Get with the times — here's what a 'Luddite' means today

An illustration showing a Luddite leader circa 1812. Henry Guttmann Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Henry Guttmann Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The original Luddites were 19th-century English textile makers who protested the ways mechanization was disrupting their livelihoods by smashing automated power looms. They took their name from a Robin Hood-like folk hero — a disgruntled apprentice worker who historians say likely never existed.

"It was either a self-descriptor or it was a laudatory term among them that came to be used as a descriptive term by the authorities," said Kevin Binfield, an English professor at Murray State University in Kentucky who edited Writings of the Luddites, an anthology of texts written by the first Luddites and their sympathizers.

How, then, did Luddite become a diss?

For this installment of NPR's Word of the Week, we look at how the Luddites lost the battle — both for their cause and their name's legacy.

"By the order of King Ludd"

The story starts in early 1800s Nottingham, the heart of England, during a period of industrialization. The arrival of automated power looms and knitting frames threatened to transform the handicraft trade of apprentice clothmakers there.

These were artisans who developed their skills through years-long apprenticeships before becoming free agents, working in small shops and homes.

"They had a lot of autonomy," said Merchant, who authored Blood in the Machine, which recounts the history of the 19th century Luddite rebellion. "They could decide how their workday was organized. They would work with their families or sing songs to pass the time, take breaks to make a quick trip to the garden in the most ideal of circumstances."

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Big factory owners and bosses changed that. The new machinery — wider, faster looms — allowed for mass production. The workers blamed the bosses for using the new technology to justify lowering prices, driving down quality and reducing wages as they used nonskilled workers to mind the machines, says Merchant.

"That's what they hated more than anything else. Not the machinery itself, but the way the machinery was being used," he said. "Sort of tearing up the social contract that had governed the way that work was done for so long."

The changes triggered the Luddite rebellion, which took place between 1811 and 1817. They started out by waging a peaceful protest campaign. In letters published in the Nottingham newspapers, workers appealed to trade masters to stop their labor practices.

But there were no unions at the time, and without a democratic system to work out their grievances, the workers turned to a more forceful approach. In Nottingham, workers sent threatening letters to employers and broke into factories to destroy the new machines.

In writings that appeared in local press, they often undersigned their manifestos with the name of their mythical leader, Ned Ludd.

In 1811, The Nottingham Review newspaper recorded what's believed to be the first historical mention of the fictitious Ludd character, described as a framework knitting apprentice near Leicester.

"His master was expecting too much of him," Binfield said. "So, what did he do? He went and got a hammer and broke his frame."

Ludd's exact motivation was unclear, he says. And there's no evidence he ever existed.

But it was good branding, says Miriam Cherry, who teaches labor law at New York's St. John's University.

"It was catchy — the idea that there's some fictional general running around in Nottingham Forest who's responsible for the machines getting broken," she said.

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In one 1812 missive that ran in the Review, the framework knitters signed a declaration "by order of King Ludd."

"All the evidence is there was actually no leader," Binfield said. But the idea was that "it would be more threatening to have a mysterious leader."

As the riots spread outside Nottingham, they grew more violent. The British Army was brought in to restore order, and the state made machine-breaking a crime punishable by death. Several people were hanged. Prosecutors made Luddites out to be misguided vandals, tech writer Merchant says.

"It goes into the books from day one," he said. "They try to associate Luddism with sort of backwards-looking, reactionary tendencies. And it becomes very quickly a useful maneuver for elites and for business interests of every kind to sort of adopt this terminology."

"It's low-hanging fruit," Merchant said. "Nobody wants to be associated with a loser."

Modern Luddites reclaim the word

But, in recent years, Merchant says he's seen a new generation of Luddites embrace the label.

Many of them, he says, are "expressing a rejection of Big Tech's colonization over their lives and our social system."

Luddite clubs at college campuses are on the rise, as Gen Z students who grew up on smartphones are now shunning them, with many united in their concerns over social media's effects on mental health.

In New York City this month, anonymous activists inspired by the first Luddites have organized a series of social-media free events they've dubbed "The Summer of Ludd."

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