industrial protest and reform

luddites

• riots which occured in the north of england from skilled labourers whose jobs were getting replaced by machinery

• 1811 -1817 years activie

• nedd ludd

• broke machinery → 1812 breaking frames act by gov← which demonstrated how the government was quick to repress any movements and limit their impact by scaring them off, this leads to the dimishing of the movement

• 1812 william horsefall shot outside of this house

• overall, it did however did weigh some signifacne in demonstrating the anger of the working class at industrial change however the repressive action from government did hinder the movements sucess

swing riots

• 1830’s riots happing in argicultural areas due to melkies threshing machine which lead to the lay off of workers

• further boost by the econmical issues in post napolenic war britian with the corn laws and over saturation of the workforce - hunger politics

• captian swing, broke machinery

• local protescutres where sympatheic to their cause, it was only lord meloborne who put them in thier place

• overall they were signifcant in demonstrating the power of the working class but also the power of the goverment in their subduing of movements

the ten hour movement

• richard oaster and george bull with the help of micheal sadler mp (shows support for the cause thus its validity)

• a peaceful campaign towards getting a ten hour way for workers in industrial britian

• by being a peaceful movement it was highly signifacant because they were not repressed by the government, however the downsdie was that they were easily ignored takin until 1847 for the bill to be introduced

• they played upon the ideology of the signifsnce of having a healthy and happy workforce ( as demonstrated in saltaire) → a more motovated workforce would mean better production and thus more profit

growing support for factory reform

• ten hour act (above)

• it was clear that a large diversty of people wanted reform for a mulirude of reasons, and being there was no commonalties between either the methods or aims, it did flatten the momentum towards reform (e.g luddites and swing, ten hour movmenet and internall gov)

• but also there was still a large oppostion to those powerful and prevelent in society since there was still a dominace of free trade

• within governement there was a small shift towards reform, but this was mainly from the pressure from soiety but also from their own lt intresets of keeping a healthy workforce

features of 1833 factory act

• under 9’s banned from factory

• U18’s → could not work more than 12 hours in one day

• 9-13 year olds had to have 1 hour complusery education

• board of investigators set up

impact of the factory act 1833

SIGNIFICANCE -

• mainly comes from it being the first act of its type meanin although it wasnt perfect, it still acted as an enalber towards future reform occuring

• showed a soicetal shift towards looking after the workforce → although this was mainly only those most vunraible within society such as women and children whom were suseptaible to exploitation this was still better than no regulation at all

• only a team of 4 investigators → shows how theoretically although both sucessful and signifance pratically, its application wasnt

IMPACT ON OTHER REFORM

• it acted as a cataylist in order to produce more reform from it

• later reforms in the factires such as the 1844 health and safety act and 1867 act which fixed the flaws within the orginal act, overall demonstrating how its long term impact was emmense

• also helped to create reform in other industries such as in the mining one, 1842, miner regulation act for example which put age restrictions on the workforce

the health and towns association + the public health act

• began to reliase the correlation between that of poverty and diease and its impact upon that of the work force

• factory owners become more envolved in order to protect their econmical intreets within the workforce

• the public health act 1848 → first ever one, so signifanct

• creation of a govenrment board

• enforcement was low however

WHY SIGNIFICANT =

• showed a general shift toward that of looking after one another, hihglighting the importance of the envrionement acting as a factor

• argubable that due to being out of own self intresets its signifacance is limited, but despite the more cynical govebrement uderlying reason reform was still occuring and was having an overall postive effect

how accurate is it to say that the growth of baking was the most important consquence of inudstrialsation in the years 1785-1870

OVERALL ARG = yes it was banking as it laid the foundation for the formualtions of other further consquences, as without the econmical input to which it gave britian the middle class nor the developmenet of factories could not ocur