth for a living, which is a very physically demanding job,
and croppers were famously large, strong, and fighty. He had
(27:53):
apprenticed for seven years at this job, and not that
many people could do this job, so it paid comparatively well.
New shearing frames were putting them out of work very quickly,
and soon he'd be lucky to just work in some
factory somewhere if he found a job at all.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Sure, So in.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Eighteen twelve and in April eighteen twelve, George Meller and
more than one hundred of his closest friends armed themselves
with everything from guns to rocks and everything in between,
and they marched on a mill called the Rawfolds Mill,
owned by a mister Cartwright. Some of the men carried
huge sledge hammers called Enoch, like they'd be like make
(28:31):
way for Enoch when some hammering needed to happen. And
they were called this because the maker of the hammers
which they used for work was a guy named Enoch,
and he's like not on their side. He also makes
a bunch of the machines. It's just like his design.
But they're Ludites, so of course they're aware of and
making reference to biblical forces when they say all this shit.
(28:53):
Enoch is a guy who lived for three hundred and
sixty five years and walked into heaven alive rather than
waiting to die.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Based.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, so they storm this mill, but it's not empty.
Mister Cartwright and nine others with four loyal workers and
five soldiers from the local militia, they're inside and they've
like defended there. They've like built everything to have little
pulleys that pull up things to block things and reinforce
the door and all this shit. And the defenders open
(29:23):
fire and they're like, bring forth Enoch, and Enoch, you know,
runs to the front and starts to batter down the door,
which is heavily reinforced. Takes a very long time for
them to break through. And now we get to my
favorite named character and the whole story with my favorite
line in the whole story. A young apprentice named John Booth,
(29:43):
forever known to history as not the other John Booth.
This is the good John Booth. He did not shoot
Abraham Lincoln. Instead he himself.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
But when people don't shoot Abraham Lincoln, one of my
favorite things for people to do is not shoot Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I know almost everyone in the world has succeeded at that.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah, the vast majority of people eating h on musk,
as far as I know, has not shot Abrahamley. Now
would he have? Maybe?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Does he probably have a secret machine to build a
time machine to go back and shoot Abraham Lincoln sooner
so that he can have aparthe'd last longer in South Africa?
Who can I can't legally say, I can't prove it yet,
But the good John Booth he takes a musket ball
to the leg and he goes down, and soon enough
a blacksmith is shot two and the alarm bell is ringing,
(30:31):
and the literal cavalry is on its way, and so
the Luddites retreat and they're like there's like tearful goodbyes
where they're like I don't think we can take you
with us, but remember your oath. Okay, bud okay, good luck,
my friend, and they like leave tearfully. They leave two wounded,
(30:51):
dying comrades. There's no time to drag them away. Both
men were interrogated, neither gave anything up, and it might
be apocryphal, but it's my favorite last words in history.
The interrogator, possibly the local priest who is a super
anti Luddite, guys like, all right, tell us what you know,
give us some names. John Booth looks up and says,
(31:12):
can you keep a secret, and the priest is like,
of course. John Booth says so can I.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
God, that's cool.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
Yeah, And then stuff like that too, where it's like
they could have stopped anyone from learning about his last words,
but it was just too cool.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
To not even as the guys you killed them, you're like, well,
but we gotta tell people. That was just too badass,
I know, I know. Or like they were like, can
you believe the rickalcitrins of these stupid you know whatever?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
But yeah, no exactly, And John Booth dies on the
operating table as they're amputating his leg. This is not
a good time to get shot in the leg.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Not like today. Today's really a golden age for getting
shot in the leg.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
I'll tell you of any year that has happened. Yeah,
if I were to pick a year to get shot
in the leg, if he's probably about fifteen years ago
or something.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
If you've become unstuck in time like Billy Pilgrim and
you're planning on getting shot in the leg at some
point now is definitely the destination.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah. Absolutely. One of the soldiers inside the mill refused
to shoot on the crowd when he's ordered to. He
puts down his gun and says he can't shoot upon
his brothers, and he is court martialed. And then because
of all of English history is one tiny town, and
I'm going to tie in, Yeah, three more literary figures.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
There have only been thirty people in English history.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, at least that wrote things that got remembered. There's
another reverend in the town, and this one's not anti Luddite.
He's an Irish Anglican guy. I don't think he's like
pro them specifically, but he's like neutral or whatever. And
he sees people sneaking into the church's graveyard at night
to secretly bury two Luttites who'd been killed in the raids,
(33:08):
whose names are lost to history, and he didn't say
anything to anyone about it, because no one should be
punished for performing a Christian burial. That guy's name was
Reverend Patrick Bronte, only famous to history because his three
daughters are the fucking Bronte sisters who wrote like everything,
the guy Cartwright, the mill owner, is hated by Luddites.
(33:31):
Every door after this happens, after these people are killed,
has vengeance for the blood of the innocent chalked on it.
One morning after the death of good John Booth and
the others based And it's this interesting thing where I
think the people, the Luddites genuinely believe that they have
been wronged for being shot while they're trying to destroy
(33:52):
things with axes and hammers, you know, yeah, yeah, which
sounds almost silly now, but like in retrospect you're like, well,
probably you shouldn't shoot people for destroying property.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
That's yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
The Ludites for the first time, they are planning specific
and actual violence. When Cartwright was leaving town, he'd been
in town testifying at the court martial of the soldier
he wasn't like, oh, I understand my boy. He was like,
fuck you. You didn't fucking shoot people. Some folks from the
bushes tried to shoot him but missed, and no one
knows for sure whether that was like trying to kill
(34:26):
him or it was like warning shots to be like
get the fuck out of here, but they were probably
trying to kill him. Around this time, they develop a
new tactic, food riots. Food riots start breaking out everywhere.
A lot of historians discount them from the story of
the Luddites, and I think that's because of misogyny, because
it's mostly men doing the raids at night, and it
(34:48):
is mostly women leading and participating in the food riots
and being hanged for it. At least two of these
women called themselves Lady lud while leading these fucking food riots,
and people are like, ah, oh, does this really count?
I don't know. The prices of basic foods were skyrocketing.
One woman named Hannah Smith, she was fifty four. She
(35:09):
was hanged for handing out potatoes to a crowd from
a cart she commandeered. They called it highway robbery in
order to hang her, and food riots turned into rob
the militias and steal their guns riots, and soon the
overall tactic of the Luddites was to start with a
food riot and then move into attacks on factories and mansions.
