It Could Happen Here - Luddism, Part One. Ft. Andrew

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Andrew is joined by James to discuss the much misunderstood Luddite movement, how they collectively bargained by rioting, and how the movement reverberated through historySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Call Zone Media. media. Welcome, welcome to Get Up and Here. I'm Andrew Sage from the YouTube channel Andrewism, joined today by... James. Hi, sorry, I'm doing my own intro. Hi, Andrew. Yeah, I'm excited to hear about something. I don't know what yet, so this should be a fun adventure yes well today we are doing a little bit of time traveling we're gonna embark on a journey to explore movements of about 200 years ago that i think is still quite relevant even today particularly in our very technological fast-paced world so let me put a new james in the early 19th century in england oh great which you know is a time of great change of evil disease all that jazz yeah i think i'd have thrived as a person with diabetes i'd have made it approximately you know a couple of weeks yeah yeah um the industrial revolution was in full

swing it hadn't quite reached that point yet uh as far as i know um but it was transforming the way the people lived and worked it was a time of innovation it was also a time of great uncertainty and amidst the clattering looms and rise of iconization, a group of workers emerged who became known as the Luddites. They were some early adopters of resistance. Yes, resistance to the changes of the Industrial Revolution. And for that cardinal sin, they've been misinterpreted ever since. So today we're going to be explaining exactly who the Lillites were and why their actions resonate with us today in the 21st century. We'll talk about their history, their

motivations, and their brave stand against the relentless march of capitalist progress. We'll also touch on some figures, some of their tactics, and the lasting impact they left on history. but most importantly, we'll be covering why their struggle still matters today. So here we are, you know, in the 19th century, industrial revolution sweeping through England, British working families were going through some very tough times as the economy was in turmoil and unemployment was spreading like wildfire. It really wasn't a good situation to be in. There was this never-ending war with Napoleon's France, there was draining resources and causing what Yorkshire historian

Frank Peel described as the hard pinch of poverty. And to make matters worse, food was in short supply and prices were shooting up. So not only were jobs hard to come by, but even putting basic food on the table was becoming a serious challenge. So it was a really tough period for these families, and they were feeling that squeeze in every way possible. So the Luddites emerged as a response to these seismic shifts, as a loosely organized group of textile workers and weavers who hailed primarily, but not exclusively, from the Nottinghamshire region of England. At the heart of their struggle was the mechanisation of the textile industry. Factories powered by steam engines and intricate machinery were replacing traditional cottage

industries, leading to unemployment and a decline in working conditions. In the place of a cottage industry where cloth workers could work as many or as few hours a day as suited them, the factory had a reason where workers would work long hours at dangerous machinery, be fed meager meals, and submit to the punitive authority of the foreman. The factory owners were winning. As I alluded to earlier, the Luddites were not blindly opposed to this idea of progress, as they've been misinterpreted. But they were seeking to protect their livelihoods and the quality of their craftsmanship. Many of the original Luddites were actually quite savvy when it came to technology. In fact, some were highly skilled machine operators that ended up smashing the very machines that they were accustomed to using.

They had no issue with welcoming innovations that made their lives and their jobs easier. But they had an issue with the way that the new machinery was being used by the factory owners to reduce them to mere cogs in the industrial machine. factory owners to reduce them to mere cogs in the industrial machine. And they didn't like that factory owners were using the machinery to kick out the trained and skilled cloth workers in favor of child laborers and other lower skilled workers who would be easier to exploit. The cloth for these machines produced was of lower quality, but because it was so cheap to churn out and there was so much of it, the factory owners were still turning a profit.

And so that, you know know that sucks for them which is why the lorites to resist these changes embraced a distinctive form of protest at the time labor organizing was labor organizing was illegal so they chose a suppose even more drastic method of targeting the newly introduced machines for destruction. Yeah. Is it E.P. Thompson who called it collective bargaining by riot? Yes. I believe so. Yeah, I think that's an excellent way to understand it. I'm sure we'll get there.

