I have just visited my dear old mother in my hometown of Scone NSW. While there, I visited the grave of George Robert Baker in the church cemetery.
My mother, was an English history teacher at Scone High School in the 1970s and 1980s. She had also been active in the local historical society and its president in the 1980s and 1990s. She instilled in me and my family an interest in history.
A few years ago, Mum had sent me to the church with a pamphlet St Lukes Church Scone A Walk Around the Churchyard by Nancy Gray. Nancy and her husband had been mentors to my mother (and also past presidents of the historical society). I had known them well as child. The Grays were well-known local historians and leading experts on first and second fleet convicts, which was not such a popular topic as it is now.
That day I had read in Nancy’s pamphlet that the “beautiful memorial” to George Robert Baker was “a fitting memorial to an unusual man”. She tells us that he was a farm labourer in Wiltshire, England, who “became one of the desperate men known as Luddites, or machine breakers, who tried to stop the advance of new technology by the only means they knew”.
It is hard to describe how excited I was to discover a Luddite buried in my little rural town’s church cemetery. My wife, also a history graduate, had taken us to the village of Tolpuddle when we visited England in 2005. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were the first trade unionists. Such was the fear of an equivalent French Revolution occurring in England that they were sentenced to transportation to Tasmania.
Machine breaking
Machine breaking had been occurring in Britain for many years before Baker was sent to Australia. Stocking making machines had been the target of workers in the hosiery industry in 1675.
Machine breaking was most exemplified by textile workers in Northern England between 1811 and 1816 in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. The group became known as the Luddites because their leader was Ned Ludd, sometimes known as Captain Ludd. However, Ludd did not exist—he had been invented so as not to expose the real leaders to prosecution.
And it is here that perhaps, Nancy Gray got it wrong. Baker was transported from England for his part in the rural protests of 1830s when farm labourers destroyed threshing machines as a protest against their wages and conditions. This made him a Swing Rioter not a Luddite.
Swing rioters versus Luddites
The Swing Rioters had modelled themselves after the Luddites. Their leader Captain Swing was also a fictional leader.
The Swing Rioters saw what they were doing as a justified protest to draw attention to the erosion of wages and increased worker poverty. The farm machinery was smashed and a pre-set fine was extracted. The labourers did not see the machinery so much as a threat but as representing the lack of regard by farmers for the well-being of their labourers. The rural workers groups would elect the most trusted individuals to hold and distribute the money—Baker and his brother were so identified at their trial.
Luddites and technophobia
“Luddite” has become used to describe someone who is opposed or resistant to new technologies. A modern equivalent is “technophobia” (or neo-Luddism) which is the fear of, dislike of, or discomfort with, advanced technology or complex devices, especially personal computers, smartphones, and tablet computers.
Neo-Luddism is increasingly the response to people’s anxiety around AI. But like all new technologies there are winners and losers. It is best to get on board and be one of the winners.