A song commemorating the Luddite attack on Foster’s Mill survives only in fragments but helps provide an insight into community solidarity in this early period of labour history, writes Joe Stanley.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y1NYqujAV24%3Fsi%3Dc9n3N_Bwl8uuoI3o

Foster’s Mill
Bill Price (traditional)

Most labour historians will be familiar with West Riding Luddism in 1812. E.P. Thompson paid particular attention to the movement, and stressed its political undertones, in chapter 14 of The Making of the English Working Class (1963).[1] One of the more violent attacks on a cloth manufactory took place on Thursday 09 April 1812 at Foster’s Mill at Horbury near Wakefield, and this has been preserved in song:

Come, all you croppers stout and bold,
Let your faith grow stronger still,
For the cropper lads in the county of York
Have broken the shears at Foster’s Mill.

Around and around we all will stand
And sternly swear we will,
We’ll break the shears and the windows too
And we’ll all set fire to tazzling mill.

The wind it blew and the sparks they flew,
Which alarmed the town full soon,
And out of bed poor folk did leave,
And they run by the light of the moon.

Around and around they all did stand
And solemnly did swear,
Neither bucket nor kit nor any such thing
Should be of any assistance there.

All dark and dreary is the day
When men have to fight for their bread;
Some judgment sure will clear the way
And the coach of triumph shall be led.

The song first appeared in Frank Peel’s The Rising of the Luddites, Chartists and Plug-Drawers (1880) on p.120. Peel stated that ‘these rude home-spun songs, which are now remembered in disjointed fragments by the few old people who have a personal knowledge of those unhappy days’ were ‘chanted to the music of the sounding “shears,”’. He added that they ‘fired the heart and stirred the   sluggish blood of many of the dreaded fraternity whose deeds at one time daunted the bravest’. In writing his history of the Luddites, Peel conversed with an eighty-year-old lady who ‘still retained her faculties unimpaired’, and who ‘gave us snatches of ballads which were universally sung’ by Luddites. He then went on to quote verses one, three and four. He quoted verse five separately, and stated that this was from a different song of a ‘less jubilant character’ that was composed after the failure of the attack on Cartwright’s Mill.[2]

The song, called ‘Forster’s Mill’, featured on the 1972 folk LP The Fine Old Yorkshire Gentlemen sung by Bill Price. Wendy Price, Bill’s wife, provided a range of interesting detail about all songs on the album and stated that what remains of Foster’s Mill is a ‘fragment’ of the original song. She also paid particular attention to verse four, which, she argued, is evidence – as Thompson suggested – of local sympathy with the Luddites. Interestingly, the 1888 edition of Peel’s The Risings of the Luddites, adds another verse which possibly originated from the song about the attack on Cartwright’s Mill:

Come listen to this, my sad story,
Of woe be to valour most brave,
While some have escap’d up to glory
The tyrant hangs over the grave.[3]

Perhaps the reason why Foster’s Mill has survived in song and Cartwright’s Mill has not is because the former attack was a success for the Luddites whilst the latter was a failure. I have not been able to trace the origin of verse two but the reference to the smashing of windows and setting fire to the mill is borne out by contemporary press reports. It is worth quoting Leeds Intelligencer at length:

‘On Thursday at midnight, about some 300 of these desperate men, some undisguised, some having their faces covered; some with fire-arms; some with hatchets, and many with clubs, surrounded the factory of Mr. Joseph Foster, of Horbury, near Wakefield, broke into different parts of the shops and houses adjoining, destroyed the frames and shears, broke the windows and iron-window-frames, damaged a quantity of warp in the looms, and even wreaked their vengeance on the machinery in the scribbling-mill. – While this was going on, another party broke open the house occupied by the sons of Mr. Foster, in the most outrageous manner. They dragged two of the young men out of bed, tied them together on the floor, and made a third accompany them with the keys, threatening on refusal, to put him instantly to death. The book-keeper’s house was also broken into, and himself and his family treated most brutally. And the miscreants departed setting the premises on fire! This was happily prevented from extending far: the whole damage is stated at £700. The men were called over by numbers, as before, and dispersed. Many of them were met on the Huddersfield road upon Grange Moor returning about three o’clock. Others went through Horbury on the Wakefield road, saluting the house of Mr. Foster, sen. with a volley, as they passed, to his great alarm, as he had for some time been an invalid. It is said that Mr. F. intends to apply to the County for reparation. No military were stationed nearer than within 11 miles. This machinery of Mr. Foster’s, we understand, has been at work several years’.

The Intelligencer lamented the widespread nature of Luddism in the West Riding, and added that ‘All these outrages, and much worse, are perpetrated without the detection of even a single individual: and, thus escaping, the offenders seem, as must naturally be expected, to increase in strength and daring’.[4] Peel stated that the assailants were drawn from many towns in the heavy woollen district including Heckmondwike, Liversedge, Mirfield, and Brighouse.[5]

It is likely that Price’s rendition is a composite of two, or possibly more, songs. Nevertheless, this does not detract from the significance of Foster’s Mill. It provides us with another way to make sense of Luddism and gives us an insight into community solidarity in the West Riding in 1812. Thanks to Frank Peel and Bill Price we can still hear the Luddites who were, in the words of E.P. Thompson, the ‘aristocracy’ of woollen workers. It is the Luddites, through their songs and actions, who provide the first evidence of the ‘manifestation of a working-class culture of greater independence and complexity than any known to the eighteenth century’.[6]

Joe Stanley, Selwyn College, Cambridge.

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[1] E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963) ch. 14.

[2] Frank Peel, The Risings of the Luddites, Chartist and Plug-Drawers (1880 ed.) pp. 119-120.

[3] Frank Peel, The Risings of the Luddites, Chartist and Plug-Drawers (1888 ed.) p. 125.

[4] Leeds Intelligencer, 13 April 1812.

[5] Frank Peel, The Risings of the Luddites, Chartist and Plug-Drawers (1880 ed.) p. 120.

[6] Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), pp. 570, 658