But yeah, it's a means of labor organizing when labor organizing is illegal. Indeed. Indeed. and if no other options are available to you you know you're pressed against the wall you have no other choice yeah so these uh these luddites would gather together in the dead of the night usually in secluded areas like forests or hillsides to plan their actions to maintain their secrecy, the Luddites adopted a strict code of silence,

making it very difficult for authorities to infiltrate their ranks. That secrecy was crucial to their survival and their ability to outwit the authorities. And so under this code, they'd go on and break into the factories and smash the machinery and occasionally leave an etching of the infamous Ned Ludd as a mark of their presence. Ned Ludd, by the way, was a symbol, not their actual leader. He was a legendary weaver who was said to have been whipped for idleness, so he smashed two knitting frames in a fit of passion. More than likely, Ned ned lud didn't exist he was more of like a folkloric character but the lights named themselves after him and would call him king lud and general lud yeah funny enough the authorities actually

thought he was the ringleader of the whole operation so they tried to hunt him down meanwhile of course the luddites are jokingly referring to ludd's office in sherwood forest and some of the luddites would actually cross-dress as ludd's wives during their protests yeah uh i do like every time you find an instance of like uh cross-dressing in history uh it's always just amusing to note that i guess some people have decided that uh like either either like cross-dressing or trans people were invented in like 2016 uh not that those two things are the same but like we can find literally

thousands of instances of of course trans people and also cross-dressing uh like as a form of like deliberate sometimes it's transgression sometimes the thing that just people did but yeah if you can see it depictions of the luddites like people even took the time to paint it into their paintings exactly exactly yeah but yeah so i mean the leader wasn't Ned Ludd. The leader, well, it really was a leaderless movement. The real instigators were just regular on-the-ground weavers and craftsmen. Folks like, for example, George Mellor, a weaver from Huddersfield who played a pivotal role in organizing Luddite actions in the West Riding of Yorkshire, best known for the time that he fatally shot a mill owner in the balls.

What a hero. Yeah. Chad move. Indeed, indeed. But these actions were not just, you know, random acts of vandalism and violence. They were a desperate plea for change. In fact, they mainly confined their attacks to manufacturers who specifically used machines in what they called a fraudulent and deceitful manner to get around standard labor practices. The lights wanted machines that made high quality goods and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an

apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were really their main concerns. And besides the raids and the smashing, they also had a couple other tricks up their sleeves. They organized public demonstrations. They sent out letters to local industrialists and government officials to lay out their reasons for wrecking the machinery. They weren't just smashing for no reason, with no messaging. And in different parts of England, to lay out their reasons for wrecking the machinery. They weren't just smashing for no reason, with no messaging. Yeah.

And in different parts of England, you know, you had different approaches, different stances, and different, you know, material conditions. So for example, in the Midlands of England, the Lodites had the company of framework knitters, which was this recognized public body that could talk to the capitalists

through named representatives. And so they used that legitimacy as a recognized institution to back up their demands but up in the northwest of england textile workers didn't have these established trade institutions so they used their letters to push for official recognition as a united group of trades people you know it's like an early union the demands weren't just of course about smashing machines they also wanted high minimum wages and again an end to child labor they were playing the long game and in yorkshire you know the tone shifts a bit they were going from letter writing to making more direct and violent threats against local authorities, who they saw as supporting these nasty machines that messed with the job market. The Yorkshire Luddites meant business. In fact, they carried around these sledgehammers that they called the Great Enoch, named after a local blacksmith who had manufactured both the hammers

and also any of the machines they intended to destroy as they declared enoch made them enoch shall break them which i think is just the division that gives me is like you know god of war style you know swinging around this sledgehammer smash other machines yeah yeah like i, they broke some big things, right? Like they weren't, this wasn't like, I don't know, like some sort of trivial sabotage. Like frame breaking is still a capital crime in the UK, but it's also a serious feat of strength. Yes. And I'm going to get into that.

Excellent. Good. Yeah. I love coming from a country with normal laws. There's so many. Don't even get me started on strange laws around the world i mean yeah you mentioned that there are some really strange strange laws but yeah yeah i'm sure that could be a whole topic for a whole episode it could be uh you could suggest that they're not connected to morality uh perhaps maybe maybe the law and what's right and wrong is not the same thing.

