The power-loom riots of 1826 took place in Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

, England, in protest against the economic hardship suffered by traditional handloom

Loon

The loons or divers are a group of aquatic birds found in many parts of North America and northern Eurasia...

 weavers caused by the widespread introduction of the much more efficient power loom

Power loom

A power loom is a mechanized loom powered by a line shaft. The first power loom was designed in 1784 by Edmund Cartwright and first built in 1785. It was refined over the next 47 years until a design by Kenworthy and Bullough, made the operation completely automatic. This was known as the...

. Rioting broke out on 24 April and continued for three days, widely supported by the local population, who were sympathetic to the weavers' plight.

The rioting ended after 20 or so of the ringleaders were arrested. Some local manufacturers subsequently attempted to introduce a minimum wage for weavers, but were unable to obtain the backing of the UK government to enforce it.

Background

England suffered economically in the years immediately following the end of the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

 in 1815, and in the textile towns of the industrial north wages fell sharply as the factory system

Factory system

The factory system was a method of manufacturing first adopted in England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 1750s and later spread abroad. Fundamentally, each worker created a separate part of the total assembly of a product, thus increasing the efficiency of factories. Workers,...

 was developed. In Bolton

Bolton

Bolton is a town in Greater Manchester, in the North West of England. Close to the West Pennine Moors, it is north west of the city of Manchester. Bolton is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, of which Bolton is the...

 alone, 1500 of the town's 6000 handloom weavers were out of work in 1826, and 1500 were on half work. A weaver who in 1792 could have expected to earn six shillings a day was by 1826 earning less than six shillings a week for a sixteen-hour day, in a period when the price of staples such as bread, cheese and meat had almost doubled.

Course of events

Rioting broke out in the east of Lancashire on 24 April 1826. The first of 21 mills to be attacked was the Higher Grange Lane Factory in Accrington

Accrington

Accrington is a town in Lancashire, within the borough of Hyndburn. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, north of Manchester city centre and is situated on the mostly culverted River Hyndburn...

. The rioters marched on to Blackburn on the second day. On the third and final day of rioting the military were called upon to defend a mill in Chatterton

Chatterton, Lancashire

Chatterton is a small village in the southern part of the Rossendale Valley, Lancashire.It is half a mile north of Ramsbottom town centre on the A676 between Bolton and Edenfield. For local government purposes, it receives services from Rossendale Borough Council and Lancashire County Council....

 against 3000 rioters, six of whom were shot and killed when the crowd refused to disperse after the Riot Act

Riot Act

The Riot Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that authorised local authorities to declare any group of twelve or more people to be unlawfully assembled, and thus have to disperse or face punitive action...

 had been read to them.

Popular support

The rioters were widely supported locally, and not only by fellow handloom weavers. Amongst those arrested in Blackburn, for instance, were labourers, a farmer, a confectioner, a butcher and even power-loom weavers. An eye-witness to the rioting in Chorley

Chorley

Chorley is a market town in Lancashire, in North West England. It is the largest settlement in the Borough of Chorley. The town's wealth came principally from the cotton industry...

 noted that "there can be no doubt that a great multitude of the townspeople were their friends. The women supplied the rioters with stones, concealing the missiles under their aprons."

Some of the soldiers sent to confront the rioters seemed sympathetic to their plight. One 16-year-old handloom weaver from Haslingden

Haslingden

Haslingden is a small town in Rossendale, Lancashire, England. It is north of Manchester. The name means 'valley of the hazels', though the town is in fact set on a high and windy hill. In the early 20th century Haslingden had the status of a municipal borough, but following local government...

, Thomas Duckworth, records that on the first day of rioting the group he was marching with encountered a number of mounted soldiers approaching them with drawn swords. The officers in charge appealed to the mob to disperse, warning of the consequences if they did not. In Duckworth's own words:

Suppression and aftermath

The riots ended after local magistrates swore in a large number of special constable

Special constable

A Special Constable is a law enforcement officer who is not a regular member of a police force. Some like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police carry the same law enforcement powers as regular members, but are employed in specific roles, such as explosive disposal technicians, court security, campus...

s to arrest about 20 of the ringleaders "in the dead of night". During the course of the rioting more than 1000 power looms had been destroyed. A number of manufacturers subsequently agreed to pay a standard rate to the weavers, but on their own admission it was a "starvation" wage. Those who stuck to the agreement found it difficult to compete with those manufacturers who did not, and could therefore undercut them, prompting an appeal to William Huskisson

William Huskisson

William Huskisson PC was a British statesman, financier, and Member of Parliament for several constituencies, including Liverpool...

, the President of the Board of Trade, to introduce a legally binding minimum wage. Huskisson's response was dismissive, expressing his view that to introduce such a measure would be "a vain and hazardous attempt to impose the authority of the law between the labourer and his employer in regulating the demand for labour and the price to be paid for it".