The Lancashire “Rising” of 1826

Abstract

In early April 1826, William Huskisson, President of the Board of Trade, wrote to the Home Secretary, Robert Peel, a gloomy picture of the state of essential foodstuffs in the domestic market: “there is a very serious deficiency in every article of produce even in Great Britain. Unfortunately, that deficiency is most alarming in those crops which are the food of the lowest classes—potatoes and oats. It is further unfortunate that the falling off is likely to be greatest in the parts where the lowest classes most abound…my opinion, founded on these and other considerations, is that some immediate measures ought to be taken.” In the industrial north west this dearth of essential foodstuffs coincided with one of the sharpest downturns in the trade cycle seen thus far in the nineteenth century. What Huskisson sought was some lessening in the application of the Corn Laws “immediately,” and that the question be given priority in Cabinet discussions. But his warning was ignored, the government failed to act, and the result was one of the most serious industrial disturbances of the early nineteenth century.This article recounts the details of the disturbances themselves, but it also attempts to locate the context of the disputes in a wider historical framework than a traditional one offered by historians, namely, the imposition of new machinery. Although scholars have noted the deteriorating conditions facing industrial workers at this time their narratives have focused on the destruction of machinery. John Stevenson, for example, concedes that the disturbances were not the “blind violence they have been painted,” however, it is implicit in his approach that he views the machines as the weavers' sole target, for he ends by saying that the riots were “ineffective” as the manufacturers quickly brought in new looms. It is important to show that this episode was not mere mindless violence; it was linked to a wider set of circumstances that affected the lives of working people. Although the power looms were the physical representation of the plight of the weavers, and thus rife for attack, their targets were not only the employers and governors of their locality.