Hmm. You might be onto something there. Yeah. Ponder. Something to think about for sure. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities,

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digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. So a lot of these chain differences and approaches, like I mentioned, really depend on their material conditions. It also depended on the background of the workers. Some of them were frame workers, some of them were weavers, some of them were spinners. It also depended on the background of the workers. Some of them were frame workers,

some of them were weavers, some of them were spinners. And so they took on different tactics and styles depending on what they were experienced with and where you found them. Of course, they were sending out death threats to some industrialists as well. And in fact, some of these industrialists were so worried about Luddite attacks

that they had secret chambers built into their buildings as escape plans in case things went south during an attack. Yeah. You can imagine them cowering in their holes while the workers were outside. Imagine being like, yeah, I'm making excellent choices in life. I employ hundreds of people and I've built a secret hole to hide in when they're never to be trying to kill me because i've made their lives so shit yes like i am going to create conditions that are so terrible these people are going to get so angry at me and then i'm just going to make a place to hide you know yeah instead of actually rectifying the reasons

they're angry yeah exactly like you could simply take the money you spent on your secret escape hatch and distribute it to people who are literally struggling to put food in their children's mouths. But I guess that's not the logic of capitalism, is it? Yeah, that'd be too humane. Yes, yeah, you can't let them realize that you're afraid of them. Indeed. With all these tactics, the lights were truly fights not only for their own jobs but also for a say in the future of their

industry and their communities like regular people of today they were just trying to provide for their families and defend themselves against the ever-expanding incursions of the capitalists. I don't know, James, how do you think the government and factory owners responded to these ordinary people and their desperate and fair pleas for change? Surely it was a humane response, right? Yeah, that's what i would expect as a british person uh throughout history our government has really shown a lot of humanity and compassion for people so i'd expect they did something similar here that's what i learned they're so compassionate that they created an empire that the sun would never set on

that's so considerate you know for people who are afraid of the dark. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's the real reason. Yeah. And of course they were doing it to uplift, civilize and Christianize the other peoples of the world.

And for no other reason. God, such philanthropists. Yeah. Such philanthropists. Kind people who brought tea and scones to uh to the rest of the world the british empire and the british government never am i gonna learn something bad about them yeah i hate to let you down but um the government and the factory owners responded with you know deploying troops to quell the light uprisings and firing against the

protesters in one of the bloodiest incidents in april 1812 some 2 000 protesters mobbed a mill near manchester and the owner ordered his men because you know addition to soldiers you also have these you know private militias that capitalists would hire so the owner ordered his men to fire into the crowd killing at least three and wounding 18 and then soldiers killed at least five more the next day okay yeah that's that's not quite what we'd hope for is it yeah yeah yeah many the luddites were arrested uh many were tortured some even faced execution or even worse exile to australia yeah the ultimate the ultimate crime the ultimate penalty rather yeah it's sent to the land of kangaroos and uh where they put mashed potatoes inside their pies what yeah no have you not seen this this is it's terrible uh but unfortunately

it's are you talking about like shepherd's pie or no they'll they'll take a meat pie like a normal meat pie and then they'll cut a bit and then put mashed potatoes like into in the top of it uh just to uh what is this called i'm gonna have to to look now. I've seen it on YouTube. Meat pie, mashed potato, Australia. You can get it in like, instead of having fish and chips, you can get it at a van. Someone will bring it to you.

I think I'm seeing it. You found it? And then they put gravy as well? Oh, man. Yeah, it's... Oh, no. I've come from a country that does terrible things to food but uh yeah it's this one is really something else you can see why people why it was uh the work i have to say though i do admire that it it seems to be a very balanced you know you

get in the carbs the fats and the proteins in it you know it's like yeah and it all in one that's that's the gym bro and me talking of course but it seems like a very efficient meal yeah it's like uh it's not the cornish pasty is the uh the truly the most efficient uh like working man's power bar because you can uh you you can hold on to the crust and eat the past. And even if you have like dirty hands from working in a factory, you still get your lunch. Yeah, but we're getting a little bit sidetracked. Yeah, we have. We've traveled a long way from the Luddites.

