On This Day: Poet/Peer Byron speaks against death penalty for destroying industrial machines - Feb. 27, 1812

[jgo]

(Edited from article)
"
On February 27th 1812, two week before the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage brought him instant fame and considerably more wealth, Lord Byron delivered his maiden speech in the House of Lords at the age of 24. It was a stirring defence of the Luddites, the machine-breakers who smashed the textile machinery that threatened their jobs. They were an oath-based group who met at night, masked and in numbers, to break into Midlands textile factories and destroy the machines they housed.

Byron was opposing Perceval’s Frame Work Bill, which introduced the death penalty for that and related offences. His case was that the men who did this had no alternative but starvation. He said:

“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.”

Byron claimed that the machines destroyed the livelihood of the poor, simply in order to make the mill owners more rich.
"
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/lord-byron-defended-the-luddites

(edited from Wikipedia)
"
The Destruction of Stocking Frames, etc. Act 1812 was an Act of Parliament passed by the British Government in 1812 aimed at increasing the penalties for Luddite behaviour in order to discourage it.

The Act, as passed, made the destruction of mechanised looms – stocking frames – a capital felony (and hence a crime punishable by death). Similarly raised to the level of capital felony were the associated crimes of damaging frames and entering a property with intent to damage a frame.

Although approximately 60 to 70 Luddites were hanged in the period that the statute was in force, no death sentences seem to have been justified on [the grounds of this particular piece of legislation], with judges preferring to use existing legislation. The Act was officially repealed in 1814 [and replaced with another]. By [1817], however, Luddism had largely subsided as a movement.

[Luddite]

The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers which opposed the use of certain types of cost-saving machinery, and often destroyed the machines in clandestine raids. They protested against manufacturers who used machines in "a fraudulent and deceitful manner" to replace the skilled labour of workers and drive down wages by producing inferior goods.

The Luddite movement began in Nottingham, England, and spread to the North West and Yorkshire between 1811 and 1816. Mill and factory owners took to shooting protesters and eventually the movement was suppressed by legal and military force, which included execution and penal transportation of accused and convicted Luddites.

Over time, the term has been used to refer to those opposed to industrialisation, automation, computerisation, or new technologies in general.

[Worker protest]

Malcolm L. Thomas argued in his 1970 history The Luddites that machine-breaking was one of the very few tactics that workers could use to increase pressure on employers, undermine lower-paid competing workers, and create solidarity among workers. "These attacks on machines did not imply any necessary hostility to machinery as such; machinery was just a conveniently exposed target against which an attack could be made." Historian Eric Hobsbawm has called their machine wrecking "collective bargaining by riot", which had been a tactic used in Britain since the Restoration because manufactories were scattered throughout the country, and that made it impractical to hold large-scale strikes.

[Economic crisis in this period] led to widespread protest and violence, but the middle classes and upper classes strongly supported the government, which used the army to suppress all working-class unrest, especially the Luddite movement.

The Luddites met at night on the moors surrounding industrial towns to practice military-like drills and manoeuvres. They wrecked specific types of machinery that posed a threat to the particular industrial interests in each region. In the Midlands, these were the "wide" knitting frames used to make cheap and inferior lace articles. In the North West, weavers sought to eliminate the steam-powered looms threatening wages in the cotton trade. In Yorkshire, workers opposed the use of shearing frames and gig mills to finish woolen cloth.

Many Luddite groups were highly organized and pursued machine-breaking as one of several tools for achieving specific political ends. In addition to the raids, Luddites coordinated public demonstrations and the mailing of letters to local industrialists and government officials.

Government response

The British government ultimately dispatched 12,000 troops to suppress Luddite activity, which historian Eric Hobsbawm said was a larger number than the army which the Duke of Wellington led during the Peninsular War.

Legacy

In the 19th century, occupations that arose from the growth of trade and shipping in ports, also as "domestic" manufacturers, were notorious for precarious employment prospects. Underemployment was chronic during this period, and it was common practice to retain a larger workforce than was typically necessary for insurance against labour shortages in boom times.

Merchant capitalists lacked the incentive of later factory owners, whose capital was invested in buildings and plants, to maintain a steady rate of production and return on fixed capital. The combination of seasonal variations in wage rates and violent short-term fluctuations springing from harvests and war produced periodic outbreaks of violence.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Stocking_Frames,_etc._Act_1812
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

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[Aristus]

1. I've always been a huge admirer of Lord Byron.

I even use one of his quotes in my signature line. But I never knew he was also an advocate for labor fairness. How wonderful.