THROUGHOUT ENGLAND IN 1830, agricultural labourers, tradesmen and smallholders rose up in their thousands to fight back against the driving down of wages, lengthening of hours, enclosure of public land and the starvation of their families at the hands of wealthy landowners. Nowhere was the rioting more fierce than in Wiltshire.
Between 1770 and 1830, over six million acres of common land had been placed in the ownership of a few rich landowners, leaving farm workers with nowhere to graze their small herds or grow subsistence crops. This, combined with a steep decline in wages for farm workers and the introduction of new machinery robbing them of their livelihoods, meant that many rural people found themselves and their families starving and penniless. The wage for a labourer in Dorset and Wiltshire was far worse than the national average.
Within a week of workers burning a threshing machine in Kent, rioting had spread to Wiltshire, where bands went on the rampage, burning farm produce and equipment and threatening the local gentry with physical force and letters demanding higher wages and food (always signed by the mythical ‘Captain Swing’). Some of the most extreme events occurred in Pewsey and Oare, where local landowner James Self was pushed into the flames as he attempted to save his property! The damage in this spree was estimated at £400. In the same night, the crops of a Mr. Fowler were also burned, with the local aristos surprised that “…the labourers of Oare, instead of assisting to put out the fire, appeared to take pleasure from the situation, and… were lying about enjoying the scene”.
Hoses brought to the scene were immediately sabotaged. Rioting was not only limited to farm labourers either, as demonstrated when a mob of 500 in Wilton gathered to attack and loot the mill of John Bishop: including his employees! And so it was in tens of towns and villages across the county, with workers successfully ‘persuading’ employers and landowners to hand over substantial amounts of money, food and, of course, beer! But before long, the shocked employers retorted, swearing in a ‘yeomanry’ comprised mainly of the local well-to-do, responding to disturbances with violent relish. After four months of sustained unrest – and, predictably, repression from employers and courts – the rioting died down, leaving hundreds imprisoned, dozens deported and 19 hung.
Despite the bloody end to the Swing Riots in Wiltshire, the workers scored some important victories. They met their material needs by looting money and supplies from landowners who were previously happy to let them starve but, possibly more importantly, the rioters experimented with ways to organize themselves to answer their own needs collectively, setting a blueprint for future working class self-organization that would inspire future generations of rebels and society as a whole.
