The Machine Brealers. E.F.Hobsbawm.
It is perhaps time to reconsider the problem of machine-wrecking in the early industrial history of Britain and other countries. About this form of early working-class struggle misconceptions are still widely held, even by specialist historias. Thus an excellent work, published in 1950, can still describe Luddism simply as a “pointless, fenzied, industrial jacquerie,”, and an eminent authoriy, who has contributed more than most to our knowledge of it, passes over the endemic rioting of the 18th century with the suggestion that it was the overflow of exitement and hight spirits. Such misconceptions are, I think, due tu the persistence of views about the introduction of machinery elaborated in the early 19th century, and of views about labour and trade union history formulated in the late 19th century...
