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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
In early April 1826, William Huskisson, President of the Board of Trade, wrote to the Home Secretary, Robert Peel, a gloomy picture of the state of essential foodstuffs in the domestic market: “there is a very serious deficiency in every article of produce even in Great Britain. Unfortunately, that deficiency is most alarming in those crops which are the food of the lowest classes—potatoes and oats. It is further unfortunate that the falling off is likely to be greatest in the parts where the lowest classes most abound…my opinion, founded on these and other considerations, is that some immediate measures ought to be taken.” In the industrial north west this dearth of essential foodstuffs coincided with one of the sharpest downturns in the trade cycle seen thus far in the nineteenth century. What Huskisson sought was some lessening in the application of the Corn Laws “immediately,” and that the question be given priority in Cabinet discussions. But his warning was ignored, the government failed to act, and the result was one of the most serious industrial disturbances of the early nineteenth century.
This article recounts the details of the disturbances themselves, but it also attempts to locate the context of the disputes in a wider historical framework than a traditional one offered by historians, namely, the imposition of new machinery. Although scholars have noted the deteriorating conditions facing industrial workers at this time their narratives have focused on the destruction of machinery. John Stevenson, for example, concedes that the disturbances were not the “blind violence they have been painted,” however, it is implicit in his approach that he views the machines as the weavers' sole target, for he ends by saying that the riots were “ineffective” as the manufacturers quickly brought in new looms. It is important to show that this episode was not mere mindless violence; it was linked to a wider set of circumstances that affected the lives of working people. Although the power looms were the physical representation of the plight of the weavers, and thus rife for attack, their targets were not only the employers and governors of their locality.
I wish to thank Adrian Randall, John Garrard, and Andrew Charlesworth who took the time to read and offer comments on this article.
1 British Library, Husldsson Papers, Add. Mss 38748 f. 124.
2 Stevenson, John, Popular Disturbances in England (London 1992), p. 259Google Scholar. The Hammonds' similarly note the starving conditions of the weavers but, although offering a more sympathetic narrative concentrate their discussion on the destructive elements in the dispute. J. L. and Hammond, B., The Skilled Labourer (London, 1919), pp. 47–57 and 126–28Google Scholar.
3 Wedgwood to Thomas Bentley, letter dated 9 October 1779, in the Meyer Collection, Liverpool City Reference Library. See also Manchester Mercury, 12 October 1779.
4 Kennedy, J., “On the Rise and Progress of the Cotton Manufacture,” in The Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 2nd series, 3 (1829): 121Google Scholar. See also the “Diary of David Whitehead” (MS. in Rawtenstall Reference Library); and the Hammonds', The Skilled Labourer, p. 53Google Scholar.
5 Resolution taken 11 November 1779, in Webb MS. Textiles, Pt. 1, p. 277 (London School of Economics and Political Science Library).
6 See the Resolution of John Knight to the Manchester Committee of Working Men, November 1811. Public Record Office, Home Office Papers, H. O. 42/117. For a further appraisal of the “political” element in Luddism at this time see, Dinwiddy, John, “Luddism and Politics in the Northern Districts,” in Social History 4, 1 (January 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on the disturbances themselves see, Hobsbawm, E. J., “The Machine Breakers,” in Labouring Men (London, 1964)Google Scholar, Thomis, M. I., The Luddites: Machine Breakers in Regency England (Newton Abbot, 1970)Google Scholar, Mumby, L., The Luddites (Edgware, 1971)Google Scholar, the introduction by John Rule to the 1979 edition of the Hammonds' The Skilled Labourer, Darvall, F. O., Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar, Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1980Google Scholar; Mitchell, S.I., “Food Shortage and Public Order in Cheshire 1757–1812,” in Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society 81 (1982)Google Scholar; Burton, V. C., “Popular Unrest in South-East Lancashire and North-East Cheshire during the Luddite period” (M.A. thesis, University of Lancaster, 1976)Google Scholar; Stevenson, ‘Popular Disturbances in England”.
7 P.R.O. (Kew), H.O. 42/117.
8 Gentleman's Magazine, May 1826, p. 458Google Scholar.
9 Bristol Gazette, 5 May 1825.
10 Blackburn Mail, 15 February 1826. This account stated that the formal resolution was moved by E. Hammond, described as an operative cotton spinner.
11 See Blackburn Mail, 18 February 1824. See also Whittle, P. A., Blackburn As It Is (Preston, 1852)Google Scholar, and, Baines, W., A History of Lancashire (Manchester, 1825)Google Scholar.
12 Blackburn Mail 2 November 1825.
13 For a more thorough examination of the position of trade unions in this period and beyond see Rule, John, ed., British Trade Unions: The Formative Years (London 1988)Google Scholar, idem, The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England (London 1986), W. Hamish Fraser, Trade Unions and Society: The Struggle for Acceptance, 1830–1880 (London, 1980), and for trade unions and the law see Orth, J. V., “The Legal Status of English Trade Unions, 1799–1871,” in Law-Making and Law-Makers in British History, ed. Harding, Alan (Royal Historical Society, 1980)Google Scholar.
