What's a Luddite I often hear it used as an insult to some of the older people in our office.

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Q.� Why Luddites

A.� The name came from threatening letters sent in the early months of 1811 by 'General Ned Ludd and the Army of Redressers' to employers in Nottingham. Workers, upset by wage reductions and the use of unapprenticed men, began to break into factories at night to destroy the new machines that the employers were using.

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Q.� Sounds serious.

A.� Yes. In a three-week period, more than 200 frames were destroyed.�By March, 1811, several attacks were taking place every night and the Nottingham authorities had to enrol 400 special constables to protect the factories. The Prince Regent (later George IV) offered �50 to anyone 'giving information on any person or persons wickedly breaking the frames'.

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Q.� Was it confined to Nottingham

A.� No. It spread to Yorkshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire. Yorkshire croppers - a highly skilled group of cloth finishers - smashed a new shearing frame they feared would put them out of work. Factories were attacked by Luddites in Huddersfield, Halifax, Wakefield and Leeds in February and March, 1812.

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Q.� So the authorities took action

A.� Brutally so. In February, 1812, the government of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval (click here to read a feature on his life and dramatic death) passed the Frame Breaking Act which made the offence punishable by death. The government also ordered 12,000 troops into the areas where the Luddites were active.

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Q.� Such as

A.� A notorious attack happened near Brighouse in Yorkshire. William Cartwright, owner of Rawfolds Mill, had been using cloth-finishing machinery since 1811. Croppers began losing their jobs and tried to destroy the machinery. Cartwright was expecting trouble and employed armed men to guard the mill. The attack on Rawfolds Mill was led by George Mellor, a young cropper from Huddersfield, on 11 April, 1812. The attack failed and croppers were killed. A week later, Luddites killed William Horsfall, another mill-owner. More than 100 suspects were rounded up, 64 were charged, three were executed for Horsfall's murder and another 14 were hanged for the Rawfolds Mill attack.

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Q.� It sounds like anarchy.

A.� Yes. These were desperate times. The price of wheat was rising dramatically. Starving workers became desperate. Food riots broke out in a number of towns including Manchester, Rochdale, Stockport and Macclesfield. Lord Byron, in a speech to the House of Lords, said: 'The perseverance of these miserable men in their proceedings tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious, body of the people, into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their families, and the community. They were not ashamed to beg, but there was none to relieve them: their own means of subsistence were cut off, all other employment preoccupied; and their excesses, however to be deplored and condemned, can hardly be subject to surprise.'

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On 20 April, a mob of thousands attacked Burton's Mill at Middleton near Manchester. They carried a straw effigy, representing the General Ludd, waving a red flag. Emanuel Burton, who had been buying power-looms, recruited armed guards and three protesters were killed by musket-fire. The next day, another attempted to storm the mill failed, so they burned Burton's house. Troops killed another seven men.

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Q. How did it all end

A. Brutally. The savagery of the sentences broke the Luddites' spirit. Those not hanged were transported. The disorder was over by 1817.

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By Steve Cunningham

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