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Tuesday May 29th - 20.00 Uhr
Ciaran Walsh performing
"Captain Swing" @ Coop Anti-War Cafe
Ciaran Walsh, a storyteller and a
radical historian. He is performing "Captain
Swing"
"Captain Swing" was the name appended to several threatening letters
during the rural English Swing Riots of 1830, when labourers rioted
over the introduction of new threshing machines and the loss of their
livelihoods. Captain Swing was described as a hard-working tenant
farmer driven to destitution and despair by social and political change
in the early nineteenth century.
Popular protests by farm workers occurred across a wide swath of
agricultural England, from Sussex in the south to Kent in the east, and
they had a number of structural causes. The main targets for protesting
crowds were landowners/landlords, whose threshing machines they
destroyed or dismantled, and whom they petitioned for a rise in wages.
They also demanded contributions of food, money, beer, or all three
from their victims. Often they sought to enlist local parish officials
and occasionally magistrates to raise levels of poor relief as well.
Throughout England, 644 rioters were imprisoned, 505 transported to
Australia, and 19 were executed.
The protests were notable for their discipline and the customary
protocols favoured by the crowds, characteristics which were very much
part of the tradition of popular protest going back to the eighteenth
century. The structural reasons for the Swing 'riots' (or risings) are
relatively straightforward: underemployment, low wages, low levels of
relief, and competition for winter employment from machinery. However,
the nature of the events of 1830 suggest that they may demand just as
subtle an interpretation as the events of the previous century.
Reform was in the air. Many protestors found sympathy in
middle-class radicals who encouraged protesters to spread far from
their original sources. Further, early sentences by magistrates against
the rioters, even those who destroyed threshing machines, were fairly
light. Thus, riots continued into 1831.
Rochstr.3
Berlin-Mitte (Alex)
U-Bahn
Weinmeisterstr/Alexanderplatz
S-Bahn
Hackescher Markt/Alexanderplatz
DISCLAMER
-HAFTUNGSAUSSCHLUSS
Impressum
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