‘Alas Poor Weavers’: The context of the April 1826 Weavers Uprising in east Lancashire

The End of the Weavers

In chapter nine of his classic study The Making of the English Working Class the socialist historian E.P. Thompson famously claimed that handloom weavers, who had once made up a significant proportion of the working class in England and Scotland, had become virtually extinct as a profession because the weavers had either died of natural causes and no new people had taken up the profession or they died prematurely due to the harmful consequences of their precarious position in the labour market. 

1^st Edition Front Cover, 1963: The Making of the English Working Class - Wikipedia

Since made, the claims of E.P. Thompson have been contested by liberal historians both in terms of timeframe and cause of extinction.  However, there is little doubt that handloom weaving did start to decline from the late 1820s onwards, and whilst the date of their disappearance has been shown to be later than E.P. Thompson argued, disappear the handloom weavers most certainly did.  His claim about the premature deaths of weavers is of profound significance for understanding the lived experience of the handloom weavers and the deadly harms of unregulated capitalism and whilst his arguments have sometimes been dismissed as hyperbole, surprisingly little data on premature deaths of weavers has been excavated through archival research to test his hypothesis.  It would not be surprising if the phrase ‘alas poor weavers’ was oft spoken, for all the workers in Britain who experienced the turbulent growing pains of industrialised capitalism at the time, the handloom weavers, as E.P. Thompson maintained nearly 60 years ago, fared worst of all.

The number of handloom weavers in east Lancashire reached its peak in the mid-1820s. It is estimated that 40% of the population in the area were handloom weavers – which equates to around 60,000 people of an overall population of 150,000 people living in east Lancashire.  Handloom weavers were known to be a hard-working and compliant workforce who faced periodic poverty with stoical resilience. Yet in east Lancashire in April 1826 their patience broke.  Faced with a perfect storm of high food prices, low or no wages, the accumulative impact of poverty over several years and the introduction of much cheaper forms of weaving through powerlooms in the factories, the handloom weavers and other ordinary people responded to a very real threat of mass starvation and related illnesses and premature deaths with rebellion.  Although the weavers uprising was to spread into Manchester and as far away as Bradford in west Yorkshire in April and May 1826, the most intensified and focussed protests took place over four days in east Lancashire between 24^th to 27^th April.  To understand the motivation of the uprising weavers it is necessary to consider the socio-economic and political contexts in the period before the start of the powerloom destruction.

The 1825-7 Economic Crisis

By April 1826 the handloom weavers of east Lancashire had faced several significant economic crises in the previous decades. Most recently, in late 1825, the Bank of England had collapsed generating a financial crisis that was to last until August 1827. Indeed, so serious was the financial crisis that the Bank of England had to be bailed out by the Bank of France, a remarkable intervention given the serious hostility between France and England only a few years earlier during the Napoleonic Wars.  The nature of the bailout indicates the severity of the crisis facing those holding economic power in the early days of industrialised capitalism, and this tumultuous financial situation quickly produced a deep economic depression that swept across the nation. The depression hit the cotton trade particularly hard. Given the cotton trade was such a significant source of employment at this time in Lancashire and Cheshire, its collapse was always going to have a massive impact on the lives and wellbeing of handloom weavers and other workers in the areas of Rossendale and the West Pennines. Consistent with the arguments of E.P. Thompson, it is clear by the end of the 1825-27 depression, the handloom weavers’ way of life in east Lancashire had been torn apart, from which it was never to fully recover.

The wages of the handloom weavers had been in relative decline for decades.  By 1826 they were working long hours for very little pay.  Whilst at the start of the nineteenth century, handloom weavers might expect to earn up to 23 shillings a week by 1826 this had reduced to somewhere between 5-8 shillings a week.  At the same time there was also cost of living crisis: the price of food in 1826-7 skyrocketed, with basic foodstuffs like bread and cheese doubling in price. 

Starving Weavers

The accumulative effects of a long term struggle for survival were also evident by 1826.  Many handloom weavers had sold virtually all their household goods and furnishings, so much so that in their dwellings there was often nothing left to sell to get a little extra money for food. Many handloom weavers and their families were living in rags. They no longer had decent clothes. Some may have even been without shoes. In their homes sometimes there was nothing but straw, hay and the handloom. Families eking out such a bare existence were working for 16 hours a day for next to nothing and even in the good times of the late 1810s and early 1820s, many handloom weavers had been dependent on parish relief to top up their wages. 

In April 1826 the Manchester Guardian gave this powerful account of the ever worsening economic situation in Lancashire.

The state of the poor throughout the whole cotton manufacturing district continues to be most deplorable. Not only is the number who are out of work greater than at any former time within our recollection, but even a larger proportion of those who are not wholly destitute of employment are so far from having full work that the insufficiency of their earnings during the time they are employed reduces their families to great distress, whilst, with respect to another large class, the hand weavers, particularly those engaged in the manufacture of calicoes, the rates of payment for the labour is now reduced so extremely low, that even such as have work, can scarcely obtain a pittance adequate to the support of nature.  In these observations we wish to be understood as referring, not only to one town, but also the towns of Blackburn, Colne, Bolton, Burnley, Rochdale, and others throughout the cotton districts.

One further account of the desperate living conditions in east Lancashire came from the sociologist Harriet Martineau.  In her book The Rioters, published in 1827, Martineau provides a vivid portrayal of the handloom weavers’ desperate plight. 

Harriet Martineau: Painting by Richard Evans (1834) Harriet Martineau - Wikipedia

The Rioters was a fictionalised version of the days before and during the weavers uprising in east Lancashire, but it conveys their poverty with enormous clarity.  For Martineau (1827:6) the inside of the weavers’ house was “melancholy and desolate” whilst the weavers and their families “sit perishing with cold and hunger, and our children dying before our faces”.   

