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  • Stuart :progress_pride:slowe@mastodon.me.uk
    Oct 31, 2026, 2:52 PM

    Yes the Luddites didn't achieve their aims and they were always highly unlikely to. They were violently suppressed by the State and their name was turned into a dismissive term for people being backwards or against technology in general. A very limited number of (non-powerful) people being critical of that framing (by power) is not about being deluded about the Luddites. It is about recognising lessons about the State - its violence and overreaction - which so often gets downplayed/ignored.

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Replies

  • Stuart :progress_pride:slowe@mastodon.me.uk
    Oct 31, 2026, 3:06 PM

    Most of the protest movements in the UK have generally "failed". For a definition of "failed" in their specific context. But, if a bunch of them hadn't happened the dial also wouldn't have ever shifted overall. For us, now, it is about keeping alive a tapestry of people's struggle to improve the lives of those who aren't the ruling class. It is about heritage, continuity, hope, inspiration, solidarity etc not about saying that some specific tactics are an unquestionable template for all time.

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  • Stuart :progress_pride:slowe@mastodon.me.uk
    Oct 31, 2026, 3:18 PM

    Smashing looms failed and was met with extreme violence and suppression by the State and ruling classes. Them failing to stop "change" (presented as "inevitable" ever since) isn't really the point. The very act of trying not to be immiserated by the deliberate decisions of the ruling class is a part of their legacy today.

    Plus, having an imaginary leader was an inspired tactic. The State could never catch them.

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  • Stuart :progress_pride:slowe@mastodon.me.uk
    Oct 31, 2026, 3:33 PM

    I feel I am regularly told by middle class people how it is only the peaceful, quiet, well-behaved protesters who made change happen in the past. However much I'd love that to be true, it feels like a fiction. That doesn't mean I think it was only violence either. I'm increasingly arguing that improving our lot has often involved many different forms of actions, by different people/groups, acting in roughly the same direction.

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  • Will Deakinwnd@fosstodon.org
    Oct 31, 2026, 3:48 PM

    @slowe I think it is British middle-class cope.

    I'd argue most progressive change has been through a combination of direct actions and violence*, and calm, well organised non-violent protest.

    Post hoc the narrative is then spun to be about the great success of the "reasonable". When it was often where peaceful protesters were ignored until windows were broken and property damaged. It is then just a more comfortable lie...

    * or at least the threat of

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  • Ian Turtonianturton@mapstodon.space
    Oct 31, 2026, 5:35 PM

    @slowe I'm pretty sure it was only violent riots that stopped the poll tax. Living in Scotland we tried lots of peaceful protest I'm the year before England got it and rioted

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  • Tim Jtimtfj@mastodon.social
    Oct 31, 2026, 7:28 PM

    @ianturton @slowe I remember writing some angrily sarcastic political definitions at the time. One I had for Scotland was "1: part of the UK from which a protest march takes longest to reach London. Hence 2: testing ground for the most unpopular government policies."

    (Another was "country whose football team was not been banned from World Cup", which the English one had been. Or some football cup or other.)

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  • Jennifer Moore 😷unchartedworlds@scicomm.xyz
    Oct 31, 2026, 5:42 PM

    @slowe

    Yeah. One of the patterns is like: The rowdy lot won't directly get the ear of government. But when the rowdy lot get rowdy enough, that's when the reasonable lot suddenly seem like people the government would like to meet with :-)

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