‘I’d like to live in a house that was made from mud, with high ceilings with really big windows on one side and really small windows on the other side, because I hate the sun, but I love the sun when it’s coming up and going down. I think the home as well needs to be extended in ways that prevent the Oedipal nuclear family set-up. So I’d like my mud house with high ceilings to have an open-mud-door policy. We did apply once to build a family home in the park, and have it as an open house so that anyone could come and live there with us. I think we asked for one million eight hundred thousand. We asked the art group Angel. They said ‘No’. So what? Their loss. But that would have been fun. In the future, you get a house by participating in your local group. Make someone a cup of tea, you can have a house. Smile, and you can have a house. Because we’ve got enough. In fact, you don’t even need to smile, you can just get one. You don’t even need to do anything. You just get one.’
What about other issues, like immigration?
‘There are no borders. There’s no such thing as immigration because there’s no such thing as anybody else. It’s all just us. Which is why everything’s for everyone.’
Healthcare?
‘You pay for it with leeks. But you don’t have to pay with a leek upfront, because it’s free at the point of delivery. You just have to know about leeks. The question is: have you ever heard of a leek. You go: “Yeah.” And then you can have your cancer dealt with. No, I don’t know. It’s interesting; my thinking now tends to rest on: do you deserve it or not? It’s funny, that. I don’t mean that, but that’s how it’s coming out. It’s still maintaining the principle of exchange. I don’t know. Maybe love. Maybe the economy is love-based. With asymmetrical reciprocity. Iris Marion Young wrote about how equality can’t really exist, because there’s no two things the same. So she came up with this idea that when we act reciprocally we do it asymmetrically. So it’s OK for me to give you more than you give me, for whatever the reason is – I’ve got more or I want to give more or you’ve got less or you want to take more, or whatever. And maybe it’s OK, maybe we don’t need to insist on equality as an end in itself. Maybe what we really need is to enable each other as much as possible.’
I ask him about the city that he lives in, how he would like it to be in the future.
‘According to my desire as it exists now?’
Yeah, exactly; where else are you supposed to speak from?
‘One of the problems with this city now is there’s no access to the river. It’s fenced off. The world comes in through the river – because it isn’t really a river, it’s just a bit of the North Sea. So having access would enable you to understand the world a bit better. So in the future everyone would have a little sailing vessel of some description, and everyone would know how to sail the river and to go across it, and sail out into the sea on a cruise. We go on these boat trips in Croatia, because Ana’s from Dubrovnik; we have a friend who puts us on his boat, and then we go to one of the islands. We get drunk from ten in the morning, all falling off into the sea and getting back on the boat.
‘I’d have the city run in little committees, for every 30 people, that everyone was involved in. Power wouldn’t be centralised. A pub, a huge sustainable plastic see-through thing, on wheels, would move very slowly around each commune. And when it comes in front of your house, you could pop in and have a drink. It stops outside your house once a week. You’d be vibrating with anticipation. The pub has the exact drink that you feel like around 5.30 in the afternoon. It’s a drink that our 30-people commune participated in producing, so we feel the labour of it. It’s not too strong, it’s quite refreshing, but it does just put you in a slightly different frame of mind. It’s some herb or something in it; the kids can drink it too. It’s just a slight tweaking of your everyday sense of self that’s slightly pleasant. It’s probably opium-based. But really benevolent.’
What other modifications would you make?
‘I think that’d probably be it.’
What about this void in the middle here? As I ask I gesture through the Institute’s window to the empty place in the centre of the square.
‘Originally that space was going to be just flat land with grass on. So people could look at it. Then some people in the community got together, got really angry about it and designed it themselves. What they actually changed was that they made the path bendy, instead of straight. But I’m happy with that, because they did it. To have the path there bendy is a masterpiece, because of the process. If it were just up to me I’d have a huge helter-skelter that the kids could go on. There aren’t that many places to play out; I’d change that. Everyone would play out. Everyone. People would all be outside. And the places for playing out would be all different; they’d have to be designed by people who were interested. But, if I was plotting my own, it would be a huge helter-skelter. But I mean huge. That’d take two hours to get up, and then 15 seconds to come down. A helter-skelter like a tower of Babel, right up to heaven. From that helter-skelter you could see the Earth curve. On the way up there’d be some correctives for altitude sickness. Maybe a floating pub – there’s a few floating pubs that you can just step onto, and have a chat. They’d go up and down like hot air balloons.’
We go downstairs. Ana and the kids have gone to play outside, but there is someone else sleeping on the sofa, and two children have wandered in off the street and are heating up baked beans in the kitchen. ‘Is there anything else we can do for you?’ Greg asks. But the red light of the setting sun is slanting in through the tall windows; it’s so late, I’ve been here for hours. Since Brick killed all the phones, it’s been harder to keep track of time. I leave the mud house at the foot of the monstrous helter-skelter, and cycle down the hill, through the park, to the river. A sloop is waiting for me on the shore. I haul my bike onto it and sail slowly home through a network of waterways, navy blue under the late summer evening sky.
