🧶 Meet the Luddites (They Weren’t Anti-Tech)

Date: May 21st
Category: Hidden Histories | Labour & Resistance | Industrial Revolution

Say the word “Luddite” today and you’ll likely hear:

“Oh, you mean people who hate technology?”

But that’s a gross injustice to the original Luddites — skilled workers, textile artisans, and weavers who didn’t fear progress. They feared exploitation. And they fought it with hammers, fiery leaflets, and a mythical leader named Ned Ludd.

Today, The Time Traveller’s Guild sets the record straight and invites you to meet the real Luddites — not machine smashers, but movement makers. Not backwards thinkers, but the first to ask: Who controls technology, and who benefits from it?

🧵 Who Were the Luddites?

Between 1811 and 1816, a growing number of skilled textile workers in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire began destroying new machinery — especially automated looms — that threatened their jobs, wages, and way of life.

They organised secretly. Marched at night. Sent threatening (often poetic) letters. And they did it all in the name of “Ned Ludd,” a fictional character who supposedly broke a stocking frame in a fit of rage.

⚙️ Think of Ned as Robin Hood meets Alan Turing meets Banksy, with a hammer.

⚔️ What Did the Luddites Want?

Contrary to popular belief, the Luddites weren’t against machines.

They were against:

• Unregulated technological change
• Mass layoffs and wage cuts
• Factory owners who profited by de-skilling the workforce
• Unsafe, exploitative working conditions

They wanted fair pay, craftsmanship, and a say in how technology was introduced. Radical stuff, really.

🏛️ How Did the Government React?

With brutal force.

• The government deployed over 12,000 troops to suppress the movement — more than it sent to fight Napoleon in Spain.
• In 1812, Parliament made “frame-breaking” punishable by death.
• Dozens were executed or transported to Australia.

It was one of the most militarised crackdowns on civilian protest in British history.

🧨 A reminder: when the people ask for fairness, the powerful often answer with cannons.

🧭 Where to Time Travel: Luddite Landmarks

• 🏘️ Nottingham’s Framework Knitters Museum – Learn about the crafts the Luddites tried to protect
• 🪓 York Castle Museum – Site of Luddite trials and executions
• 🚶 Luddite Trail, West Yorkshire – Walk from Huddersfield to Halifax along real protest routes
• 🪧 People’s History Museum, Manchester – Explore labour and resistance exhibits

🛍️ Reclaim the Hammer: Guild Merch Drop

Inspired by Ned Ludd and his digital-age descendants:

• “Smash the System (Not the Screen)” T-shirts
• Luddite quote prints and hammer-themed totes

🛒 Browse the Collection

📚 Want to Know More?

• Rebels Against the Future by Kirkpatrick Sale
• The Luddite Rebellion by Brian Bailey
• The Luddite Link – Huddersfield University Archive
• Commoners: The History of a Revolution in the Making by Jo Stanley

💬 Let’s Talk: #ModernLuddite

Are you a modern Luddite? Do you question new tech, fight for fair data, or long for hand-crafted everything?
Share your thoughts with #ModernLuddite and tag @TimeTravellersGuild — we’ll build a digital wall of resistance for the 21st century.