(35:32):
Two men in dresses led a riotous crowd to a
factory owner's mansion and then everyone broke out the windows
of the place with rocks. And this is the only
known for certain time that crossdressers were involved, but it
is the symbol of the movement for generations to come,
is to have like kind of like a big strong
man with a sledgehammer wearing a dress. And what's interesting
(35:53):
about it is that the historians who like the Luddites
tend to downplay the cross dressing, whereas those who like
want to accuse it of being like silly and fight
against modernity and annoying play up the cross dressing. But
even the downplayers are like, well, there might have been
more articles of women's clothing like here and there among
the rest of the raids. I don't know, you know,
(36:16):
this was a common method of disguise and more like
carnival that was part of rebellions in England and Ireland
at this point. It comes from this sort of world
turned upside down thing that happens at festivals, which is
the like someone's king for a day, or you know,
(36:37):
the lay people are the priests and the priests are
the lay people, this kind of thing, and often the
Luddites will claim themselves as General Luod's wives, and I
of course you will be shocked to know. I think
is really cool that they were all a bunch of
weird cross dressers.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Yes, that is like, that's also just a thing the
English do a lot. I mean, like we all know
our Monty Python. There's like a long and complicated history
of cross dressing, specifically in the UK. Yep.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
But what there isn't a complicated history of in the
UK is advertisement. Because if you're listening to this in
the UK, all of the sponsors are good and moral.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
We're entirely sponsored by the British Royal Family, that's right. Yeah,
so check that out. You know, you know, the British
Royal Family is such a good deal that you're about
to get like two or three monarchs in the space
of just a couple of years, so really, you know,
constantly working on that value. Yeah, and remember to use
(37:40):
the promo code sausage fingers. Here are the ads and
we're back.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Okay. So another time, five Loodites are killed and eighteen
injured when thousands of women and men storm a factory
and were met with rifle fire. So you're moving towards
these daytime raids, these like larger mass actions. And it's
around this point when even the misogynists have to admit
women were heavily involved in the movement. Yeah, the crowds
(38:23):
get larger and larger, the attacks get more brazen, and
the persecution becomes more deadly. And these crowds would march
with a straw dummy held aloft which represented ned Lud
and they flew a fucking red flag, the flag of revolt,
which is way older than state socialism. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And as many as thirty people were killed one day
(38:44):
in an attack on one owner's mansion. They were met
with sword and rifle from cavalry. And they're still at
this point rarely shooting back. Their goal isn't violence, not directly,
but intimidation and destruction. It's around this point that spies
are starting to success get into the movement. At least
nine of them, and around one or two of the
arrestees were starting to talk, but really very very few.
(39:08):
In the end, the government, not particularly fond of being overthrown,
just put thousands of soldiers into these tiny areas, like
fourteen thousand soldiers. I've read somewhere that one in seventy
people in the entire triangle was a soldier.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Gny Christmas.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
The rewards kept getting raised higher and higher. At some
point they're offering two thousand pounds, which is literally a
lifetime's wages, is forty years of wages at the like
decent previous artisan rate. No one takes it. The occupying
force was rather rude, to say the least. They weren't
there weren't enough barracks, and they were all housed in
like local pubs and just kind of like took over
(39:46):
these towns. And then at the end of April they
entered their final phase where most movements that don't succeed go,
when most movements that don't become widespread popular were across
the entire.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Ta, don't become a government, right.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, some of them turned to reform because the government
started promising like, oh well, like look into some stuff,
and some of them, because of the repression, turned to
increasingly isolated acts of armed insurrection violence appropriation and assassination
in the name of outright revolution. One owner had the
(40:24):
picked the wrong name for his family. His name was Horsefall,
and he said he wanted to ride his horse up
to the saddle and Luddite blood. He really didn't like
the Luodites very much, and he was so famous for
saying this shit that little kids, like local kids in
the area would like run in front of his horse
and be like, I'm general, lud, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3 (40:44):
You know, Oh boy, brave kids, I know.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Like they're not quite old enough for the factory job.
Just kidding their old enough for the factory jobs. Mel Or,
that veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, he has it out
for this particular owner, Horsefall. He once says that he
saw an infant die at its mother's breast while Meller
like rode by uncarrying he like holds in his version
of the story, I think it's like he like holds
(41:10):
the dead baby up to Mellow, who's like, I don't
even give a shit fuck you. You know, I don't
really believe that story is too pat but it might
have happened. I don't know. He doesn't like Horsefall, so
him and three of his buds. Waylaid horsefall and shot
him to death. And he fell off his horse. And
what he said as he fell was not poetic, but
it was definitely accurate. He shouted murder.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Well kay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
He didn't die right away. He died thirty six hours later.
His last words were, these are awful times, doctor. And
that's like kind of I'm like, yeah, I get some
empathy there.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
You know, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
And the revolutionists are robbing mansions for guns for a
revolution that doesn't happen. The reformists are failing to get
basic water down reforms pushing through the house pushed to
the House of Lords, like the House of Commons, like
take their demands and water them down extensively and then
put them to the House of lords, who are like,
we don't give a shit. Where the House of Lords.
(42:09):
Only Lord Byron is on their side in the House
of Lords, and it just loses steam in the face
of military occupation and repression. Also, the Comet's gone. It's
largely seen as a movement that failed, and that is
mostly true. It did not win lasting reforms. It did
not stop the industrial revolution. To be fair, no one
(42:31):
else did either, But strategically, it was actually kind of
interestingly a stalemate. The government wanted to kill a lot
of them, wanted to convict and kill or deport just
so many people. They had a massive occupation of the area.
They only managed to get a couple dozen convictions in
(42:52):
the end with this army, and they managed to send
some lawdates to Australia, and they hanged others. But for
all that spies and the astronomically high bounties, the Crown
couldn't get many arrests, and those they arrested, they couldn't
get too many convictions. Because this is the thing that
the Leddites were best at. They shut the fuck up. Yeah,
(43:13):
that is the whole secret. Many many more of them
would have died. You had thousands and thousands of people
committing capital offenses. No one talked, so not everyone walked,
but most people did. Thousands of lives saved. They kept
their mouths shut for decades after. It wasn't until the
end of the nineteenth century that people started talking about
(43:35):
the wild shit they'd done in their youth. It was
also successful that it cemented the Ludite name into history, though,
of course, the powers of culture and control have done
an amazing job of turning it into a byword for
doesn't understand how to program a VCR, which shows how
old I am, but what I could mean part of
(43:56):
a seriously amazing armed insurrection that like it is seventy
two degrees in early March in the mountains while I
am recording this. If the luddit had succeeded, it might not.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Be yeah, and we could still have clothing.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
I know, because they weren't trying to get rid of
the idea of automating anything.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Yeah. If they had been.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Like, hey, y'all, we're going to automate a lot of
your jobs. Here is a living wage, or here is
like other ways to express your artistic craft, or like
here's some you know, or like you're the one who
can operate this machine, don't worry, here's a pension. Like
could have been fine. But I will end with one
(44:44):
more quote from Queen May. That poem by Percy Shelley,
just a bit of the utopian imagining, because this is
after the lut eight Rebellion. This poem comes out and
it is the bible of the working class for multiple generations.