In the following week I recruit a couple more students from the college, who I meet outside a music festival being held in one of the market gardens that now cover the city. We agree to meet up on the terrace of one of the ambulant perspex pubs that had invaded the suburbs, making sure we write down the date and time, as people have started to have to do again now. I eat a seitan sandwich I made at home while I wait for them, and wonder if they’ll turn up at all. They’re very late. But the sun is out, and this art nouveau beer garden is a pleasant place to while away an afternoon. Across the terrace, a large party of young punks are getting gently high on the mellow local brew. Half an hour later Lin and Aisha finally arrive. Lin is androgynous and confident, in a striped T-shirt and orange trainers. Aisha’s eyeliner is peacock green, her hair is seapunk green and her denim shorts are embroidered with pineapples.
So what do you want the world to be like in the future?
Aisha starts. ‘More awareness, and therefore more acceptance. Knowing different types of people exist, different genders exist, and also knowing that those things are OK – there’s literally nothing weird. By knowing that those things exist it becomes more normal, and less scary. It should just be a part of the general stuff that kids learn growing up, in PSHE [personal, social, health and economic education].’
‘Like, kind of like a fairyland,’ says Lin. ‘You know, everyone can be who they are; we don’t assume people’s gender, we don’t assume people’s sexuality. I mean, I suppose that’s kind of far-fetched.’
That’s OK; I’m asking you a far-fetched question. Be as farfetched as you want.
‘Having the chance to make change that is not really painfully slow. Knowing that, if you are discriminated against, people are going to stand up for you. Having that support network, I guess.’
‘If I didn’t have to worry about just getting the train by myself. That would be a nice thing.’
‘If someone started up a conversation with you on the train and was, like, “Oh yo, I like your band T-shirt”, or something, you’d feel less unsafe…’
‘Y
eah, it’d be more of a community. Like, if people didn’t feel like you needed to be really closed off all the time, and you needed to protect yourself from everyone.’
‘Every time you see a guy on the street, and there are no women around, you’re like, OK, I instantly have to be wary. It’s like, I’m on my own and stuff? You shouldn’t have to feel alone just because there’s no one else of your gender. It should be a community. More equality.’
What should happen with gender?
‘It shouldn’t exist. It’s not real!’ Lin laughs.
What about race?
‘There’d be no remnants of the fact that they were colonised. The open borders are nice. Free immigration. Oh yeah – we shouldn’t have left the EU!’
‘That’d be good,’ Aisha says wistfully, ‘if, magically, in 100 years’ time…’
‘Oh, the EU’s not going to exist in 100 years’ time. It’s not going to exist in, like, 30 years’ time.’
What should exist instead of the EU?
‘I don’t know, like… I said that I wasn’t going to say this, but, you know, communism! No, that was a joke. But regulations making sure people have enough money, can get jobs, take the burdens off their minds so they can worry about other stuff.’
I guess things are going that way anyway, what with the new asymmetrical love-based economics recently proposed by the All-Union Federation and the Local Area Committees. ‘With economic stability will come more freedom,’ says Lin, ‘because when you’re not having to worry about money you can take more time to think about things like gender equality.’
We hear noise in the street outside, chanting: it’s another march. The punks are getting up to join it; we link arms with them and go outside. As we merge into the demo, trade unionists hand us pastel balloons with Steven Universe characters on them. We march to St Agabus’ Campus, where more students and staff join us, then to the council building, where someone comes out to tell us we’ve won our demands for queer sex education in schools already, even though the campaign began just a week ago. We hang around in the space outside the council building, drinking together and dancing to Grace Jones. The streets are full, and the warm light paints them coral and rose. I normally take the biobus home, but this evening I walk, as the last of the light drains from the streets and off to the horizon, and the streets’ twilight rises into the sky and brings the stars into focus. I hear someone’s footsteps behind me, and turn to greet them.
1This is an account of, and excerpts from, some interviews I conducted, together with some speculation. The excerpts have been edited for length and clarity, but are otherwise faithful to the transcripts, apart from the tenses used at the end, where some things have been moved from the future conditional to the present.
16
The Future Encylopedia of Luddism
Miriam A. Cherry
Overview
Originating in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, Luddism was a movement arising as a response to poor working conditions in nascent textile manufacturing businesses. The Luddite movement was a precursor to the development of the economic philosophy known as Sustainomics, which promotes technological development that adheres to principles of Utilitarianism and Human Flourishing Doctrines. Sustainomics began its rise in the early part of the twentieth century and has remained the dominant economic system of the Hemispheric Union for the past 600 years.
Beginning in the early nineteenth century, foreign wars coupled with high unemployment and food shortages caused widespread desperation among the populace. Many seeking ‘earned wages’ went to work in rudimentary industrial factories. With no safety standards and shoddy medical care, industrial accidents were quite common.
As corn became increasingly scarce in the winter of 1810 to 1811, groups of workers who could not pay for food and shelter became even more desperate. Under the Combination Act of 1799, Parliament had outlawed unions. It was amidst these stark conditions that the Luddites began to organise in secret. The Luddite Movement was open to both women workers and child labourers. Indeed, women and children comprised roughly 40 per cent of the Luddite membership.
