Throughline - Is it time for a Luddite Renaissance?

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Calling someone a "Luddite" is usually an insult – shorthand for someone who is behind the times. But the real Luddites weren't just afraid of change; they were a labor movement fighting to save their jobs from being replaced by machines. Today, with the rise of AI, many feel the same kind of existential threat and some are even pushing for a Luddite Renaissance. In this episode, Throughline takes on a listener's question to explore what the 19th-century Luddite rebellion can teach us about technology and human agency.Guests:Katrina Navickas, history professor at the University of Hertfordshire and author of the book Protest and the politics of space and place, 1789–1848Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The American people have not provided their consent to the complete takeover of our interpersonal relationships by artificial intelligence. What is happening? Why is this happening so fast? Why didn't I get a say in this? It's cognitive offloading. It's dangerous and it takes away thought and it takes away analysis. I feel like I'm living in a nightmare. What's happening with AI right now is exactly why the Luddites smashed the kettle of living. They're calling it the Summer of Ludd, inspired by the first Lull. If this was a disease, the cure is human connection. A lot of us are worried right now about how AI is changing the way we work and live. And sure, it isn't the first time in history that a new technology has upended society.

But something about this moment feels more existential. Like the very core of who we are as human beings is under threat, challenging the way we think, communicate, connect. Meanwhile, data centers are popping up in cities across. the country, prompting pushback from local communities, which is probably why some people are now calling themselves new Luddites and trying to spark a Luddite Renaissance. Now, I've heard that word thrown around a lot. I've even been accused of being a Luddite myself on occasion. And I know that it generally means people who are antiquated or resistant to change or new technology. But who were they really? And what was their movement actually about? That's what one through line

listener, Drew Barrett, wrote to us wanting to know. Hi, very nice to meet you. Hi. Nice to meet you, too. Drew talked to me from his home in Colorado. I live in Golden, but largely I'm in Denver. Drew considers himself a modern Luddite. Thinking about them now, I think Luddite is like synonymous with like, you know, Neanderthal or something like that where it's like a term that's like used to as kind of

disparaging. But it feels more like it was almost a latehury. labor movement. Labor activists or Neanderthals, heroes or villains. On this episode of ThruLine, we're taking on Drew's question and digging into the story of the original Luddites. That's coming up. I'm curious, when did you first hear the word Luddite?

I'm from near Manchester in the northwest of England. That's one of the areas that the Luddites were active. So, yeah, very much from the, from Tumption. childhood, really. This is Katrina Nabikas, a history professor at the University of Hartfordshire in the UK. And my new book is Contested Commons, A History of Protest and Public Space in England. Katrina thinks the OG Luddites get a bad rap. Hopefully I'm going to convince you that Luddite is a good word, and it's a positive word

because it represents a lot more than just being opposed to technology. But it's become this kind of shorthand, I think, that perhaps we need to correct. I like this. You've now set up a wager for us here. Can you convince me and also the listener that Luddai is actually a good word? Okay. Now imagine we're traveling back in time to Katrina's hometown near Manchester, England, early 1800s. The country is at war with Napoleon's France. There's widespread poverty, food is hard to come by. Life is hard for a lot of people. And these new, odd-looking machines start popping up all over the place.

This is the Industrial Revolution, and it's where the story of the Luddites begins. It's a time when employers are starting to introduce large factories. Skilled workers, usually skilled men, are being replaced by machinery, increasingly powered by steam, the great inventions of the Industrial Revolution. Big cities like Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham were booming. More and more people were flocking to them, and massive factories transformed what these cities looked like. Almost brutalist buildings with mechanized processes,

with set hours that you have to go in, and clock in and clock out, heavily polluted air, heavily polluted rivers. A lot of these factories were producing textiles. And the workers in these textile factories were getting more and more worried about how this new technology was impacting the way they worked, how much money they could make,

and the quality of life they and their families had. Eventually, it reached a boiling point. And the first attack that we know of happened on the 11th of March 1811 in a village called Arnold in the stocking industry. Framework knitters, they gather outside the local exchange where the cloth is sold. and then go around attacking the new machinery. That seems to set off a wave of attacks across the East Midlands in 1811.

And then it spreads to West Yorkshire, where the woolen mills are attacked by local woolen croppers, as they're called. Not people. They're attacking only the machines. Yeah, they're attacking the machines. And then it escalates from there. People have broken machines before. What's unique about them is that they all say, start calling themselves Luddites.

For the most part, the Luddites were an anonymous group, except for their leader, General Ned Ludd. Only one known image exists of him. It's a cartoon drawing of him in a dress, standing in front of an angry mob with a factory on fire in the background. This was all the authorities had to go on. But he seemed to be everywhere. The Luddites produced lots of written material,

so they wrote threatening letters to their employers. saying, if you do not take down your machinery, we will attack your factory. Signed, General Lud. So in April 1812, the local employer who runs West Horton Mill speaks with the magistrate, who's a guy called Colonel Ralph Fletcher, who has a whole network of spies. This magistrate is employing spies to go into the pubs, listen to what the workers are saying, and then try and stir them. up into attacking the mill. So on the 24th of April, West Horton Mill, which has 200 of these cotton

looms, 50 people start gathering outside it. And then there's further processions from the local villages all around. So this is hill country. People are coming down from the hills, little villages where these small workshops are, and they converge on West Horton Mill. And from about 5pm onwards, they start breaking the windows, they start throwing burning wood into the mill to try and set fire to the machinery there. They get into the mill and start breaking the machinery. The Luddites are well known for having what's called Enoch, which is a big hammer, so a huge mallet thing.