A brighter morn awaits the human day when every transfer
of Earth's natural gifts shall be a commerce of good
words and works, When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,
(45:08):
the fear of infamy, disease and woe, war with its
million horrors and fierce hell shall live but in the
memory of time. Wow, them's the ludites.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Yeah, well, maybe take some lessons out of those, folks.
Is we're going to need to do something about this?
Or seventy two degrees in march in the mountains?
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, you know. And some of the other lessons you
can take out of it are like, well, sometimes things
work and sometimes things don't. And just because something's the
more militant doesn't make it right, and sometimes because things
the more reformist, it doesn't make it right. And it
takes all of us trying different things, you know. Yeah,
(46:01):
And what it also takes is pivot to plugs.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Yeah, sure. Read my book After the Revolution, which is
about the aftermath of a successful revolution, and shit's still
fucked up as it always is, but now there's a
big rolling city, so that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
That is what I like about the book After the Revolution.
People haven't read it, they should go out and read it.
It's like, oh, we had a revolution and it didn't
fix everything, and yeah, some things are more interesting and
some things are worse, and some things are better and
some things would have been worse anyway, And like I
appreciate that it's a little bit more honest. Like I
like this utopian imagining. This poem I'm closing with Shelley
(46:47):
being like, oh, you know, we'll be a time without
war and disease and pover and like no one will
be poor and no one to be rich. And it's
like cool, and I'm all about that, but it's also
not how it's going to go. Yeah, you know, no,
Like that's the one thing that's the that's the Margaret
Killjoy promise.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Yeah you gotta. I mean, one of the things that
roden Berry got right is that you don't get any
steps towards utopia without some disasters along the way. And
then one thing that people who eventually took the series
from him got right is that maintaining Utopia is also
a constant battle. Yeah, things just start nice forever. Yeah,
(47:27):
I really I've been on a Star Trek kick lately too.
I've been really into the way that, yeah, people have
picked up the ball and run with it and been like, oh,
maybe the Federation isn't perfect, and like, but what is
perfect is I have another podcast called Live Like the
World Is Dying, which comes out every Friday, and I'm
one of three hosts and we talk about how to
(47:50):
navigate living in bad times. And also, Sophie, what do
you got?
Speaker 4 (47:59):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Subscribe to Cooler Zone Media on Apple Android version coming soon,
look out for that.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah, all right, in the near future, check out Margaret's
baking cookbook, Live Like the World Is Pieing. Oh my god,
That's all I got.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Was a Margaret cookbook. It would literally just be how
to make hard tech. Everyone. This is my final plug. Everyone,
make hard tech. If you eat it, you'll break your teeth,
but it lasts forever if you keep it away from moisture,
light and heat. So hard tech it's the way you
turn your flour into non dour times. Bye.
Speaker 4 (48:45):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. You have been
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Do Cool Stuff. Your podcast,
it's yours, You belongs to you because it's part of
the commons. You see what I did there. If you
didn't listen to part one, you have no idea what
I'm talking about. But you might know my guest, Robert Evans,
that's right in the bastards.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yes, uh, and I legally own all podcasts. Actually, I
came up with the idea. Before me, no one had
ever had the idea to steal the human voice and
imprison it in an audio file. You know I invented that.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, uh, the first wax cylinder Robert Evans special.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
That's right, that's right, it's audio Drunken Try to Pizza Hut.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Our producer is Sophie.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Robert says is a lie. Everything Margaret says is the truth.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Oh, you know, market guards getting at that.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
If podcasting, ever doesn't work out, you and I could
get get a gig doing that guarding some rich guys. Dungeon.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I look good in the suit of full plate armor
of a Halbert just saying now they have the like
every now and then the Internet figures out that some
Victorian rich people had had like hermits that they hired
to like little in the property. The new one should
be the the ominous Guards.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
The harminous Guards, one of whom tells only lies and
the other speaks the truth.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
And honestly guarding our legal liability by cutting out when
we say things we shouldn't. Is our audio engineer, Daniel Hi, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, Dannel, Robert fucking say it?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Hi, Daniel, Okay good?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
And our theme musical was written for us by n women.
And this is part two in a two parter about
the Luddites. And I wonder if there's people who actually
only listen a part two of mine because they know
the first part is contact. But you're gonna miss so
much and you won't understand why it's cool if you
don't go back and listen to part one. There's poetry
and fire. So the Ladites. I mentioned that there was
(02:15):
a war going on in Europe, the Napoleonic Wars, and
this was fucking everything up as war tends to do.
It was fucking up industry and the economy and food
and all of that shit. It didn't help that you
also get like four years of bad harvest in a
row and there's a fucking comet in the sky and
everyone you know is dying in Europe fighting a Napoleon,
(02:38):
and trade embargoes are cutting off entire markets for textile exports,
which is ten percent of what the British people do
for work. Food prices are rising dramatically. People are living
literally starving in a lot of these working class towns,
and all of these fucking factories are suddenly popping up everywhere,
and trade unionism is out, And we do and don't
(03:03):
know a lot about the Luddites. There are endless well
researched books written about them, and there are plenty of
primary sources because they weren't afraid to write. But they
were also a secret society and they took it their
vow of secrecy really seriously. A lot of what we
know only came out decades later as old Luddites approached
the end of their lives, and it's like the eighteen
(03:24):
sixties and they're like, I fine, I guess I could
fucking talk about that shit. You know, so not the
best way to get super accurate information. They are also
such mythic figures that everyone tries to write a story
onto them. I'm honestly doing it too. I'm trying not
to write, but it's impossible. But we do know a
(03:46):
lot of their actions. The Ludites weren't all over England.
They were in what gets called the Luddite Triangle, which
should have been called the Ludic triangle if you ask me,
but no one did because I wasn't born and might
have a different etymological route. There was a triangle formed
by Yorkshire in the north west to Lancashire and down
(04:08):
to Leicestershire.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Leicester. I know that because I've pronounced it wrong on
the show and everyone in England is like, how did
you not guess that? It's pronounced completely differently from how
it's spelled.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
But it's Leicester.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
You have wester.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Leicester because they're the different The bigger areas have the
Shire at the end, and then the towns look like
there's like nottingham and then it's in Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire. Get
your shit together, England, come on, I know, I know.