Leadership of General Ned Ludd and Origin of the Term ‘Luddite’
Many stories and legends have grown up around the esteemed figure of General Ned Ludd, named by Passage Zine as one of the ‘Top 10 Most Influential People of the Last Thousand Years’. Hailed as a visionary even in his own time, the Luddite Councils are named in his honour. The complete story of Ludd’s life and times is told in The Epic Saga of General Ludd. While stylised, the Saga has largely been corroborated with the archaeological records.
As an orphan, young Ned grew up in the late 1790s in a ‘workhouse’, a facility that existed to make people ‘earn their keep’, to use the antiquated terminology and backward thinking of the time. Ned was trained in the textile trade as a boy. Contemporary sources recount 15-year-old Ned being beaten when he refused to work at a machine that had, only moments beforehand, severed one of his co-worker’s arms. After several days of docked wages, Ned, still nursing bruises from his beating, was told to go back to work on that same dangerous device. As every schoolchild learns in reading The Luddite Primer, young Ned seized a hammer and smashed the hazardous machine. Within a fortnight Ned had fled the factory and joined the British army.
Although he had only a brief stint in the military, young Ned was a quick student of battlefield strategy. Returning to Huddersfield just a few years later, his supporters styled him ‘General Ludd’. As the Movement increased in popularity over the summer of 1811, a large crowd gathered at Huddersfield. By the time the Movement began in earnest, Ned Ludd’s supporters numbered over 100,000. Luddite supporters were characterised by their sense of utmost loyalty and solidarity to their brothers and sisters in the Movement. Despite the large number of supporters and the completely rudimentary communication available at the time, the Movement, its leaders and its political and social aims remained a well-guarded secret to factory owners and the government alike.
Takeover of Factories
Beginning in November 1811, General Ludd and his right-hand man, Lt George Mellor, surrounded, took and held factories throughout the textile district of Nottinghamshire. Their first victory, at Cartwrights Mill at Rawfolds, is now the site of the Mellor Memorial Museum, which contains many of the original documents so central to the Luddite Movement. Much of the success of the early campaigns was largely due to the fact that the Luddites were chiefly a peaceful movement. Contemporaneous newspaper accounts described individual events as the ‘occupation’ of factories. This characterisation has since been disputed by researchers, and definitive archaeological studies have completely repudiated these polemic accounts as wholly fabricated. Remarkably, in the first two years of the Luddite campaign, only one serious injury was reported. The owner of Ottiwells Mill, William Horsfall, refused to stand down when a peaceful crowd gathered around his factory. After shouting that he planned to ‘swim in Luddite blood’, Horsfall began firing his rifle indiscriminately into the largely unarmed crowd, which included many of the factory’s large group of child workers. As a defensive measure, Lt Mellor fired a single shot, intending to hit Horsfall’s arm, but which instead injured his groin. No further resistance was encountered and the factory changed hands without incident.
The Ottiwells Mill incident was an anomaly. Typically, when the Luddites arrived at a factory, the oppressed wage earners cheered and chanted: ‘Up with Ludd!’ Many deserted to join the Luddite forces. Against this overwhelming show of support for the Movement, most of the managers and owners would turn and run or else peacefully surrender. Part of why Ludd could count on such support was that Lt Mellor began by strategically targeting the factories that had the worst records of safety and that paid the lowest wages. After a Luddite victory, local towns would break into impromptu celebrations. Later these celebrations were formalised to become the most important state holiday of the Hemisph
eric Union. Every year on 1 March, and under the formula of equivalency on Mars, ‘Ludd Day’ commemorates the courageous citizens who took part in the Movement. The day is characterised by rest from labour, time with family and community, fashion shows with costumes from Regency Britain and a dinner of fish and chips. It is also a well-recognised, though not universal, custom to give a hand-made item of clothing to a loved one, in order to commemorate the Movement’s origins in the textile industry.
Luddite Ceremonial Hammers
Sometime in 1812 a group of Ludd’s followers in Nottingham gained control of a tool factory, and used its metal-working machines to construct large hammers. In turn, those involved in factory takeovers would use the massive hammers to break machines that had been responsible for death or injury by industrial accident. Ludd’s own hammer was named ‘Great Enoch’. The original hammers were later employed in ceremonial capacities establishing trade relations between the United Kingdom with Russia and Japan, before the Great Consolidation into the Hemispheric Union. Today the original ceremonial hammers are displayed in the British Museum’s Robert Owen Branch in Valles Marineris, Mars.
Response to the Luddites
By 1813 the British government faced a severe crisis. Waging the Napoleonic Wars had depleted the Crown’s treasury. Inflation was high, and food shortages persisted. Until that time the Luddites had mostly been seen as a nuisance. The Luddite Movement then emerged from the fringes, however, to capture the support of an economically depressed populace. By the time Parliament grasped that the wage earners were serious about not being abused and would not back down, the Luddites had already gained significant power. By that point the Luddites had control of over half the output of Britain’s textile factories.
Economic Science Fictions Page 28