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“Captain Swing” in the West Midlands
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
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“Captain Swing” had small success in the West Midlands. As Hobs-bawm and Rudé correctly point out, Staffordshire and Shropshire were among those “counties only marginally affected by the labourers' movement”. There were few cases of incendiarism and the whole episode in this area was somewhat anticlimacteric in character. Nevertheless the threat of “Captain Swing” in the last months of 1830 and into 1831 did not leave the West Midlands unmoved. It had the incidental effect of uncovering some of the otherwise subterranean rifts and divisions in rural society. In the fragments of evidence that survive, one can see that “Swing” induced a number of responses from the various sections of rural life in Staffordshire and Salop – attitudes were exposed and recriminations voiced. In effect, the fear of conflict rendered explicit social and economic circumstances which otherwise one can only guess at.
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- Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1974
References
page 86 note 1 Hobsbawm, E. J. and Rudé, George, Captain Swing (1969), p. 305.Google Scholar
page 86 note 2 E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé, op. cit., p. 91. The causes of these circumstances, of course, are more problematical. See the alternative view of Mingay, G. E. in The English Historical Review, 10 1970, p. 814.Google Scholar
page 87 note 1 See for instance G. E. Fussell and Compton, M., “Agricultural Adjustments after the Napoleonic Wars”, in: Economic History, III (1939), pp. 197–8;Google ScholarClapham, J. H., An Economic History of Modern Britain (3 vols, Cambridge, 1926–1938), IGoogle Scholar, Ch. XI; Select Committee on Agriculture, 1833 [House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1833, V, Commons Paper No 612], qq. 473, 539, 552, 553; Second Report from the Committee appointed to inquire into the State of Agriculture [House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1836, VII, Pt 1, Commons Paper No 189], evidence of Samuel Bickerton.
page 87 note 2 It is significant that, in the West Midlands, the greatest fear of local forces of law and order was a conjunction of high bread prices and heavy unemployment in both agriculture and industries. Indeed unemployment was assumed to be the root cause of disaffection in whatever form it took.
page 88 note 1 Cf. the picture drawn by William Howitt in 1838. Referring to the agricultural villages of “the sleepy hollows” of the champaign regions he wrote: “Universally they may seem old-fashioned, and full of a sweet tranquillity; but their inhabitants differ widely in character in different parts of the country – widely often in a short space, and in a manner that can only be accounted for by their less or greater communion with towns, less or greater degree of education extended to them – and the kind extended. Where they are far from towns, and hold little intercourse with them, and have no manufactory in them, they may be dull, but they are seldom very vicious. If they have had little education, they lead a very mechanical sort of life; are often very boorish, and have very confined notions and contracted wishes; are rude in manner, but not bad in heart.” Howitt then offered the contrast: “It is in those rural districts into which manufactories have spread – that are partly manufacturing and partly agricultural – that the population assumes its worst shape. The state of morals and manners amongst the working population of our great towns is terrible – far more than casual observers are aware of. After all that has been done to reform and educate the working class, the torrent of corruption rolls on […] and where the rural population, in its simplicity, comes into contact with this spirit, it receives the contagion in its most exaggerated form – a desolating moral pestilence, and suffers in person and in mind. There spreads all the vice and baseness of the lowest grade of the town, made hideous by still greater vulgarity and ignorance, and unawed by the higher authorities, unchecked by the better influences which there prevail, in the example and exertions of a higher caste of society.” Howitt, William, The Rural Life of England, 3rd ed. (London, 1844), pp. 199 and 201.Google Scholar
page 89 note 1 Loch to Reynolds, and Loch to Lord Stafford, 16 December 1820, Stafford Record Office, Sutherland Collection, Estate Correspondence, D593/K. (All subsequent references to letters are taken from this series of correspondence.) On repeated occasions the landlord was prepared to think the worst of the tenant farmers. In February 1834, for instance, the Duke of Sutherland said of his Shropshire estate: “There is no doubt that the Farmers make a wrong use of the advantage they have in respect of the labourers.” Sutherland to Lewis, 22 02 1834.Google Scholar The agent commented that “The wages I consider too low for a family to exist on, but I am sure, indeed I am positive, it will never do for his Grace or his Agents to interfere in the adjustment of such matters between master and men.” Lewis to Loch, 27 02 1834.Google Scholar
page 89 note 2 A fuller discussion of these agricultural policies is provided in Eric Richards, “Leviathan of Wealth in West Midland Agriculture, 1800–1850”, forthcoming in Agricultural History Review, 1974. It may be noted here that the improvements put considerable emphasis on the consolidation of farms, the use of threshing machines and the encouragement of labour-saving innovation. New tenants were brought in – men with “that spirit of enterprise […] which must prove so beneficial to the country, by the additional surplus produce which will be brought to market”. Loch, James, An Account of the Improvements on the Estates of the Marquess of Stafford (London, 1820), pp. 180–1, 187–8, 193.Google Scholar
page 90 note 1 For some not entirely impartial comments on this policy see Bakewell, Thomas, Remarks on a Publication by James Loch Esq. (London, 1820).Google Scholar This is a long catalogue of criticisms of the Leveson-Gower estates. Its main theme was that a managerial hierarchy had been imposed upon the estates which destroyed all communication between the elements of society. Bakewell blamed the landlord rather than the farmers for the alleged social malaise. James Loch acknowledged that the policies had been unpopular (Loch to Lady Gower, 6 July 1823).
