[...] It is true that Napoleon’s Contintental System and the retaliatory Orders had so disrupted the markets for British textiles that the industries of Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Midlands were stagnant. Both war and successive bad harvests had contributed to raising the price of provisions to ‘famine’ heights. But this will not do as an explanation of Luddism; it may help to explain its occasion, but not its character. These years of distress, 1811 and 1812, added the supreme grievance of continuous hunger to existing grievances. It made each device by which the least scrupulous masters sought to economize on labour, and cheapen its value (power-looms, shearing-frames, or ‘cut-ups’), seem more offensive. But the character of Luddism was not that of a blind protest, or of a food riot (as took place in many other districts). Nor will it do to describe Luddism as a form of ‘primitive’ trade unionism. As we have seen, the men who organized, sheltered, or condoned Luddism were far from primitive. They were shrewd and humorous; next to the London artisans, some of them were amongst the most articulate of the ‘industrious classes’. A few had read Adam Smith, more had made some study of trade union law. Croppers, stockingers, and weavers were capable of managing a complex organization; undertaking its finances and correspondence; sending delegates as far as Ireland or maintaining regular communication with the West Country. All of them had had dealings, through their representatives, with Parliament; while duly-apprenticed stockingers in Nottingham were burgesses and electors.

Luddism must be seen as arising at the crisis-point in the abrogation of paternalist legislation, and in the imposition of the political economy of laissez faire upon, and against the will and conscience of, the working people. [...]