Ten Days of Tumult: The Mass Strike of 1842 in the West Riding of Yorkshire

Abstract

Variously termed the ‘Plug Riots’, ‘general strike’, or ‘strike wave’, the industrial unrest that hit northern England in the summer of 1842 was perhaps the most serious in modern British history. This article offers the first detailed account of this mass strike in the West Riding, showing how pickets from Lancashire and Cheshire successfully persuaded Yorkshire communities (including women) to assume the direction of the action. The article also analyses its causes, character, and the factors that led to the mass strike’s failure. Chief among the latter was the rapid militarisation of West Riding industrial centres to back civil authority’s response to the strike. The interpretation (widely circulated at the time) that the strike was a conspiracy by mill owners who supported the Anti-Corn Law League to promote political unrest is refuted. Although some historians have seen the strike as purely a movement to raise wages (typically to their 1840 levels), this article argues that support for the Chartist movement was decisive in shaping it. However, it is shown that not all strikers necessarily identified their actions with Chartism, while key figures in the movement’s leadership suspected ACLL involvement and/or were fearful that official suppression meant strike action could not be sustained.