Writing - Nothing changes

 It is often stated that 'there's nothing new under the sun', and 'history repeats itself'! We are also advised to learn from the experiences that history tells us. I am reading a book about the Luddite rebellions of 1811/12. Even 200+ years ago, there were people concerned about the reasons for civil unrest. 

The events of 1811/1812 occurred mainly in the north, from Nottingham, Cheshire, Lancashire, to Yorkshire, and concerned the use of automated machinery in the cloth-producing industries. It began in the knitting factories and spread to cotton and wool processing. Workers were frightened of losing their jobs. There were several violent acts, mostly against the machinery, all over the area. The government at the time was weak and slow in responding to the problems and allowed things to ride without attention. There were underlying issues that sound familiar today. One of the major events that escalated the need for a response from the administration was the assassination of the prime minister Spencer Perceval on May 11th 1812. 

Spencer Perceval 

In fact, it seems that his killing was a mistake. The real target was the Home Secretary, Richard Ryder, was the intended target but the assassin, John Bellingham, became frustrated at the fact that Ryder wasn't in the lobby of the Houses of Parliament, and he shot Perceval instead. 

John Bellingham 

A chaplain from the Manchester area had concerns about the rifts in society and came up with the following. 

Canon Parkinson writing On the Present Condition of the Labouring Poor in Manchester, would later state, 

"There is no town in the world where the distance between the rich and the poor is so great, or the barrier between them so difficult to be crossed.... There is far less personal communication between the master cotton spinner and his workmen, between the calico printer and his blue handed boys, between the master tailor and his apprentices, than there is between the Duke of Wellington and the humblest labourer on his estate, or than there was between good old George the Third and the meanest errand-boy about his palace. I mention this not as a matter of blame, but I state it simply as a fact." 

Sound familiar?

The government sent the army to the north to manage the situation under Thomas Maitland. After just two days he reported back to Ryder.

Before the end of his second day in Manchester, Maitland was telling Ryder that the high price of food in relation to wages required very serious consideration. He gave some precise examples. Potatoes, now the most frequent food of the cotton worker, had risen from 7/6d to 18s a wholesale load. This had caused an increase in retail price to the worker such that, where once his penny would buy him 3lbs of potatoes, now it bought only 1lb.

Maitland carried on to say that if wages had increased to maintain a closer relationship with the owners' remuneration, there would have been no reason for the unrest. 

This is the exact same situation that pertains today, and more and more people are becoming unhappy about the worship of billionaires, and at the same time, the increase in the number of poor in rich western countries. 

God Bless