These machines are very large and require a lot of manpower, literally, to break them. And the riots basically go on all night. About 45 minutes after the riot started, The military arrived. Several people were later arrested. The government then clamps down hard on this. Over the next few years, the Luddites and the government played a cat and mouse game. There were major battles with hundreds of Luddites reining onto manufacturing plants

where the main goal was to take down the machines. There were also high-profile murders of company owners, like William Horsfall, who had a cannon installed at his mill to prevent Luddite at the same. attacks, Horsfall would be ambushed by four Luddites who were hiding along the road. But the government also fought back. The government passes the frame-breaking act in 1812, which makes frame-breaking a capital offense, so you can get hanged for doing it. Some of the Luddites are caught and made an example out of.

There are kind of show trials after these big attacks. Several executions followed. And during these years, when the Luddites were squaring off against the machines in government courts, they were also waging a PR battle in the court of public opinion. The Luddites would create what was essentially propaganda to market their movement. So after a big attack, you'll see celebratory poetry written, songs written. It's part of folk culture, keeping the memory alive, passing the memory on to different groups of people. And many of these messages,

would include their leader, General Ludd. Shant no more your old rhymes about bold Robin Hood. His feats I but little admire. I will sing the achievements of General Ludd, now the hero of Nottinghamshire. For Darby it's true and Nottingham 2, poor men to the jail they have been taking. They say that Ned Ludd, as I understood,

a thousand wide frames has been breaking. Faldoral, Faldoral. What's Faldaral? I think it's just a kind of, you know, They're like, do-de-do. Oh, follow the row, follow the row. Like that. Yeah, something like that.

Got it. This whole time, the British authorities could not find any leads on General Ludd. They don't know who General Ludd is. They're still looking for him. But they'd never find him. Because, and this blew my mind when Katrina told me about it, Ned Ludd, the guy they sang songs about, who the authorities were hell-bent on tracking down.

Well, it turns out more than likely he wasn't even real. I think it's a myth. No one could pin him down, but perhaps there was someone called Ned Lud. And that name seemed to stick with the reputation of breaking machinery that your employer is bringing in that will reduce your wages and reduce your skill level. She says there was a power in that mythology, an almost prophetic quality to him. And then General Lud then creates his own extended universe. I'd like to see him as a kind of superhero with all the different characters involved in the extended universe. So he has a solicitor. He has lieutenants underneath him. All these characters appear as signatories to these anonymous letters.

Because obviously people don't want to sign their own names because then they'll get caught. They're chasing a ghost. Yeah. Did people perceive the Luddites as like what we would call today rogue terrorists, you know, going around destroying things? Or did they have a different view of them? Certainly most of people in power, local gentry, aristocracy, authorities are completely opposed to Laudais. But in local communities, I think opinions are a lot more mixed, because local communities support these skilled workers who are making their livelihood in small workshops.

And there is this idea that, yes, you should have control of your work. working conditions. What was the goal? Were they just like, we want to destroy the technology and go back to the way things were? Basically, yes, they want to go back to their original working conditions, which is working in small workshops using hand-powered machinery that they could use with skill. Their argument is that the machines produce less good quality cloth. So by mass production, it's cheapening the quality of their products, which then

cheapens their reputation. They want to retain their higher wages. They're paid by pieces of cloth. Whereas in factories, they were paid weekly wages. They're worried about women and children being involved in working conditions, not just from a humanitarian position, but also from a wages position that women and children automatically paid less than men. So it's also a defense of skilled male labour. In a lot of ways, what you've described is a very sympathetic movement, right? I can relate to the fear that it sounds like motivated a lot of them. On the other hand, you've described real acts of violence, right? There was at least a few people who were murdered by the Luddites.

So if, going back to the wager, we are to think of them as good. How do we square those two things? As a historian, I'd say the Luddites in 1812 had no choice. The options were very limited. Violence was one of the only options available to them. Today we've got a lot more choice than agency. We have the vote. Adult men in Britain at that point didn't have democracy.

They didn't have the vote. So this, again, was another way in which they were expressing their anger. Today we've got a lot more options for political organisation and to express what we want to say. We've got much more freedom of expression in many respects than the Luddites had in 1812. So I'm not condoning the violence or the murders, but actually my contention that we should think about Luddite in a positive way is related to that kind of defence of your working conditions, your skill, you're worth as an individual. against a system that seems to be removing that skill and that independence. A lot of what you're saying feels really resonant to today. You can see why there is a Luddite Renaissance, quote-unquote, that has emerged.

Because when we think about AI, which arguably there's never been any technology, I mean, if they thought the steam engine was threatening, I mean, what would they think of AI, right? Like, it is truly an existential. It feels existential to. not just work, but who we are as human beings? Yeah, so the Luddites, you've got it in one, are about being human, and machinery that takes away that sense of human agency is what they were opposing.

Just as today, AI takes out the human from the machine. So I think that's the similarity with the fight around the unlimited or unrestrained use of AI. Yeah, forcing people to think more carefully about even if we're going to have the technology and it's here to stay, how do we incorporate into our lives rather than force humans to reshape themselves to fit the technology. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what the Lord is we're talking about or singing about. That's Katrina Navikas, a history professor at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. She has a new book called Contested Commons. a history of protests and public space in England.

Thank you to our listener, Drew Barrett, who asked us to look into the history of the Luddites. And that's it for today's show. Throughline was created by me and Ramtin Adablui. This episode was produced by me and... Devin Kadiama. Molly Marcello. Leanna Simstrom.

Jasmine Romero. Sarah Wyman. Julia Redpath. Amy Padula. Irene Noguchi. This episode was fact-checked by Nicolette. and mixed by Robert Rodriguez. Music by Ramtin Ada Blue and his band, Drop Electric.

Thanks also to Johannes Durgy. I'm Randad Vettah. Thanks for listening.