Well they're still fighting giants, so it's hard, you know.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Did you just say get your shit together, England?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
The one thing we don't want them to do.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
You're right the last time that happened.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
It went badly for a lot of people when Albion
Rises were all in trouble.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Keep your ship apart.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, some of us. Actually, that's the next line of
my script. Some of us don't know a lot about England. Say,
for example, all you know about England is that King
Uther Pendragon once died while his air was missing, and
his son Arthur was discovered by pulling a sword out
of a stone. And the same thing is about to
happen now, because get it, there's a I'm trying to
make a reference to things that are happening in the
(05:21):
modern world and in the news.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Sophia, are you talking about the fact that nobody's seen
Printess Kate Middleton in many months and the photoshop fail
and that the royal family is not explaining why?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yes, which I knew about because of you.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
You're welcome, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Whereas if you want to know about kings who either
never existed or have been dead for five hundred years,
I'm your girl. But things that actually impact our lives
now so versed with.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
This does not impact our lives.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
But that's good.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Kate Middleton may not be a live which she's not.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Good unless By the time you're hearing this, she has
returned with Excalibur and has Warwiz gone to the Isle
of Avalon and talked to the ladies there to get
a sword from the lady in the lake.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Or if you follow conspiracy theories with.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
A brand new face, ooh, I hope there's still a sword.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Me too, should always be a sword.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
The other thing that you might know about England is
that there was a fox named Robin Hood who hung
out in a forest called Sherwood, robbing people alongside his buddy,
who was a bear named Little John. For those of
us who don't know anything beyond that, the ludic triangle
including not in Him and nottingham Shire and therefore Sherwood Forest.
(06:46):
In fact, our story starts in Noddingham. Okay it started.
I'm going to claim it started in November eighteen eleven.
Other people are like, oh, it was in March, but
there was like some specific characteristics that made it. Some
people did some cool shit in March. But I'm gonna
start at in October. In November, sure, because this is
(07:06):
when it is more self consciously. The Luodites on November fourth,
eighteen eleven, on a night lit by the comet in
Nodingham a small band of men. More women are involved
later or were written out of this earlier part because
everything keeps being like and then these men did things,
and like later in the story they're like, oh, there's
some women.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
You're like, really they're all along? Yeah, who's to know?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
You know?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
But a small group of people gathered and disguised themselves.
Some of them blackened their faces with coal, others covered
their faces with scarves. They are armed with hammers, axes
and pistols. They make their way to a weaver studio,
not quite a factory, but a place where machines for
knitting hoseery are being worked. And they go in and
they only smash up not all the frames, but the
(07:53):
wide frames. These are the frames that make cheap, inferior
product at like greater speeds. A week at the first
November raid, they went at it again. This time the
owner was ready. One ludite died and he shouted out, proceeed,
my brave fellows, I die with a willing heart. This
(08:13):
might be one of those things where we have it
fifty years later, but who knows. I'll give it to him.
He became their first martyr, and his body was displayed
for all to see, for everyone to get mad at
the murder. It wasn't like I put his head on
a pike so everyone doesn't want to fight.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
They did, our boy.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah exactly in the Marge Simpson voice.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
The lud eight smashed their way into the building. The
defenders fled, and the Luddites went and smashed everything up.
I suspect that after they had just seen their friends shot,
they probably were a little less particular in what they
chose to sabotage. That same night, other Luddites attacked another
shop and smashed up frames and revenge for that shop,
hiring what are called colts, which were young men who
(08:58):
hadn't been apprenticed, basically like old timey scabbing or strike breaking.
A few days later, a cart full of looms was
bandited by men who disguise their faces along the road,
and then they smashed up the looms. That same day,
a thousand people poured into the town of Sutton, armed
to the teeth and smashed up all the machines in town.
(09:20):
The militia came in. There's like no cops basically at
this time. It's soldiers and militia that are doing all
the law enforcement at scale. They came in and arrested
about twelve people the next day, and this is actually
one of the bigger arrests in the movement. But it
didn't stop or slow down the movement any appreciable way.
It's at this point, it's November nineteen eleven that they
(09:43):
started sending letters out communicate as if you will. All
of them invoked Edward Lud or ned Lud. Sometimes it
was King Lud, sometimes it was General Lud, sometimes it
was Captain and Chief ned Lud. And these letters are threats.
The letters are stop treating workers as disposable, or will
destroy your property or maybe just kill you. It was
(10:06):
quite literally terrorism. Yeah, they had no structural power over
their bosses or the owning class, and they had no
other means of recourse, but they had numbers, organization, secrecy,
and the ability to instill fear. So that's what they did.
They picked a leader, a fictitious one, and the first
(10:27):
written version of that ned Lud kid I talked about
last time comes from eighteen eleven, which was like thirty
years after it supposedly it happened, So we don't know
if this is actually the origin. One historian Kirkpatrick's Sale
makes the case that it could be derived from local
slang that sent all of a lud meant to smash
something into a heap, or that it could derive from
(10:50):
an actual king from eighteen twenty five named King Lud
or you'll be shocked to know this as my favorite.
It could also be connected to a King Lund of
the first century BC, who is connected to the Celtic
god Lud. That oh, and King Lund might be where
the name London comes from. It might come from Lundstown,
but other people make the etymology is out people.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yeah, when you're getting shit that old, it's usually like
this is one of our better guesses.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, and it used to be the best I can tell.
It used to be a little bit more like, oh, yeah,
it's Lundstown totally, it's from King Lund. And then like
now people are a little bit it's like, oh, it's
from the Proto Indo European word for like a low
lying area or whatever. I don't know, but I like
it when the Ludites get their name from the Celtic
(11:40):
god lude that obviously is my favorite. All over they
are you could say soliciting financial support for their movement.
Other people could say they're extorting it. I think both
would be perfectly accurate representations. They would leave notes around
that said things like, gentlemen, all he had Lud's compliments
(12:01):
and hopes you will give a trifle towards supporting his army,
as he well understands the art of breaking obnoxious frames.
If you comply with this it will be well. If not,
I shall call upon you myself.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I love that again, very classy.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
And meanwhile they're starting to robin Hood shit too. They
are raiding wealthy farms for food and money, and they
were They decided that they were better than robin Hood.
Soon enough, an unknown author coined a famous rhyme about them.
Chance know more your old rhymes about bold robin Hood
his feats. I but little admire, I will sing the
(12:41):
achievements of General Leude, now the hero of Nottinghamshire. Sometimes
they worked alone, sometimes they worked in huge formations. And
there's one problem with running around doing terrorism?
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Oh is there really? Now? This is something new. I've
never heard of any problems with terrorism, magpie.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah. Well, it turns out that Britain is a particularly
law and order focused country only at the time.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Interesting at I may have to change some of my
vacation plans.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, it's a good idea. There are about two hundred
capital offenses on the books in eighteen eleven, including like
stealing cheap boots or writing threatening letters, also being a
guy who has sex with another guy capital crime. At
the time. Ten percent of all criminals who were sentenced
(13:38):
in England in eighteen ten were sentenced to death.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Like, Texas, get your shit together, you got to catch up.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
The rest of Europe was like the rest of Europe
wasn't really I mean, they had the death penalty, but
they were like looking over at England being like, y'all right,
fucking the fuck is happening here?
