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More About the FACHRS Swing Riots Research Project |
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1816 and 1822 there were localised outbreaks of violence against the
threshing machines, mainly centred on the wheat growing areas of East
Anglia. However, waiting in the wings was the biggest and most extensive
response to mechanised farming, the Swing Riots. These first erupted
around the parish of Lower Hardres in Kent where a mob smashed a local
farmer’s threshing machine. The ringleaders were arrested and taken
before a magistrate who decided that a paternalistic approach to the
crime would be the preferable way of addressing the matter and virtually
let the men off with a warning. This was taken as a sign that the
magistracy was in favour of what the men had done and so the protest
exploded across Kent, Sussex and Hampshire.
In 1911 the Hammonds referred to the riots, calling them the Last Labourers’ Revolt in their book ‘The Village Labourer.’ Very little more work was done on these riots until George Rude’s book the Face of the Crowd was published in 1964. This was followed in 1969 by what some see as the definitive work on Swing by Hobsbawm and Rudé, entitled, Captain Swing. In the latter, the authors attempted to assess the extent of rural unrest in the period but, as the Essex evidence demonstrates, under estimated the full extent of the rioting across the country. At his juncture it would be appropriate to define Swing, or at least hazard a guess as to its origin. In order to place the Swing Riots into perspective it is necessary to go back in time to 1811 in the industrial midlands of England. A young man, named Ned Ludd a handloom weaver, was involved in a machine breaking incident as the weavers battled against mechanisation in their trade. For whatever reason the name Ludd became associated with factory breaking, participants being known as Luddites. When the agricultural rioting erupted in 1830 the rioters needed a focal point and for reasons that are by no mean clear, they adopted the name Swing. A few theories have been propounded on this name. The flexible part of the hand thresher is called the swingel. This, it is said, is the reason for Swing. Another suggestion relates to group action and was a theory put forward in a letter to the Kent and Essex Mercury. When the scythe men were harvesting in the field the leader would start the line working with the executive command, altogether, swing! Michael Holland prefers this theory but neither may be right Finally, a word about the origins of protest within popular culture: The fundamental problem with protest crime per se is that it changes over time. During the period C16th to C18th subsistence riots, where the crowd imposed their own moral economy on the market place prevailed, with arson being a minor form of protest. After the end of the chronological C18th subsistence riot came to an abrupt end, mainly because food supplies were not as fragile as they had been in the past. Our last famine occurred in 1800, and steps were taken at the highest level, George III to ensure that the populace were fed. From 1800 we notice a marked change from overt subsistence riot, to covert forms such as animal maiming and arson. The machine breaking riots in industrial areas occurred circa 1812, but the overall agricultural pattern remained arson orientated. There were a couple of strikes / wage riots. The notable one being in the Essex parish of Steeple in 1800 where the tricolour was raised and things began to take on a worrying aspect. Then Reverend Bate Dudley JP arrived on the scene at the head of a posse comitatus and the revolt melted. The chain of events was so serious that none other than the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Kenyon, tried the case. We then move into the machine-breaking phase, culminating in the Swing Riots. Then, machine breaking became a thing of the past. Incendiarism and anonymous threatening letter writing has always prevailed. The most recent incident being Barling, Essex in 1999! The first enactment to address such activities is 8 Henry VI cap 6 (1429) when legislation was passed to address the rash of anonymous threatening letters that were being received in Essex, Kent and the City of Cambridge. Arson as a means of protest can be traced to the Dissolution of Monasteries and was attributable to masterless men. |