What is a Luddite?

The term Luddite in today’s lexicon is synonymous with the word “technophobe,” but its origins harken back to the start of the 19th century, when a protracted war against Napoleon’s France brought hard times to Britain’s working class poor.

In response to competitive pressures in the textile industry—brought about by the recent advent of mechanical looms and knitting frames—British weavers grew fearful that unskilled machine operators would soon threaten their artisan livelihoods.

In response, the Luddites, as they called themselves, began breaking into textile factories with the intent of destroying the very machines that, in their minds, anyway, threatened their existence. Named after Ned Ludd—an alleged apprentice who was rumored to have trashed a textile loom in 1779—General Ludd, as he was known, was most likely a made-up and purely mythological leader who unified an otherwise disorganized band of technology-adverse protesters.

Technophobia Leads to Terrorizing

On March 11th, 1811, British troops broke up a crowd of protesters demanding better wages in Nottingham, England, which at the time was a large textile manufacturing center, prompting angry workers to ransack the looms of a textile mill later that night. After the precedent-setting evening, attacks spread out across a 70-mile stretch of England, from Loughborough in the south to Wakefield in the north.

In response to the rising destruction, Parliament shipped in thousands of soldiers to defend vulnerable factories, while passing a law that made the destruction of machinery a capital offense. The Luddite protests reached its bloody peak in April of 1812, when 150 Luddites exchanged gunfire with guards at a Yorkshire mill, and after two protesters died in the exchange, the Luddites retaliated by killing the mill owner, who had boasted that he would ride up to his britches in Luddite blood.

Later that month, some 2,000 Luddites stormed a mill near Huddersfield, and when the mill owner ordered his guards to open fire, three protesters were killed, while another 18 were wounded. The next day, when the Luddites returned for a second round of violence, British soldiers took the lives of five more protesters. By 1813, after dozens of Luddites were hanged or transported to Australia, the Luddite movement vanished as quickly as it had arrived.