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So England responded to the Ladites by basically being like
fuck this, fuck them, fuck are on peasants. Let's just
kill the lot of them. They pulled thousands of troops
out of the Napoleonic Wars to put down the revolt,
and this is the largest force used to put down
a disturbance in English history up to that point. Although
I've read that in multiple places, I would argue the
English Civil War was like probably bigger and as many
(14:29):
disturbance but whatever, I guess since the Civil War like won,
it's like different, I don't know whatever. Yeah, Nottingham was
under siege by troops. Anyone who turned informant would be
pardoned and massive rewards were offered for information. Supposed ring
leaders were rounded up and a dozen people were arrested,
but no one turned informant. None of the arrested turned snitch.
(14:54):
Almost everyone was released for lack of evidence, and none
of it stopped the raids because they hadn't actually caught.
It's the thing that we keep running over time and
time again. The hierarchical organization is like, Haha, we have
cut off the head of the snake, and then they're like,
oh shit, it's a jellyfish.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah, no one's in charge, we're all just pissed.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah. In the end, a few people did come forward
to claim the reward for information. All of them were
scamming the government. None of their lives held up in
any court case. They just showed up with random ass
information based which is a sketchy tactic that could get
people hanged, but it worked, so fuck it. The government
(15:38):
at the time wrote basically being like, oh, they must
have an absolute hierarchy in order to have this much organization.
Historians are pretty sure that they had the opposite thing
working in their advantage. In some ways, they are quite formal.
They're drilling out on the moors at night, and they
are sending representatives back and forth to coordinate between different
groups sometimes and soon enough they'll be taking oaths of
secrecy into the society. It was very decentralized, and there's
(16:01):
no evidence of any kind of any kind of steering committee.
Some owners started to give in to the Luddites and
started promising to stop wage cuts and stop churning out
mediocre hosiery. And this time period sometimes gets called collective
bargaining by rioty.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Now, now that sounds like they're onto something here, I
can get on board.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
It worked and didn't you know. It's like one of
those things where it's like everything does or doesn't work.
You know, people are like, oh, this one thing didn't
work that one time, and you're like, yeah, you know,
what doesn't work most of the time most things. Yeah,
but the New Year eighteen twelve donned. Nottingham is under
martial law, and this doesn't stop the antics. A man
(16:48):
in a goat skin mask with a beard down to
his waist like waylays a cart full of frames in
broad daylight and gets away with it and no one
can track him down.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
The magic of goats, which.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Is impressed because I mean, yeah, like the godpan has
now robbed you. But how do you disc the man
had a beard down to his waist?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
That was a lot I've been. I've been some places
in the world where it's like, well, that has not
narrowed it down at all. Okay, We're in this village
in like rural Iraq. There's a lot of men with
beards down to their waists.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Fair enough, fair enough, And I want to know what
the goat's skin mask was. I want to know more
about that. Did it look like a goat or was
it just a bandana? Or was it? Who knows? On
Valentine's Day eighteen twelve, the government, as a love letter
to the common people, passed a new law death penalty
(17:39):
for anyone who's caught breaking a frame. Okay, during the
debates in the House of Lords, a young new baron
in the House of Lords went up and gave a speech,
and it is his first speech before the House and
it is a defense of the Luddites. He is the
lone voice speaking out in defense of the Ludites. And
his name is Lord Byron, the first vanik Go.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yes, he is.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
More famous as a romantic poet than being the first vampire,
and for being friends with the Shelleys and the father
of Ada Lovelace, who is probably the first computer programmer.
But I'm gonna tell you about how he's the first vampire.
Have you heard this story? Yeah, bits of it? Yes, Okay,
we I'm gonna tell it to you again. Anyway. There's
this famous ghost story competition that happens in Switzerland where
(18:28):
Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron are the only
three people there that person not true and they have
a ghost story competition, And this is where Frankenstein comes from, right,
And Percy Shelley and Lord Byron wrote some forgettable stuff.
What Lord Byron told was like not technically a vampire story,
(18:48):
but not not a vampire story, like could have been
a vampire story, but there was another person there. There's
probably a bunch more people there. There's probably servants there
all over the place, but there's this like hanger on,
who is it in the employee of Lord Byron, John Polardori,
and the two men. The two men might have been fucking.
(19:08):
Lord Byron was absolutely bisexual, which is actually part of
why he left England is that that was a capital crime.
Whether just as friend or employer or lover. Lord Byron
was a shit to John Polodori. He's like constantly like
making fun of him and shit, And it's basically like, Ah,
(19:29):
this drag of a guy, I gotta keep around me.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
It's like the pickup artists always say, negging is the
best way to hit on someone.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I know, Lord Byron is the expert at this.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
It works great on him.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Yeah. But the other thing is that every single historian
is like John Polardari sucked and was annoying as hell.
But I'm like, was he or was he in an
abusive relationship with Lord Byron? I don't know whatever happened.
John wrote a story called The Vampire, and this is
this is the creation of the vampire as a romantic
(20:02):
character in Western literature prior to this. The vampire is
an Eastern European folklore creature that is like not incredibly
distinct from a zombie or a ghost or something, you know,
it's like someone has come back from the dead, but
it's not an aristocratic romantic character. So Lord Ruthven the
(20:27):
vampire in the story The Vampire is absolutely a parody
of Lord Byron, and it is this heartbreaking story about
kind of being attached to and traveling with this guy
who's just seducing women everywhere and sucks and to make
things worse. So Lord Byron is the first vampire, and
(20:48):
John Polodaria is like, Oh, I wish I could like
have my own career, but I'm attached to this rich
man or whatever. Right, A magazine found his story and
published it under the name Lord Byron, and so he
just like can't exist in his own way.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Yeah. We talked about this during our Dracula episodes. Oh
shit o yeah, but without this much detail, I didn't
really get into anything about like their relationship, yeah, which
is such a fucked up thing to have happened.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah. And then like a couple of years after this,
John Pulladari probably kills himself at a pretty young age.
It's like he died of accidental poisoning. But most people
are like, yeah, he killed himself. That is like more
the gay love affair thing is like conjecture, right, But
it's funny to me to realize that the modern vampire
might exist because of a salty gay love affair. Yeah,
(21:40):
So what I'm telling you is that the ludd It's
primary supporter and government. Actually, before that, I should do
an ad.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Our primary supporter is.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Not is all of these ads these guys. Yeah, and
we're back. The Lunnight's primary supporter and government was the
first vampire. And his speech went hard. I don't know.
(22:10):
We might have been a terrible person. He might have
been a perfectly fine person. And John sucked. I don't know,
but he was a good writer. He wrote or said,
is there not blood enough upon your penal code? That
more must be poured forth to ascend to heaven and
testify against you? How will you carry the bill into effect?
Can you commit a whole country to their own prisons?
