Book Review
Captain Swing

by Tom Gill

The book Captain Swing by E J Hobsbawm and George Rude was first 
published in 1969 (Lawrence & Wishart) and deals with events in the early 
19th century but in recent years it has acquired a new relevance to events 
in the labour movement. How can things which happened so long ago be of 
concern to modern working people and who was the Captain Swing of the 
title?

By 1830 the conditions of English farm labourers were bad indeed because of 
low wages and irregular employment — but around this period a development 
was taking place which threatened disastrous consequences for the farm 
labourers.

This was the introduction of threshing machines which led to what can only 
be called an insurrection!

Various means of protest were resorted to, but the one which made the 
deepest impression and in the end gained some benefits, was what is 
sometimes referred to as the Captain Swing movement.

Bands of farm labourers marched from farm to farm and village to village 
demanding that farmers destroy their threshing machines and grant wage 
increases.

The weekly wage at that time was often less than ten shillings, and any, 
even partial unemployment could be catastrophic. To enforce their demands, 
stacks of wheat, hay, etc, or even buildings, would be burnt and machines 
wrecked or burnt.

Such methods were typical of the rural class struggle of the 18th and early 
19th centuries and the struggle of the farm labourers has a lot in common 
with the Luddites' campaign of the same period.

Allies

It is of some significance that the farm workers were often accompanied by 
artisans, factory workers and even farmers, (and occasionally by the odd 
poacher or smuggler) and that sometimes not only farm machinery was 
destroyed.

The sympathy shown by some farmers towards the movement, can in part be 
explained by shared grievances and in particular by the farmers' resistance 
to the imposition of tithes which were widely resented, and which were 
regarded as one reason for low wages.

(Tithes were a levy, in kind, on the produce of farms in England collected 
by the local vicar of the Church of England and widely resented by farmers, 
especially those who did not adhere to the established church. Tithes were 
replaced by a cash rent in 1836 and abolished in 1936.)

Who then was Captain Swing?

As far as is known he was not a real person. His name was widely used to 
sign the letters sent to farmers demanding that they destroy their 
threshing machines and threatening retribution if they failed to do so. We 
might say that Captain Swing was a spectre haunting the English 
countryside.

When the movement was suppressed using the military as well as the other 
machinery of the law, 1,976 people were brought to trial.

Of these 800 were acquitted, 644 jailed, 252 sentenced to death (of whom 
only 19 were executed). In the end, 481 were transported as convicts to 
Australia.

Australia bound

Hobsbawm and Rude devote a whole chapter to the fate of those transported. 
Most of them were not criminals in any real sense and the vast majority 
remained in Australia after most of them were finally pardoned or ended 
their term.

The authors note that: "By and large, as we have seen, these men stood out 
from their fellow convicts both by the nature of their crime and by their 
general respectability and high moral character.

"But there is nothing in their later careers to suggest that they brought 
with them from England any particular ideology, or political opinions or 
outlook, that mark them off from other settlers whether free or bond, in 
the Australian colonies."

Because of their agricultural experience and general character, this batch 
of convicts must have been among the most beneficial to Australia ever 
transported.

An interesting question is, why do we hear so little of these Australian 
pioneers while the story, just a few years later of the Tolpuddle Martyrs 
(1833-34) is so widely known?

Prior to the arrival of the Captain Swing prisoners, many others who took 
part in machine breaking and other forms of industrial action had been 
transported to Australia.

Machines delayed

Hobsbawm & Rude's book gives a comprehensive account of the Captain Swing 
campaign and a considerable amount of statistics on the number and types of 
incidents as well as many details and an interesting analysis of the 
movement.

Hobsbawm sums up the result of the Captain Swing agitation as follows, in 
another book, where he is discussing the whole question of "machine 
breaking":

"Could riot and machine breaking, however, hold up the advance of technical 
progress? Patently it could not hold up the triumph of industrial 
capitalism. On a smaller scale, however, it was by no means the hopelessly 
ineffective weapon that it has been made out to be....

"Paradoxically enough, the wrecking by the helpless farm-labourers in 1830 
seems to have been the most effective of all. Though the wage concessions 
were soon lost, the threshing machines did not return on anything like the 
old scale.

"How much of such success was due to the men, how much to the latent or 
passive Luddism of the employers themselves, we cannot however determine. 
Nevertheless, whatever the truth of the matter, the initiative came from 
the men, and to that extent they can claim an important share in any such 
success."*

170 years on

There were good reasons, in this period, why machine breaking and riot were 
often more effective forms of industrial action than striking.

Trade Unions were illegal, but more important the idea of working class 
solidarity was in its infancy, though not negligible.

Some forms of direct action, especially sabotage** could not be frustrated 
by the use of strikebreakers — and did not call for the degree of 
unanimity that an effective strike does, although strike action was not 
unknown in this period.

No matter how many unemployed and hungry workers were willing to take the 
jobs of strikers this was in vain if the machines were broken up.

Whether the threat of machine breaking was effective would depend to a 
large extent on the employer weighing an increased wage against loss of 
machinery and time.

It is a long time since Captain Swing's men roamed the English countryside 
and things have changed dramatically since those days.

Today we have nationally organised trade unions, with considerable assets 
and large memberships, as well as extensive industrial legislation.

The state of affairs which made necessary the violence of Captain Swing no 
longer exists. We can celebrate today the victories of 170 years of working 
class struggle — that is if we just look at how things were in 1830 and 
how they are just at present.

If we look instead at the way things are changing and at the direction of 
these changes then we begin to see why the story of Captain Swing may have 
some relevance at the present time.

Legislation and policies now in force in Australia are aimed at removing 
all the most effective methods of defending and improving working 
conditions and wages, and the Howard Government is planning an extension of 
the existing "reforms". (See Guardian, July 7)

In addition to various penalties which can be imposed under industrial law 
there is now the possibility of heavy damages being imposed by civil law 
proceedings.

While the removal of the Howard Government would be welcome, it should be 
realised that this could be little better than a delaying action.

We should remember how the policy of the "Accord" sanctified class 
collaboration, as far as the ALP was concerned, and ushered in the era of 
enterprise agreements and individual contracts.

As if this were not enough, we saw strike breaking getting an official 
blessing in the airline pilots dispute!

Howard turning the clock back

In short, the agenda of the Howard Government, if fully implemented 
threatens to put the situation of working people as regards industrial 
action, back to 1830!

Does the loss of legal means of defending conditions mean that the labour 
movement must turn to illegal means? The answer must be "yes" unless 
conditions are to be left entirely to the whim of the employer.

This does not mean that we return to the tactics of Captain Swing but it 
does mean that sooner or later the right to strike, to assist workers on 
strike by whatever means, to picket, to restore union membership which is 
being eroded by individual contracts and enterprise agreements, must be 
asserted.

There will, unless the trade union movement is destroyed or rendered 
helpless, be no need to resort to tactics which many working people would 
regard as criminal or unjustified.

One of the lessons to be drawn from the Captain Swing movement is that the 
tactics of the labour movement must be suited to existing conditions.

Another lesson, perhaps almost as important, is that industrial workers, 
organised in trade unions, should look for allies in other sections of the 
working class, among the unorganised workers and sections of the middle 
class who have common problems.

* * *

*From Labouring Men — Studies in the History of Labour, E J 
Hobsbawm (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1986), p 17. Threshing machines were not 
replaced over a large part of the country until around 1850.


**In Monty Miller's autobiography Eureka and Beyond, edited by Vic 
Williams (1980), there is an interesting defence of sabotage as a tactic in 
the class struggle (p 73). Its emphasis is rather on abstract justice than 
efficacy.