Luddite Spring: The Cropper's Song
Continuing his monumental novel concerning epoch-making industrial unrest, Ronnie Bray presents rebel song.
Although the Huddersfield Luddite Uprising began among croppers, it spread to other textile operatives whose employment was also threatened by the march of machines. Many jobs had already disappeared and the signs were sure that more would follow. Croppers’ jobs were lost at the rate of nine for every cropping frame installed. The loss to other trades was not of this order, but the threat occasioned by increasing mechanisation had no visible limit on the number of jobs that would be lost in the future unless condign action was taken. The ‘Cropper’s Song’ expressed this fear in a refreshingly honest way.
Come, cropper lads of high renown,
Who love to drink good ale that's brown,
And strike each haughty tyrant down,
With hatchet, pike, and gun!
Oh, the cropper lads for me,
The gallant lads for me,
Who with lusty stroke,
The shear frames broke,
The cropper lads for me!
What though the specials still advance,
And soldiers nightly round us prance;
The croppers lads still lead the dance,
With hatchet, pike, and gun!
Oh, the cropper lads for me,
The gallant lads for me,
Who with lusty stroke
The shear frames broke,
The cropper lads for me!
And night by night when all is still
And the moon is hid behind the hill,
We forward march to do our will
With hatchet, pike, and gun!
Oh, the cropper lads for me,
The gallant lads for me,
Who with lusty stroke
The shear frames broke,
The cropper lads for me!
Great ‘Enoch’ still shall lead the van.
Stop him who dare! stop him who can!
Press forward every gallant man
With hatchet, pike, and gun!
Oh, the cropper lads for me,
The gallant lads for me,
Who with lusty stroke
The shear frames broke,
The cropper lads for me!
‘Enoch’ was the name given by Huddersfield Luddites to the huge sledgehammers utilised to wreck the abominable frames. There was irony in calling them Enoch because cropping frames were made by Enoch Taylor of Marsden with his brother James. The Taylor brothers also made heavy iron hammers that made short work of cast iron frames. This circumstance produced a wry couplet, reportedly sung or spoken as the Luddite Liturgy during the shattering of the frames:
“Enoch shall make them,
And Enoch shall break them!”
And, indeed, ‘Big Enoch’ did just that.