(22:31):
Will you erect a gibbet in every field and hang
men up like scarecrows? And the answers like yes that,
They're like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yes, that's exactly what I'll do.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, we're England. He stood alone in the House of
Lords against the law, and it soon passed, and frankly
he stood alone against one of the greatest blows against
the world ever passed by law, because it was one
of the landmark laws in the Industrial Revolution, protecting the
Industrial Revolution from anyone who is discontented about the way
(23:03):
that revolution was going, the consequences of which have been
a disaster for the human race. The law was the
beginning of the end of the Luddites, but it didn't
stop them like the beginning of the end. It actually
was the beginning of them going like twice as hard. Honestly,
it hardened them. Many of them had thought the government
(23:26):
was there to protect them, like we were talking about earlier,
though the crowns on our side, even if the business
people aren't. This is when they're like, oh, the crown
existed pretic capital. So between martial law and occupation and
then soon a trial of some young Luddites happens. It
puts a damper on activities in Nodingham, so then it
just springs up in multiple other places. Immediately Lancashire and
(23:47):
Yorkshire are like, all right, let's fucking go, and they
went even harder. Raids become more and more frequent, despite
attempts to stop them. In Yorkshire, they're stockpiling arms that
they're like robbing from militias and from houses of rich people.
They're more violent, they're more disciplined, and they're more likely
to perceive themselves as a revolutionary force. They add a
(24:07):
solemn oath to the mix, and to join the movement
is to be twisted in because these are like wolf
spinners and shit, right. I like that, Yeah, as if
an individual fiber is spun into yarn.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
The oath was a far more poetic and long winded
way of saying if I snitch, someone should kill me.
They've got secret signals and like hand gestures. They have
a call in response, and the call in response is
what are you determined? What for free liberty? And the
government is like, hey, this is an insurrection and they're right.
(24:46):
They call themselves the army of redressers sometimes, and they
are genuinely building towards a revolution. At least many of
them saw themselves this way. Not necessarily everyone involved, but
this is manster of every revolution, honestly.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
They were in connection with with quote the Papists in Ireland.
They were building ties with Scotland and France. They're doing
what a lot of different people who are mad at
the English government do, which is like, yo, France, you
want to invade? Could you invade real quick?
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And they were putting out explicit calls to end the
monarchy and usher in or republic. At the core of it,
they're mad because they're starving, right, they are barely able
to find work. They're subsisting off of oatmeal and like
a scarce potato here and there, and they're watching people,
especially infants, die of malnutrition.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah. That would that would make me unhappy. I would be.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Miffed, Yeah, a little bit, a little bit upset.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
I might write a strongly worded letter.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Oh yeah, but I would be writing letters two or
three times a week.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah. And these people were too. They just the strong
words were a little stronger, and they had something behind them.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And I think one thing that's hard for the modern
European left to understand about the Luddites is that these
workers were fighting for tradition against the industrial revolution. They
were fighting for cultural lifeways. So they weren't revolutionaries in
a certain context, right. They were fighting for the preservation
of an existent or a previous way of life. There
(26:24):
were utopian dreamers among them, but it was a utopianism
based on the foundations of their actual lifeways and culture,
and as a vibe more familiar to leftist and radicals
who come from outside the imperial core, is what I
would argue.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
It also is part of why the right wing tries
to claim this kind of stuff. At this point, they
add arson to their toolbox. On January nineteenth, eighteen twelve,
they burn down a mill with no one inside, and
soon they burn an awful lot more. And at this point,
none of them, even when they're running around with axes
and swords and shit, none of them are killing people
on purpose at this point. And I think, actually they
(26:57):
haven't killed anyone at this point. A lot of them
have died. One of the more notable Luodites was of
the more militant variety, was this man named George Meller,
who is twenty four in eighteen twelve, and he was
a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. And Robert, I don't
know if you knew about this thing that I learned
about from you years ago from one of your podcasts,
(27:19):
about how when you go train soldiers to go fight
wars overseas, they can come back and become revolutionaries.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, it turns out if you make people really good
at fighting and then they get angry at you, you
have a problem.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, and that's the Luodites, especially once you get up
into Yorkshire. So this veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, he
and presumably other veterans, gave the Luddites their military structure
and tactics. And he was a cropper. Basically, he cut
cloth for a living, which is a very physically demanding job,
and croppers were famously large, strong, and fighty. He had
(27:53):
apprenticed for seven years at this job, and not that
many people could do this job, so it paid comparatively well.
New shearing frames were putting them out of work very quickly,
and soon he'd be lucky to just work in some
factory somewhere if he found a job at all.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Sure, So in.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Eighteen twelve and in April eighteen twelve, George Meller and
more than one hundred of his closest friends armed themselves
with everything from guns to rocks and everything in between,
and they marched on a mill called the Rawfolds Mill,
owned by a mister Cartwright. Some of the men carried
huge sledge hammers called Enoch, like they'd be like make
(28:31):
way for Enoch when some hammering needed to happen. And
they were called this because the maker of the hammers
which they used for work was a guy named Enoch,
and he's like not on their side. He also makes
a bunch of the machines. It's just like his design.
But they're Ludites, so of course they're aware of and
making reference to biblical forces when they say all this shit.
(28:53):
Enoch is a guy who lived for three hundred and
sixty five years and walked into heaven alive rather than
waiting to die.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Based.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, so they storm this mill, but it's not empty.
Mister Cartwright and nine others with four loyal workers and
five soldiers from the local militia, they're inside and they've
like defended there. They've like built everything to have little
pulleys that pull up things to block things and reinforce
the door and all this shit. And the defenders open
(29:23):
fire and they're like, bring forth Enoch, and Enoch, you know,
runs to the front and starts to batter down the door,
which is heavily reinforced. Takes a very long time for
them to break through. And now we get to my
favorite named character and the whole story with my favorite
line in the whole story. A young apprentice named John Booth,
(29:43):
forever known to history as not the other John Booth.
This is the good John Booth. He did not shoot
Abraham Lincoln. Instead he himself.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
But when people don't shoot Abraham Lincoln, one of my
favorite things for people to do is not shoot Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I know almost everyone in the world has succeeded at that.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah, the vast majority of people eating h on musk,
as far as I know, has not shot Abrahamley. Now
would he have? Maybe?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Does he probably have a secret machine to build a
time machine to go back and shoot Abraham Lincoln sooner
so that he can have aparthe'd last longer in South Africa?
Who can I can't legally say, I can't prove it yet,
But the good John Booth he takes a musket ball
to the leg and he goes down, and soon enough
a blacksmith is shot two and the alarm bell is ringing,
(30:31):
and the literal cavalry is on its way, and so
the Luddites retreat and they're like there's like tearful goodbyes
where they're like I don't think we can take you
with us, but remember your oath. Okay, bud okay, good luck,
my friend, and they like leave tearfully. They leave two wounded,
(30:51):
dying comrades. There's no time to drag them away. Both
men were interrogated, neither gave anything up, and it might
be apocryphal, but it's my favorite last words in history.