Exiled to Australia. I shut out the thought. But some of them, despite that, kept their fighting spirit to the bitter end. Like, for example, John Booth. And no offense to you, James, but, you know, a lot of the names I read in, like, British history

are the most generic-sounding names. It's like you just casually find somebody in british history named like john do yeah we do we're choosing from a limited palette like until very recently uh we we were really pretty pretty like uh pretty stodgy on the names you know like i mean more power to you i mean it's it's iconic but at the same time it's also hilarious that you're like everybody from like regular people to like some of the movers and shapers uh leaders in the military and you know politicians and stuff just all of them yeah yeah it's like they had six-sided yeah yeah yeah just some guy occasionally you'll get like a

cornelius or a marmaduke or just some absolute nonce with like a really posh name uh but yeah we otherwise yeah it's well apparently like an enoch you know yeah yeah you got to respect enoch like once you go outside of england you get some good names but like uh yeah we were moving with a pretty pretty pretty playing with a playing with a small deck i guess when it came to names for a while there yeah for sure i mean i can't even talk my name is andrew so i think my name is the most popular name for boys born in the year i was born so i can't really uh can't really say much either oh god we're getting off track again right yeah john booth right so john booth was this 19 year old apprentice who joined one of the luddite attacks

he was injured detained and died after being tortured to give up the identity of his fellow luddites a local priest was in the room when he was passing and his dying words became legendary. So John was like, can you keep a secret? And the priest was like, yes, my child. And then Booth was like, so can I. And then he died. There you go. What a hero.

Iconic. Yeah. there you go what a hero yeah iconic yeah iconic yeah so yeah government officials by 1813 were trying to quash the lyrite movement by any means necessary so they organized this massive trial in york after the attack on cartwright's mill at rawford's near clack heaton i've got it right yeah clack heaton i think that seems about right where are we looking there yeah yeah we're in uh i'm signing on the map okay you know leeds yeah yeah bradford uh i've not actually spent much time in that part of the world but if i had to guess raw folds um something like that we do like one of our another another great tradition in britain is having names which

uh don't bear any relation to the way they're spelt we just write them like that so we can tell if you're local or not yeah yeah i mean we primarily use british spelling conventions um internet and english so i know all about your center with the R and then the E. Yeah, yeah, and our defense. And yeah, I'm working on a book at the moment and my American Microsoft Word is fighting me every step of the way on my spelling. Yeah, I mean, can't they see that the U

is absolutely essential in the word color? Yeah, without it, we wouldn't know what it meant. And that's what language does welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.

I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again,

the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, películas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators,

sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So yeah, so after

this attack on Cartwright's Mill at Ruffles near Clacketton, the government accused over 60 men, including Melor and his associates, of various crimes related to Luddite activities. It's important to note that not all of these charged men were actually Luddites. Some had no connection to the movement. And while these trials were technically legitimate jury trials,

many were abandoned due to a lack of evidence, leading to the acquittal of 30 of those 60 men. It's evident that these trials were primarily intended as show trials to discourage other lorides from continuing the activities. And then here's where we get to the important bit. Parliament went on to make machine breaking, i.e. industrial sabotage,

a capital crime with the Frame Breaking act of 1812 yeah what a normal thing and they've never repealed it is that right yeah i believe i don't think so yeah it's still in the books yeah listen if you're listening since it was yeah go ahead yeah i was gonna say if someone's listening in the uk just give it a try see what happens uh stakes stakes are quite high but uh yeah you know you never know they might you might be able to get the machine breaking act struck down a frame break honestly i i wouldn't be surprised if you know since it