14 Sykes, Robert, “Trade Unionism and Class Consciousness: the ‘Revolutionary’ Period of General Unionism, 1829–1834,” in British Trade Unions, 1750–1850, ed., Rule, John (London, 1988)Google Scholar, see also Sykes, Robert, “Early Chartism and Trade Unionism in South-East Lancashire,” in The Chartist Experience, eds., Epstein, James and Thompson, Dorothy (Basingstoke, 1982)Google Scholar.
15 Blackburn Mail, 19 April 1826.
16 Blackburn Mail, 24 August 1825, and 2 November 1825.
17 Blackburn Mail, 4 January 1826.
18 Preston Chronicle, 25 March 1826.
19 Preston Chronicle, 23 April 1826, The Times, 22 April 1826.
20 They were named as Barry and Beetly. The Times, 22 April 1826.
21 Blackburn Mail, 10 May 1826, and, 24 May 1826.
22 1826, Annual Register, “Chroniclt” p. 63.
23 The Times, 28 April 1826.
24 See The Times, 28 April 1826, and the Preston Chronicle, 29 April 1826.
25 Preston Chronicle, 29 April 1826.
26 The period that saw the end of the “traditional” type of food riot is the subject of debate. Historians such as Bohstedt, John (Riots and Community Politics in England and Wales [London, 1984])Google Scholar, or Stevenson (“Popular Disturbances in England”), or Thompson, E. P. (“The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” in Customs in Common [London 1991])Google Scholar, suggest that food rioting was essentially an eighteenth and early nineteenth century phenomenon that died out by the 1820s. While true in the industrial regions it cannot be said for the whole of the country. The research of the Economic and Social Research Council project looking into “Social Protest and Community Change in the West of England 1750–1850,” based at the University of Liverpool, have found several examples of the “classic” food riot in the 1820s (for example the Trowbridge riot of April, 1826 arose out of a dispute over the price of potatoes), and as late as 1867 in rural areas. See the forthcoming published findings of the project.
27 Preston Chronicle, 29 April 1826.
28 Evidence of Thomas Duckworth cited in Aspin, C., A Local History of Helmshore (Helmshore, 1969), p. 48Google Scholar.
29 Evidence of John Houghton, P.R.O. (Chancery Lane), PL 27/10/Part 1.
30 The Times, 27 April 1826, and the Blackburn Mail, 20 August 1826.
31 Deposition of John Haslam against George Heys taken 14 October 1826, in P.R.O. (Chancery Lane), PL 27/10. The tendency of a well organized demonstration of working people to adopt the nomenclature of the military seems to have had a long tradition. At a disturbance in Taunton in 1722 for example, the crowd are described as “loose Fellows called the Bloody Blacks of North Town (who) being armed with Clubs, and led a Captain of their Clan, marched in a riotous manner into the Borough…’ Cited in Rogers, N., Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt (Oxford, 1989), p. 352Google Scholar.
32 Evidence of John Ormrod of Rawtenstall. P.R.O. (Chancery Lane), PL/27/10.
33 See P.R.O. (Chancery Lane), PL 27/10/Part 1, for the names of those arrested, indicted and suspected of involvement. See also Blackburn Alfred, 15 May 1833 and 22 May 1833; Norhern Star, 23 February 1839; Blackburn Standard, 28 July 1847.
34 P.R.O. (Kew), HO 40/20. Unsigned to Peel.
35 The Times, 4 May 1826.
36 Preston Chronicle, 29 April 1826.
37 Preston Chronicle, 29 April 1826.
38 Evidence of Thomas Ellison against Robert Butterworth, 6 May, 1826. P.R.O. (Chancery Lane), PL 27/10.
39 See Gash, Norman, Mr. Secretary Peel (London 1961), pp. 327–34Google Scholar.
40 See the “Diary of David Whitehead.” Whitehead was a manufacturer from Haslingden. “That night (the 24th of April) a meeting was called of magistrates and manufacturers at Burnley…which meeting I attended.”
41 Preston Pilot, 8 April 1826, and 29 April 1826. Blackburn Mail, 19 April 1826.
42 P.R.O. (Kew), H.O. 40/18, Williams to Peel, 31 August, 1825, and H.O. 43/33, Dawson to Williams, 3 September, 1825.
43 See Gloucester Journal, 10 April 1826, for reports of the trial of Aldridge. See also the analysis of Albion Urdank, “Custom, Conflict and Traditional Authority in the Gloucester Weavers Strike of 1825,” in Journal of British Studies (April 1986): 193–226, and idem, Religion and Society in a Cotswolds Vale: Nailsworth 1700–1865 (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1990). For a detailed examination of the disputes in Gloucestershire see, Randall, A. J., “Labor and the Industrial Revolution in the West of England Woollen Industry” (Ph.D. diss., University of Birmingham, 1979)Google Scholar, and for early Luddism in the West of England and the West Riding of Yorkshire see Randall, A. J., Before the Luddites (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar.