The interrogator, possibly the local priest who is a super
anti Luddite, guys like, all right, tell us what you know,
give us some names. John Booth looks up and says,
(31:12):
can you keep a secret, and the priest is like,
of course. John Booth says so can I.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
God, that's cool.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
Yeah, And then stuff like that too, where it's like
they could have stopped anyone from learning about his last words,
but it was just too cool.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
To not even as the guys you killed them, you're like, well,
but we gotta tell people. That was just too badass,
I know, I know. Or like they were like, can
you believe the rickalcitrins of these stupid you know whatever?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
But yeah, no exactly, And John Booth dies on the
operating table as they're amputating his leg. This is not
a good time to get shot in the leg.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Not like today. Today's really a golden age for getting
shot in the leg.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
I'll tell you of any year that has happened. Yeah,
if I were to pick a year to get shot
in the leg, if he's probably about fifteen years ago
or something.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
If you've become unstuck in time like Billy Pilgrim and
you're planning on getting shot in the leg at some
point now is definitely the destination.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah. Absolutely. One of the soldiers inside the mill refused
to shoot on the crowd when he's ordered to. He
puts down his gun and says he can't shoot upon
his brothers, and he is court martialed. And then because
of all of English history is one tiny town, and
I'm going to tie in, Yeah, three more literary figures.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
There have only been thirty people in English history.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, at least that wrote things that got remembered. There's
another reverend in the town, and this one's not anti Luddite.
He's an Irish Anglican guy. I don't think he's like
pro them specifically, but he's like neutral or whatever. And
he sees people sneaking into the church's graveyard at night
to secretly bury two Luttites who'd been killed in the raids,
(33:08):
whose names are lost to history, and he didn't say
anything to anyone about it, because no one should be
punished for performing a Christian burial. That guy's name was
Reverend Patrick Bronte, only famous to history because his three
daughters are the fucking Bronte sisters who wrote like everything,
the guy Cartwright, the mill owner, is hated by Luddites.
(33:31):
Every door after this happens, after these people are killed,
has vengeance for the blood of the innocent chalked on it.
One morning after the death of good John Booth and
the others based And it's this interesting thing where I
think the people, the Luddites genuinely believe that they have
been wronged for being shot while they're trying to destroy
(33:52):
things with axes and hammers, you know, yeah, yeah, which
sounds almost silly now, but like in retrospect you're like, well,
probably you shouldn't shoot people for destroying property.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
That's yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
The Ludites for the first time, they are planning specific
and actual violence. When Cartwright was leaving town, he'd been
in town testifying at the court martial of the soldier
he wasn't like, oh, I understand my boy. He was like,
fuck you. You didn't fucking shoot people. Some folks from the
bushes tried to shoot him but missed, and no one
knows for sure whether that was like trying to kill
(34:26):
him or it was like warning shots to be like
get the fuck out of here, but they were probably
trying to kill him. Around this time, they develop a
new tactic, food riots. Food riots start breaking out everywhere.
A lot of historians discount them from the story of
the Luddites, and I think that's because of misogyny, because
it's mostly men doing the raids at night, and it
(34:48):
is mostly women leading and participating in the food riots
and being hanged for it. At least two of these
women called themselves Lady lud while leading these fucking food riots,
and people are like, ah, oh, does this really count?
I don't know. The prices of basic foods were skyrocketing.
One woman named Hannah Smith, she was fifty four. She
(35:09):
was hanged for handing out potatoes to a crowd from
a cart she commandeered. They called it highway robbery in
order to hang her, and food riots turned into rob
the militias and steal their guns riots, and soon the
overall tactic of the Luddites was to start with a
food riot and then move into attacks on factories and mansions.
(35:32):
Two men in dresses led a riotous crowd to a
factory owner's mansion and then everyone broke out the windows
of the place with rocks. And this is the only
known for certain time that crossdressers were involved, but it
is the symbol of the movement for generations to come,
is to have like kind of like a big strong
man with a sledgehammer wearing a dress. And what's interesting
(35:53):
about it is that the historians who like the Luddites
tend to downplay the cross dressing, whereas those who like
want to accuse it of being like silly and fight
against modernity and annoying play up the cross dressing. But
even the downplayers are like, well, there might have been
more articles of women's clothing like here and there among
the rest of the raids. I don't know, you know,
(36:16):
this was a common method of disguise and more like
carnival that was part of rebellions in England and Ireland
at this point. It comes from this sort of world
turned upside down thing that happens at festivals, which is
the like someone's king for a day, or you know,
(36:37):
the lay people are the priests and the priests are
the lay people, this kind of thing, and often the
Luddites will claim themselves as General Luod's wives, and I
of course you will be shocked to know. I think
is really cool that they were all a bunch of
weird cross dressers.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Yes, that is like, that's also just a thing the
English do a lot. I mean, like we all know
our Monty Python. There's like a long and complicated history
of cross dressing, specifically in the UK. Yep.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
But what there isn't a complicated history of in the
UK is advertisement. Because if you're listening to this in
the UK, all of the sponsors are good and moral.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
We're entirely sponsored by the British Royal Family, that's right. Yeah,
so check that out. You know, you know, the British
Royal Family is such a good deal that you're about
to get like two or three monarchs in the space
of just a couple of years, so really, you know,
constantly working on that value. Yeah, and remember to use
(37:40):
the promo code sausage fingers. Here are the ads and
we're back.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Okay. So another time, five Loodites are killed and eighteen
injured when thousands of women and men storm a factory
and were met with rifle fire. So you're moving towards
these daytime raids, these like larger mass actions. And it's
around this point when even the misogynists have to admit
women were heavily involved in the movement. Yeah, the crowds
(38:23):
get larger and larger, the attacks get more brazen, and
the persecution becomes more deadly. And these crowds would march
with a straw dummy held aloft which represented ned Lud
and they flew a fucking red flag, the flag of revolt,
which is way older than state socialism. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And as many as thirty people were killed one day
(38:44):
in an attack on one owner's mansion. They were met
with sword and rifle from cavalry. And they're still at
this point rarely shooting back. Their goal isn't violence, not directly,
but intimidation and destruction. It's around this point that spies
are starting to success get into the movement. At least
nine of them, and around one or two of the
arrestees were starting to talk, but really very very few.