was established in 1812 if by now um a lot of the british colonies you know might still have it in their books as well yeah yeah i've inherited that common law and stuff yeah i'm not like a legal scholar i don't know all the deets on that no i can see liz truss incorporating it into her platform to return to uh our leadership position it's like a very uh insane kind of tory position like there's there's still this bizarre british like uh anytime we have a protest movement in the streets in the uk you can like uh log on to at like meta on facebook or whatever and see like a certain type of british person being like send in the army like it's like a like

there are people who have not reconstructed their opinions on labor organizing since the luddite period yeah indeed indeed they are the conservative party you can literally picture them like smoking cigars with top hats except you know they were not capitalists a lot of them are just like regular workers it's like what are you even doing yeah yeah yeah like uh you've uh like don't you understand that your economic interests line up with these people uh and not with like the boris johnsons of this world and your social interest too of course but i mean speaking of of you know interests aligning there was actually a politician who did stand against um that legislation and that is you know the well-known english poet lord byron yeah he was

actually one of the few prominent defenders of the luddites especially after witnessing how the defendants were treated during the york trial yeah i mean go ahead but byron has some surprisingly like uh good i think he was part of this romantic movement right like the idea that the uh industrial revolution spoiled the idea that the Industrial Revolution spoiled the innocence of the rural working people, which it's paternalist at its core, but like when at least he's

not baying for their blood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually that attitude reminds me of Van Gogh. He was another, all of his art was very obsessed with the peasants because he just saw it as like a better way of life yeah real romanticization of the peasantry yeah it was i think it was a thing that sort of spread around europe in the late 19th

early 20th century maybe like uh even 18th century but no they yeah 19th 20th century like this idea that yeah like the innocence of the rural peasants have been broken and like it's just so reflected in so much art from that period that is that's literally just like their version of nostalgia you really think about it you know it's like it's kind of like how people today are like oh the 90s was so much better oh the 2000s was so much better oh the 80s oh the 70s it's just that but with yeah yeah instead of like disco or whatever yeah yeah you're right like yeah it is it's like uh yeah doing uh like uh doing a ironic wearing a fanny pack but with uh but with a peasant i'm not even just in fashion it's also like the actual like material reasons people feel nostalgic nostalgic as well yeah it's like

we think about you know safety when you think about the ways that our cities have changed think about you know all the material realities that have changed in these decades and it makes sense that just like we wished for the simpler life of the present, a lot of people now wish, you know, we were back to the simpler times of... Yeah, of the minor strike when... Immediate post Jim Crow and, you know, post-colonial independence period.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's... I think also we forget the hardships, but yeah, like it's a way think also we we forget the hardships but yeah like it's a way and change accelerates so much quicker now because uh we've really fucked the whole planet and climate change is accelerating and obviously technological change is accelerating so our nostalgia cycles are much shorter but yeah this is just like when i had an estate and i could direct the peasants to trim my trees in a certain shape, life was better for them, kind of nostalgically.

But in a meaningful sense, the lives of working class people were not improved. We see the GDP, which is a useless metric, but the amount of value of goods the country produces in the Industrial Revolution goes up and up and up. But the quality of life and even life expectancy does not right like uh people are dying earlier and certainly like and chiefly life expectancy is dropping because children are dying right either from industrial conditions or conditions in cities and so like in a meaningful sense those people's life was not improved the life of the bourgeoisie was improved and like yeah uh we see that later in britain with things like the uh britain's forced

to incorporate the bourgeoisie into it into its politics right so that it doesn't have a bigger revolution that's what it does in the great reform act but like the working class people it continues to suppress with like after this you know we look we see it with the chartists and uh like the violent suppression of chartism but uh yeah this this nostalgia isn't it helps them but i guess it's not really invested in their agency it's more of a paternalist like uh it's it's i guess not dissimilar to the way britain treated its colonies in many ways yeah and i think another aspect of it as well is you know when we look at this sort of nostalgia and whether it's talking about this romantic nostalgia for the simple life of the peasant or we're talking about the nostalgia of for example give an example from trinidad um the oil boom period in the 70s and 80s right yeah we we gained independence 1962 and in the 70s and 80s we got this oil boom and you know a lot of people were living lavish

