Sir, - In your edition of August 6th, Dr O'Reilly of Mosanto is reported as using the term "Luddite" in a pejorative sense. This sense is challenged by Kirkpatrick Sale in the latest issue of The Ecologist, where he notes that the Luddites were not opposed to machinery in general, since many of them worked with fairly sophisticated weaving looms, but to machinery that was injurious to the common people and their communities: "They rose up with such ferocity not against all technology . . . but against technologies that they saw would crush their livelihoods, overturn the traditional modes of work and employment, and erase the customary bonds of household, community and marketplace that had endured for centuries."
To show what was at stake in the Luddite opposition to industrialism, Sale juxtaposes quotations from the historians Ure and Henderson. Ure describes Lancashire around 1780: "Their dwellings and small gardens clean and neat - all the family well clad . . . every house well furnished with a clock in elegant mahogany or fancy case - handsome tea services in Staffordshire ware . . . The workshop of the weaver was a rural cottage, from which when he was tired of sedentary labour he could sally forth into his little garden, and with the spade or the hoe tend its culinary productions. The cotton wool which was to form his weft was picked clean by the fingers of his younger children and was carded and spun by the older girls assisted by his wife, and the yarn was woven by himself assisted by his sons."
In contrast, there is Henderson's description of Lancashire around 1814: "There are hundreds of factories in Manchester which are five or six storeys high. At the side of each factory there is a great chimney which belches forth black smoke and indicates the presence of the powerful steam engines. The smoke from the chimneys forms a great cloud which can be seen for miles around the town. The houses have become black on account of the smoke. The river upon which Manchester stands is so tainted with colouring matter that the water resembles the contents of a dye vat . . . To save wages, mule jennies have actually been built so that no less than 600 spindles can be operated by one adult and two children . . ."
The resistance of the Luddites to the annihilation of their way of life was, as we know, overcome by state repression in the service of industrialisation and its wealthy beneficiaries. But the horrendous consequences of industrialisation - consequences which are still with us in the form of global warming - should give us some understanding of why the Luddites felt impelled to take such drastic direct action. - Yours, etc.,
Paul O'Brien, Bertram Court, Christchurch, Dublin 8.