The Swing Riots

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   agricultural      century      crops      Enclosure      farming      fatter      final      hanged      harvest      identity      iron      Kent      landscape      letters      lower      property      Queen      riots      Secretary      starvation      Swing      unemployment      winter      work   

By the end of the eighteenth , the growth of industrial towns made it necessary for agriculture to be
run more on 'business' lines - in the same way as , coal and textiles. Great changes were
brought in on the land which resulted in an revolution. Major changes included the
introduction of new to put goodness into the soil, crop rotation, selective breeding to
produce animals and efficient land drainage.

Captain Swing

However some improvements in would lead to trouble for the workers. By the 1800s there had been
several in rural areas, chiefly
in . Following years of high taxes, inflated bread prices and low wages, farm
labourers finally snapped in 1830. These farm labourers had faced for a number of years due to
the widespread introduction of enclosing the fields and bringing in of agricultural machinery.
meant that not as many men were needed to tend the crops and so unemployment rose. Traditionally much
work was threshing wheat by hand but threshing machines were introduced which also meant some employment was lost.
With fewer jobs, wages and no prospects of things improving for these workers the threshing machine
was the straw, the object that was to place them on the brink
of .


Captain Swing

Crisis came in the 1830s when the was poor, wages were further cut and employment rose. Workers
reacted by sending threatening to farmers and burnt ricks, barns and machines. The movement was
called Captain and the name came from the letters which were often signed Captain or Swing in an
effort to hide the leaders' . The riots beame widespread in the south and east of the country.


Major landowners were concerned about their and got military assistance in crushing the riots. The
Home , Lord Melbourne, reacted vigorously; nine labourers
were and over four hundred transported to Australia.

Incomes of farmers rose in the first half of Victoria's reign as improvements were made. However
those of the labourers did not, especially for the southerners. They lived in terrible poverty and needed to find more employment. So as the
changed from rural to urban the workers went to the towns to search
for .