"Ned Ludd" in women's clothing.
The term "Luddite" is used throughout the modern world, used when the target of the name-calling is ignorant or against technology. This use of the name is incorrect, because the Luddites themselves were not technology-hating neanderthals (another illogical slur) but rather playful cross-dressers who wanted better treatment of the working man. The Luddite movement appeared in Nottinghamshire, England around 1811 of the Industrial Revolution, and the group received their name from a fictional character named Ned Ludd who supposedly worked at a factory in which he was reprimanded for doing an unsatisfactory job. Ned rose up against his superiors and vowed to fight for the workers. The Luddites gained their image as machine-haters when they attacked a factory that had fired hundreds of weavers and replaced them with mechanized looms, and the Luddites smashed the new machinery to make a point about how the factories were taking jobs away from people who needed them. Fearing the sweetest plum of their economy would collapse, the English sent in regiments of troops to break up the movement, and after the British started killing off the activists the Luddites slowly began to fall back into line. But as the embodiment of British governance Winston Churchill once said, "History is written by the victors" and all that remained of the crushed Luddite movement was the English propaganda, which has forever branded the Luddites as technology-hating hypocrites. Below is the theoretical interpretation of the Luddite actions through the eyes of an English farmer living in the area. By writing in this style, we will attempt to see the common man's perspective of the Luddite movement and how it functioned.
Dear Cousin Abigail,
I hope this letter finds you well. The last I wrote to you I had just sent Elizabeth off to one of the new mills appearing all over our two countries. She writes often, but I get the feeling that your father was right all along, and that she should never have gone to work in one of those houses of lies. She does send money home, and I can't complain about that, what with the plantations in America selling their crops to the markets. It doesn't help me much that those crazed weavers have been stirring up trouble again, thank god the King finally sent in the regiments. I feel as if they are in right, although I can't say I agree with their methods. They actually smashed a line of machines at the mill in Yorkshire, and my new wife Emily does not necessarily approve of the men dressed in gowns and ladies skirts; perhaps she fears they'll come for her clothes next. I believe i'll ask Eliza to come home. She misses her brothers and her horse, and I could use an extra hand now that John is married off. I don't feel comfortable with her around those odd men with clothes, and I don't think I want her around with the guns going off. What do you think?
-William
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