(39:08):
In the end, the government, not particularly fond of being overthrown,
just put thousands of soldiers into these tiny areas, like
fourteen thousand soldiers. I've read somewhere that one in seventy
people in the entire triangle was a soldier.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Gny Christmas.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
The rewards kept getting raised higher and higher. At some
point they're offering two thousand pounds, which is literally a
lifetime's wages, is forty years of wages at the like
decent previous artisan rate. No one takes it. The occupying
force was rather rude, to say the least. They weren't
there weren't enough barracks, and they were all housed in
like local pubs and just kind of like took over
(39:46):
these towns. And then at the end of April they
entered their final phase where most movements that don't succeed go,
when most movements that don't become widespread popular were across
the entire.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Ta, don't become a government, right.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, some of them turned to reform because the government
started promising like, oh well, like look into some stuff,
and some of them, because of the repression, turned to
increasingly isolated acts of armed insurrection violence appropriation and assassination
in the name of outright revolution. One owner had the
(40:24):
picked the wrong name for his family. His name was Horsefall,
and he said he wanted to ride his horse up
to the saddle and Luddite blood. He really didn't like
the Luodites very much, and he was so famous for
saying this shit that little kids, like local kids in
the area would like run in front of his horse
and be like, I'm general, lud, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3 (40:44):
You know, Oh boy, brave kids, I know.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Like they're not quite old enough for the factory job.
Just kidding their old enough for the factory jobs. Mel Or,
that veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, he has it out
for this particular owner, Horsefall. He once says that he
saw an infant die at its mother's breast while Meller
like rode by uncarrying he like holds in his version
of the story, I think it's like he like holds
(41:10):
the dead baby up to Mellow, who's like, I don't
even give a shit fuck you. You know, I don't
really believe that story is too pat but it might
have happened. I don't know. He doesn't like Horsefall, so
him and three of his buds. Waylaid horsefall and shot
him to death. And he fell off his horse. And
what he said as he fell was not poetic, but
it was definitely accurate. He shouted murder.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Well kay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
He didn't die right away. He died thirty six hours later.
His last words were, these are awful times, doctor. And
that's like kind of I'm like, yeah, I get some
empathy there.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
You know, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
And the revolutionists are robbing mansions for guns for a
revolution that doesn't happen. The reformists are failing to get
basic water down reforms pushing through the house pushed to
the House of Lords, like the House of Commons, like
take their demands and water them down extensively and then
put them to the House of lords, who are like,
we don't give a shit. Where the House of Lords.
(42:09):
Only Lord Byron is on their side in the House
of Lords, and it just loses steam in the face
of military occupation and repression. Also, the Comet's gone. It's
largely seen as a movement that failed, and that is
mostly true. It did not win lasting reforms. It did
not stop the industrial revolution. To be fair, no one
(42:31):
else did either, But strategically, it was actually kind of
interestingly a stalemate. The government wanted to kill a lot
of them, wanted to convict and kill or deport just
so many people. They had a massive occupation of the area.
They only managed to get a couple dozen convictions in
(42:52):
the end with this army, and they managed to send
some lawdates to Australia, and they hanged others. But for
all that spies and the astronomically high bounties, the Crown
couldn't get many arrests, and those they arrested, they couldn't
get too many convictions. Because this is the thing that
the Leddites were best at. They shut the fuck up. Yeah,
(43:13):
that is the whole secret. Many many more of them
would have died. You had thousands and thousands of people
committing capital offenses. No one talked, so not everyone walked,
but most people did. Thousands of lives saved. They kept
their mouths shut for decades after. It wasn't until the
end of the nineteenth century that people started talking about
(43:35):
the wild shit they'd done in their youth. It was
also successful that it cemented the Ludite name into history, though,
of course, the powers of culture and control have done
an amazing job of turning it into a byword for
doesn't understand how to program a VCR, which shows how
old I am, but what I could mean part of
(43:56):
a seriously amazing armed insurrection that like it is seventy
two degrees in early March in the mountains while I
am recording this. If the luddit had succeeded, it might not.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Be yeah, and we could still have clothing.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
I know, because they weren't trying to get rid of
the idea of automating anything.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Yeah. If they had been.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Like, hey, y'all, we're going to automate a lot of
your jobs. Here is a living wage, or here is
like other ways to express your artistic craft, or like
here's some you know, or like you're the one who
can operate this machine, don't worry, here's a pension. Like
could have been fine. But I will end with one
(44:44):
more quote from Queen May. That poem by Percy Shelley,
just a bit of the utopian imagining, because this is
after the lut eight Rebellion. This poem comes out and
it is the bible of the working class for multiple generations.
A brighter morn awaits the human day when every transfer
of Earth's natural gifts shall be a commerce of good
words and works, When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,
(45:08):
the fear of infamy, disease and woe, war with its
million horrors and fierce hell shall live but in the
memory of time. Wow, them's the ludites.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Yeah, well, maybe take some lessons out of those, folks.
Is we're going to need to do something about this?
Or seventy two degrees in march in the mountains?
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, you know. And some of the other lessons you
can take out of it are like, well, sometimes things
work and sometimes things don't. And just because something's the
more militant doesn't make it right, and sometimes because things
the more reformist, it doesn't make it right. And it
takes all of us trying different things, you know. Yeah,
(46:01):
And what it also takes is pivot to plugs.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Yeah, sure. Read my book After the Revolution, which is
about the aftermath of a successful revolution, and shit's still
fucked up as it always is, but now there's a
big rolling city, so that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
That is what I like about the book After the Revolution.
People haven't read it, they should go out and read it.
It's like, oh, we had a revolution and it didn't
fix everything, and yeah, some things are more interesting and
some things are worse, and some things are better and
some things would have been worse anyway, And like I
appreciate that it's a little bit more honest. Like I
like this utopian imagining. This poem I'm closing with Shelley
(46:47):
being like, oh, you know, we'll be a time without
war and disease and pover and like no one will
be poor and no one to be rich. And it's
like cool, and I'm all about that, but it's also
not how it's going to go. Yeah, you know, no,
Like that's the one thing that's the that's the Margaret
Killjoy promise.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Yeah you gotta. I mean, one of the things that
roden Berry got right is that you don't get any
steps towards utopia without some disasters along the way. And
then one thing that people who eventually took the series
from him got right is that maintaining Utopia is also
a constant battle. Yeah, things just start nice forever. Yeah,
(47:27):
I really I've been on a Star Trek kick lately too.
I've been really into the way that, yeah, people have
picked up the ball and run with it and been like, oh,
maybe the Federation isn't perfect, and like, but what is
perfect is I have another podcast called Live Like the
World Is Dying, which comes out every Friday, and I'm
one of three hosts and we talk about how to
(47:50):
navigate living in bad times. And also, Sophie, what do
you got?
Speaker 4 (47:59):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Subscribe to Cooler Zone Media on Apple Android version coming soon,
look out for that.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah, all right, in the near future, check out Margaret's
baking cookbook, Live Like the World Is Pieing. Oh my god,
That's all I got.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Was a Margaret cookbook. It would literally just be how
to make hard tech. Everyone. This is my final plug. Everyone,
make hard tech. If you eat it, you'll break your teeth,
but it lasts forever if you keep it away from moisture,
light and heat. So hard tech it's the way you
turn your flour into non dour times. Bye.
Speaker 4 (48:45):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. You have been
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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