LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Luddites: Government
built 168 days ago
The radical sentiments which increasingly clung to the Luddites are at some distance from the pro-government toadying of today’s greens. This derives from a key difference in the make-up of the movements. In short, the Luddites were a popular movement. Their cause was one which resonated with many working men, hence the diversity of workers hauled to the scaffold in June 1812. As the radical pamphleteer and journalist William Cobbet remarked of the rampant conspiracy theories doing the Westminster rounds: ‘And this is the circumstance that will most puzzle the ministry. They can find no agitators.
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The Luddites are fighting for the right cause, but in the wrong way. They are right to protest against machines replacing their jobs but they should not destroy machines and factory property. They want their jobs back from these metal machines that do not have to be paid an hourly or daily wage. The government and factory owners have only thought about what will help them instead of thinking about the poor workers they have laid off. Now they are suffering the consequences. The Luddites have started vandalizing their property.
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Politically, the actions of the Luddites brought the idea of having a society based on industrialization into the eyes of the public and open to debate. People were forced to look more closely at the positive and negative effects of having an industrial society. The "machine question" continues tobe unanswered today. The riots became a turning point because the flaws of the Industrial Revolution were brought to the surface and the government could no longer ignore the opinions of the working class.
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In 1812 the Luddites faced over 10,000 soldiers and mill owners. The government knew that the protests could become a national movement and hung enough Luddites to eventually break the movement in 1816.
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The Special Commission appointed to try the Luddites opened at York on the 2nd January 1813. More than sixty men awaited trial in York Castle on a variety of charges and all were to be tried as Luddites, though many of them had no connection with the movement. This was not to be a demonstration of justice so much as a "Show Trial", by means of which the government intended to warn any other would-be groups of insurrectionists of the penalties to be faced. Various facts support this argument:
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[O]n other issues, the digital Luddites are having more success. In particular, a major reason the U.S. government does not require driver’s licenses to be secured against fraud using a smart chip (which could incorporate biometric data such as a fingerprint) is that privacy extremists have engaged in a campaign of deception to convince policy-makers, the press and the public that this would turn America into a "show us your papers" state.
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