um but whether you took either of those cases when you look at the reality of the situation on the ground it's like oh you actually go back to that time it wasn't all sunshine and roses you know like it actually was not good to be a peasant actually um i mean there are certain things that you know a lot better than now in terms of perhaps the the vibrance of culture or the ability of to lean on a community for support and that sort of thing but or take for example this oil boom situation i'm talking about with trinidad um yeah like there was this massive influx of wealth and stuff but there's also you know a whole bunch of corruption and also we had the whole 1970 black power revolution um that was born out of the frustration of the people at the time

yeah it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows you know yeah yeah yeah there's this always this sense like you see in uh like nostalgia as well right like the nostalgia for east germany that german people will talk about like uh you also had the stasi like yeah exactly yeah exactly i mean i i get it when i look at some of the maps of like like we're talking about with germany yeah some of the data related maps you know sociological data of things like religiosity or things yeah uh i can't remember some other examples but there's some like stark differences between the two sides of the country even to this day yeah yeah very much so so i completely understand why people would feel like oh we feel so separate and distinct from um you know west germany and all that stuff but

yeah and when you become like they went from being like a i guess like a nation within the ussr to like the often the less economically advantaged parts of a nation which is neoliberal and capitalist and like neoliberal capitalism is not kind to the less economically advantaged people it wasn't a great situation before either to be clear but like i can see how suddenly being incorporated into like not not everyone's going through this but you lot are and the state's not going to do fuck all to help you is like i can see how that might promote some nostalgia definitely definitely and i mean speaking of states doing nothing uh at this time byron is making this his speech the lords, and in that speech, laced up with sarcasm, of course, he was highlighting the benefits of automation, which he believed led to the production of inferior goods and unemployment.

He concluded that the proposed law, the Frame-Breaking Act of 1812, was only missing two crucial elements to be effective. Twelve butchers for a jury and a Jeffreys for a judge, which was a reference to George Jeffreys, an infamous hanging judge known for his very harsh judgments. Yeah. It's also mad that like, but also not uncommon in this period, that you are seeing like the leftmost political opinion being advanced within parliament, being advanced in the hereditary chamber,

like the House of Lords. Yeah, exactly. So the aristocratic realm is still you know having to deal with this yeah it's very much tied to like a paternalism and and this sort of feudal attitude but it's just it's just fascinating to see like and it does happen in that especially and i think also there's this uh a deep deep disdain for new money that this is a powerfully british vibe uh that um that comes especially from the house of lords right like this like they don't identify with the bourgeoisie at all and fucking hate them because

they're turning up at the country club or whatever yeah and it's so it's so funny but a lot of old money and i'm gonna say this and i'm gonna you know give our contract what's so funny about the old money folks is that a lot of our cases they don't even have like as much money as the new money people yes yeah it's not even about money for them at this point it's really just about lineage and culture and whatever yeah like britain's class thing is like a it's almost like a caste system like your caste is your class is inherited regardless your actual financial means like yeah they're like lord living in a castle that he can't afford to heat is it's like a it's like a it's a trope for a reason in britain i guess indeed indeed so yeah with the passing of that act

and in the years that followed the light movement came to an end but the light actions left a lasting mark on the labor movement their tactics of collective action even though clandestine laid the groundwork for future labor unions, demonstrating the power of organized resistance. Defenders of their way of life, reminders that technology, while transformative, can also disrupt lives and communities. The light experiences echo even today, you know, in an era with the fear of technological unemployment with discussions and the impact of automation and ai yeah you know before he had said his infamous last words john booth also said that the new machinery might be man's chief blessing instead of his curse

if society were differently constituted. In other words, technology can either help common folk or harm them, depending on not just what the technology is, but also what society the technology develops within.

Yeah, that's very true. So I'll leave you all with that for now. And next time we'll be shifting our focus to the present day and examining how Buddhism's principles have been applied by movements of the 20th and 21st century. Cool. Nice. That's all from me.

You can find me on youtube.com slash Andrew Izzo and support on patreon.com slash St. Drew. This has been It Could Happen Here. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources.

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