44 Randall, A. J., “Industrial Conflict and Economic Change: The Regional Context of the Industrial Revolution,” Southern History 14 (1992): 74–92Google Scholar.
45 A. J. Randall, “The Industrial Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” in British Trade Unionism 1750–1850; E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” in Customs in Common.
46 “Diary of David Whitehead,” p. 55.
47 See The Times, 2 May 1826, for reports of the first attack and 6 May 1826, for details of the subsequent attacks.
48 The Times, 6 May 1826, and the Preston Pilot, 2 May 1826, and 13 May 1826.
49 The Times, 2 May 1826.
50 The Times, 2 May 1826.
51 This episode at the time created a minor sensation, resulting in a Military Board of Enquiry into the actions of Col. Kearney. See P.R.O. (Kew), HO 40/20, 31 May 1826.
52 Bolton Chronicle, 1 May 1826.
53 Manchester Journal, 2 May 1826.
54 P.R.O. (Chancery Lane), PL 27/10.
55 The Times, 5 May 1826.
56 Manchester Guardian, 29 April 1826. See also Manchester Gazette, 29 April 1826, for evidence that some Churchwardens were refusing relief. Also The Times, 4 May 1826.
57 Manchester Gazette, 29 April 1826.
58 See depositions in P.R.O. (Chancery Lane), P.L 27/10, Part 1.
59 Manchester Guardian, 29 April 1826.
60 The Times, 4 May 1826.
61 The Times, 5 May 1826.
62 Compared to the same region 15 or 20 years later when a plethora of social and political forces operated in an attempt contain and direct the attitudes and assumptions of working people, and which raised levels of social and political status differentiation among the working class, see Walsh, David, “Working class political integration and the Conservative Party in the North-West, 1800–1870” (Ph.D. diss., University of Salford, 1991)Google Scholar.
63 The Times, 27 April 1826.
64 “Ministers were actively engaged Saturday and yesterday in devising measures for the restoration of tranquillity in Lancashire” (The Times, 1 May 1826).
65 A fact admitted by Canning in the House of Commons (The Times, 2 May 1826).
66 Gordon, Barry, Political Economy in Parliament, 1819–1823 (Basingstoke, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, also idem, Economic Doctrine and Tory Liberalism, 1824–1830 (Basingstoke, 1979)Google Scholar.
67 Hilton, Boyd, Corn, Cash and Commerce: The Economic Policies of the Tory Governments, 1815–1830 (Oxford 1977)Google Scholar.
68 On the question of the Corn Laws for example, a noted authority in economic history wrote: “From 1823 to 1827 the corn-law question was in abeyance.” Fay, C. R., The Corn Laws and Social England (Cambridge 1932), p. 81Google Scholar. Both Gordon and Hilton have shown this not to be the case.
69 B.L.,, Peel papers, Add. Mss 40305, f. 192, Peel to Goulbum, 22 July 1826.
70 Peel regarded direct governmental intervention in the economy as “quackery.” B.L., Peel papers, Add. Mss 40332, Peel to Goulbum, 21 July 1826. Similarly so did many leading politicians on the other side of the House. For example, in the General Election which took place in June/July 1826, Lord Stanley spoke at Preston after his initial canvass: “there is no man who regrets more deeply than I do the melancholy situation to which the lower classes of the manufacturing districts are reduced; and I lament it the more, because I cannot but feel that the present distresses, and their causes, are beyond the reach of even Parliamentary assistance.…So far as Parliamentary interference can reach the cause of these distresses.…An alteration of the com laws may do something, but do not deceive yourselves…it cannot reach the seed of the present disorder” (The Times, 5 May 1826).
71 The limes, 1 May 1826. Elsewhere in the country the press reflected the sympathy and concern for the workers in the north, see Bristol Gazette, 4 May 1826.
72 The Times, 5 May 1826.
73 The Times, 18 July 1826.
74 See Gash, Norman, Mr Secretary Peel, pp. 331–34Google Scholar, also Radzinowicz, L., History of English Criminal Law (London 1948)Google Scholar; B.L.,, Peel Papers, Add. Mss 40391, ff. 83, 87; 40393, ff 65, 148, 156.
75 The Times, 2 May 1826.
76 B.L.,, Peel Papers, Add. Mss 40501, Hornby to Peel, 21 January 1842. Nor was it only the middle-class manufacturers who long remembered 1826. In 1841 a weaver from Ashton- Under-Lyne wrote to Prime Minister Peel stating that it was 1826 which marked real decline in the conditions of his trade (Peel Papers, Add. Mss 40491, ff. 75–79, J. A. Stewart to Peel, 5 October 1841).