page 90 note 2 Some of these points are discussed more fully in Richards, Eric, “The Social and Electoral Influence of the Trentham Interest, 1800–1860”, forthcoming in Midland History, 1974.Google Scholar
page 91 note 1 Ford to Loch, 11 August 1830. Ten years previously Ford was described by Loch as one of the best of Lord Stafford's tenants: “Mr. Ford, is an example to the whole county, for his liberal, enterprising, yet judicious conduct.” Loch, Account, op. cit., p. 194, Appendix, p. 74. The survival of the fittest, and the policy of consolidation, produced a class of very substantial tenant farmers living in “large and expensive farm houses more like the seats of independent proprietors, than the houses of industrious and frugal farmers, with extravagantly expensive farm buildings”. Bakewell, op. cit., p. 129. Bakewell claimed that this process generated a great deal of discontent in the agricultural community.
page 91 note 2 Loch to Horsburgh, 17 November 1830.
page 92 note 1 Loch to Lewis, 23 and 27 November 1830.
page 92 note 2 Lewis to Loch, 24 November 1830.
page 92 note 3 Loch to Lewis, 1 December 1830.
page 92 note 4 Jones to Loch, 1 and 5 December 1830.
page 93 note 1 Lewis to Loch, 5 December 1830.
page 93 note 2 Jones to Loch, 11, 12 and 14 December 1830.
page 93 note 3 Lewis to Loch, 6 December 1830.
page 93 note 4 Idem.
page 94 note 1 Lewis to Loch, 10 December 1830.
page 94 note 2 Lewis to Loch, 11 December 1830.
page 94 note 3 Lewis to Loch, 13 December 1830. Note that Hobsbawm and Rudé (op. cit., p. 348) date the incident at 7th December and classify it under “Arson”.
page 94 note 4 Lewis to Loch, 14 December 1830.
page 94 note 5 Lewis to Loch, 15 December 1830.
page 95 note 1 Young to Loch, 5 December 1830.
page 95 note 2 Dempster to Loch, 13 December 1830.
page 95 note 3 Loch to Mackenzie, 10 November 1830. “The question is so decidedly desired by a large and increasing portion of the Middle and Upper classes, that the sooner it is granted the less will be required […] and as it is delayed, more will be demanded.”
page 95 note 4 Loch to Dempster, 25 December 1830. Here Loch re-iterated his views on Reform: “I assure you it is impossible to avoid it – it has made a progress among the middle and upper classes of the County since last year, no one who is not a daily witness to it can imagine. It may be guided, it cannot be stopped and the sooner that it is conceded the less will be required. It was by his uncompromising declaration against ever entertaining the subject that put an end to the Duke of Wellington's Government.”
page 95 note 5 Cf. Hobsbawm and Rudé, pp. 198–9.
page 95 note 6 Loch to Lewis, 2 and 4 December 1830.
page 96 note 1 Loch to Gower, 16 January 1831; Lewis to Loch, 27 January 1831.
page 96 note 2 Loch to Lord Stafford, 18 January 1831.
page 96 note 3 Loch to Gower, 19 January 1831.
page 97 note 1 Loch to Lewis, 20 and 28 January 1831.
page 97 note 2 Kirkby to Loch, 2 February 1831.
page 97 note 3 Loch to Bishop of Lichfield, 26 February 1831.
page 97 note 4 Both Staffordshire and Shropshire had above average levels of literacy in 1840 (see Hobsbawm, E. J., Industry and Empire (1969 edition), Diagram 20).Google Scholar But it is not difficult to believe that there existed pockets of very high levels of illiteracy in the 1820s. Loch was actively involved in the promotion of working class education in the 1820s and believed that education had a civilising and pacifying mission to perform. In 1821, for instance, he believed that the working classes might be kept occupied in schools of art, mechanics and chemistry – attending lectures which excluded all religious and political discussion. “A library of elementary books only should be formed and lent out […] it would keep the people from publick houses and politics [and also be] an excellent means of diffusing the benefits of education over a very intelligent and active portion of the community and give a sound direction to genius which is not lost or expends itself either in the miseries of dissipation or of crime.” Loch to Brougham, 25 December 1821.
page 99 note 1 Loch to Gower, 19 January 1831.
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