“This is where we live where we shall soon die," answered she (one of the weavers). “That bit of bread,” pointing to half a loaf which lay on one of the chairs, “is all the food we are to have till next Saturday." (Martineau, 1827:6)

During the 1825-27 economic depression, where perhaps somewhere in the region of 50% to 75% of the handloom weavers were under-employed or without any work at all, starving to death was a real and constant danger.  Their predicament was so severe that if the handloom weavers and their families went for more than three weeks without paid work they would be literally starving. It should not be forgotten that unemployment, chronic low wages and under-employment lasted around 21 months from late 1825 right the way through to August 1827. Without virtually no financial assistance from the state to speak of, the east Lancashire handloom weavers were looking at death directly in its face. It was desperate times and in April 1826 they came up with a desperate plan to send a symbolic message to government through the destruction of the powerlooms in the local mills and thus raise awareness of their precarious plight. 

Political Responsibility and Resistance

Lord Liverpool, the then prime minister, and his government had ignored all of the previous attempts by handloom weavers to make their voice heard.  Since the early 1800s the handloom weavers had adopted several different strategies of political resistance to try to lessen their intense labour exploitation – strikes (in 1808 and 1818), petitions to parliament for a minimum wage, direct appeals to local mill owners for higher wages and ultimately, in April 1826, powerloom breaking. 

Lord Liverpool: Lord Liverpool, Eurosceptic | History Today

The handloom weavers in east Lancashire and elsewhere, were undoubtedly a tragic casualty of the instability of the capitalist markets.  At the best of times, when there was rapid economic growth and demand for cotton, they were an early example of a ‘relative surplus population’ – a workforces that could be quickly mobilised for low wages and dispensed with afterwards; at the worst of times, when the markets contracted or collapsed. they were reduced to starving wretches on the brink of annihilation. Back in the 1820s the weavers were literally eating porridge three times a day. Their basic diet was oatmeal plus water. Other basic foodstuffs, like bread and cheese, where sometimes beyond their reach. The economic conditions of the depression had produced a tragic scenario. Literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of people, had no money to speak of.  They were left unable to buy food, decent clothes or pay for fuel.

In 1826 the government's approach to economic policy was ‘laissez faire’, which basically meant that the government believed that it should not intervene in the regulation of the capitalist markets, nor did it consider that it was legitimate for it to play a role in mitigating the harms of an unpredictable and unstable early industrial capitalist economy.  The government defended its ‘non-intervention’ as handloom weavers starved on the grounds that should it provide any state funded forms of subsistence or welfare relief this would merely encourage the mill owners and other employers to offer even lower wages.  This ‘denial of responsibility’ for the wellbeing of the people of east Lancashire in the face of mass starvation was a very weak argument and one that seemed to be more grounded in moral indifference and neglect than rational and humanitarian fiscal policy.   The extent of starvation among the people of east Lancashire is evident in the parish records, which details large numbers of people who died prematurely from early 1826.  This trend of avoidable and premature deaths – of children, teenagers and young people in their twenties - continues in the months following the weavers uprising and indicates that their protests were genuinely a desperate cry for help.

Powerloom Destruction as a Political Message

In 1826 there was then a juxtaposition of a very real existential threat of starvation among local workers and their families and the perceived threat of increasing industrialisation of weaving through the introduction of powerlooms in the factories.  Although there had been acute poverty among the weaving communities before the introduction of the powerlooms, it had always been periodic.  The introduction of the powerlooms would potentially make work for the handloom weavers even more precarious and thus vulnerable to extended bouts of poverty, especially in times when the economy slumped. 

Drawing of the Powerlooms in 1820s:  Oswaldtwistle Mills Museum

So, alongside starvation, the other key element in the weavers uprising was the expansion of the use of the powerlooms, which was part of an increasing shift from weaving as a cottage industry to its production in factories and mills.  Although the first powerloom had been invented in the 1780s it was not until the refined versions were introduced in the mid-1820s that it was considered a sufficiently reliable and efficient replacement for handloom weaving.  In 1826, the powerlooms were the rightly considered a threat to the weavers’ way of life. The expansion of mill work through the powerlooms was a threat especially for the male handloom weavers, as weaving had traditionally been work dominated by men.  In the factories the operating of the powerloom would more likely be performed by women and children as they were considered more likely to work for lower wages and were perceived to be a more docile labour force and thus easier to exploit and control by the mill owners.

When the weavers uprising came, on the 24^th of April 1826, it was clear in its mission: to destroy all the powerlooms in east Lancashire but not to destroy any other property or harm any people.  The disciplined assault on the powerlooms, that occurred over the following four days was undoubtedly a primitive attempt to send a message to government that thousands were starving to death. In effect the people of east Lancashire were asking for help and powerloom destruction was a forlorn attempt try and avert a massive human catastrophe: the avoidable loss of life on a scale which was enormous even for that time.  This is what the weavers uprising was trying to achieve.  This was the reason, the motivation for the weavers uprising.  Indeed, it is only when you call it an uprising (rather than a riot) that you start to understand that there were political and genuine humanitarian reasons for the destruction of the powerlooms.  The damage to the powerlooms was not luddism – at least in its contemporary meaning of the term as an irrational fear of new technology - the powerlooms were chosen because they ultimately were a means, through a disciplined and focused form of demolition, of sending a message to their lords and masters and national government that they were in urgent need of help.  Alas, this desperate political message from the impoverished and starving handloom weavers was ignored.