A collection of lever arch files stands along the bottom shelf of my bookcase. Although they contain a few photocopies made in the university library during my undergraduate years most contain print-outs of academic papers, sourced through a digital library and printed at home during the last decade. How times have changed. All evidence of my vocational qualifications met the shredder some years ago but the contents of these files proudly remain.
Last night I watched a feature on the local BBC news about a commemoration of the rising of the handloom weavers in Chadderton near Oldham in 1826. 1100 power looms in east Lancashire were destroyed. At least six weavers were shot and killed and, despite the brutal action of the authorities, the rising spread further west to Chorley claiming more looms, but no more lives. I was inspired to seek further information from my files.
This uprising of Lancashire weavers was just seven years after the infamous demonstration calling for parliamentary reform at St Peter’s Field in August 1819. Many participants at Peterloo were from Oldham, including women from the newly formed female suffrage society. Eighteen people were killed and hundreds injured. Only two years previously in 1817 the march of the Blanketeers had set off from the very same Peter’s Fields intending to reach London. There they aimed to present petitions on the state of the cotton industry and the suspension of Habeas Corpus. The majority got no further than Stockport where they were assaulted with sabres and a local man was shot dead. The machine breaking activities of the craftsmen who were commonly called Luddites had only just come to an end in 1816 after five years of night-time mayhem.
It strikes me that the acts of resistance of the home-based artisans and craftsmen to mechanisation are often treated as separate episodes and, sometimes, attributed to the undisciplined actions of rowdy drunken mobs. The perpetrators were often impoverished and starving yet they had a common motive – to destroy their mechanised rivals, the power looms. Surely some of these people were involved in more than one act of resistance? The workers taking part were fighting against the transformation of their lives which would erode their liberty and health, not just of the adults but their children as well. Some must have attended several of these events or witnessed relatives’ accounts of their involvement in them.
The handloom weavers managed their own schedules to achieve their weekly targets in a system of task and finish. Both monetary reward and free time were valued in their world. There is now a brewery called Saint Monday but once this name alluded to a day of the week which was a day of leisure for the home-based worker. This long weekend could even extend to a Tuesday or even Wednesday. The imposition of the factory system would end the practise although many continued to worship Saint Monday and fought to maintain their control of time. The employers responded by introducing fines for those who failed to turn up for work on time and a culture of disapproval of the immoral working classes who persisted in promenading in a park on a Monday was promoted. The opponents of Saint Monday linked it to a drinking culture. The former home workers and craftsmen were fighting to keep control over their own time. They did not succeed.
Some have favourite books. I have favourite academic papers.
A great piece of academic research. Recommended.
