Are You A Luddite?

(This is the second in a series on the human cost of artificial intelligence)

This isn’t just a story about machines and jobs. It’s a story about place. About towns where people built things with their hands and watched those things disappear.

I’ve lived in Huddersfield for thirty years in one of the old industrial areas. Milnsbridge. It’s half a mile from where Harold Wilson, one of the UKs prime ministers was born. It sits in a valley carved by the River Colne, surrounded by stone terraces, and mills that once pulsed with life. The name Milnsbridge itself comes from the bridge that once connected two major mill sites across the river. You can still see the buildings, although some have burned down. Some are flats now. Others, especially along the canal, are abandoned. But the bones of the old industry are everywhere.

And not just any industry. Huddersfield’s textiles weren’t just known locally. They were world famous. By the mid-nineteenth century, the town was exporting fine worsted and woollen cloth to Europe, North America, India, Australia and elsewhere. The quality of its weaving, dyeing, and finishing work was unmatched. It became known for suiting fabrics in particular. The word “Huddersfield” on a bolt of cloth meant something. It still does, in some circles.

Cloth woven in Huddersfield has been worn by royalty, diplomats, heads of state. Savile Row tailors still source fabric from a handful of local mills that have survived the wreckage. Companies like Huddersfield Fine Worsteds and Dugdale Bros & Co, both of which maintain that long tradition. But those are the exceptions. Most of it has gone now.

A lot of the changes in the production of textiles was vigorously opposed by the Luddites. These were part of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who resisted the introduction of certain automated machines. Their main concerns were falling wages and a decline in the quality of the finished cloth. In response, they organised raids and destroyed the machines they saw as threats to their livelihoods. They called themselves Luddites in reference to a figure named Ned Ludd, a possibly mythical apprentice weaver. According to popular legend, he smashed two stocking frames in 1779 after being reprimanded by his employer. His name became a symbol of resistance and was later used as a signature in threatening letters sent to factory owners and government officials.

The movement began in Nottingham in 1811, where workers attacked wide-framing knitting machines that had made their jobs redundant. But it was Huddersfield where the Luddite movement gained traction and the unrest became something else. More organised. More desperate. And, in the end, more bloody.

Here in Huddersfield, it wasn’t just about stocking frames. It was about cropping machines. These were heavy, iron-framed contraptions used to shear the raised nap from woollen cloth. This had traditionally been done by highly skilled men known as croppers, working with large hand-held shears. A good cropper could earn a decent living. But the new gig mills and mechanised frames needed far fewer hands.

The machines were made by men like Enoch Taylor, a Marsden blacksmith who also happened to make sledgehammers. The Luddites used those same hammers to smash the very devices he built. “Enoch made them, Enoch shall break them,” they used to say. (“Enoch’s Hammer” is still the name of a beer brewed at Linfit Brewery in the Colne Valley and served at the Sair Inn, just a short distance from Marsden.)

In the spring of 1812, the movement reached a flashpoint. A group of croppers and weavers, angry and increasingly militant, began to gather around Huddersfield. Their most famous action was the assault on Rawfolds Mill, just outside the town near Liversedge.

Rawfolds Mill was run by a man called William Cartwright. He was a cloth finisher who had fortified his premises with barred doors, armed guards, and tripwires. He was using cropping machines to process cloth faster and cheaper than any manual cropper could manage. On the night of 11 April, about 150 Luddites assembled, many of them local. They carried hammers, axes, pistols. Some had muskets. Their plan was to break in and destroy the machines. But Cartwright had prepared for them.

A short and violent gun battle followed. Two Luddites were killed. Several others were wounded. The rest fled into the darkness. Over the following weeks, dozens were arrested. Around 17 were hanged. Others were transported.

You can still stand on the road where it happened. There’s a pub nearby, The Shears Inn, where the Luddites are said to have met before the attack. It’s was open until recently, quietly serving pints to people who may not have realised they were drinking in one of the flashpoints of early industrial resistance.

These weren’t thugs. They weren’t ignorant farmhands lashing out at new ideas. Most were trained artisans, men with years of experience. They weren’t against machines on principle. They were against how the machines were being used: without consultation, without compensation, and without care for the consequences.

They weren’t asking for miracles. Just fair wages. A bit of job security. Some say in how the changes would be managed. What they got instead was surveillance, arrests, and the slow collapse of everything they knew.

Does all of this sound familiar?

The difference now is that the machinery is harder to see. There’s no cropping frame to break. No noisy loom rattling away behind a bolted door. AI doesn’t live in a brick mill with a chimney and a guard dog. It lives in code. It shows up in the form of silent updates, invisible bots, seamless integrations. And one morning, you wake up to a cancelled contract, or a workflow that no longer needs your input.

And again, those who speak up are being written off. Anti-tech. Out of touch. Luddites.

But the Luddites understood something we still haven’t worked out how to say properly. Technology doesn’t just arrive. It’s chosen. And those choices are usually made by people who aren’t the ones who end up dealing with the consequences.

The mill owners got richer. They bought more machines. Paid fewer wages. Squeezed out the skills. What was left was cheaper cloth, and more of it, but less pride in the making, a lessening of quality. Less craft. Less control. Ultimately the cloth could be produced cheaper elsewhere, and what was Huddersfield’s crowning glory all but disappeared.

Now, of course, it’s not about cloth. AI is currently being trained to mimic not just repetitive tasks, but judgement. Writing. Analysing. Designing. Teaching. Even therapy and care are being trialled through AI avatars. The line between machine and knowledge worker is blurring. What once looked like safe, desk-based jobs are now vulnerable in ways that factory jobs were a century ago. Bit by bit, process by process, it’s being pulled apart and reassembled into something that feels colder. Something that doesn't really need you anymore.

And the logic is brutal but clear. Machines don’t call in sick. They don’t join unions. They don't need lunch breaks. They don’t go on maternity leave or ask for training budgets. From a balance-sheet point of view, they’re irresistible. From a human perspective, they’re quietly devastating.

Look closely and the current concerns branded “Luddite” are specific. They’re not about stopping AI. Most people can see how beneficial, and empowering, AI could be. No, the concerns are about how it’s being used. Who gets to decide. Who gets to benefit. And who gets left behind.

They’re not wrong to worry. Take IBM. In May 2023, they announced they were freezing hiring for around 7,800 roles in areas like HR and admin. Not because they were broke. But because they believed AI would soon handle those tasks instead. Their CEO sounded upbeat at the time. He said they’d be more efficient. That they’d still hire for “client-facing roles”. But if you worked in a back-office job, it probably didn’t feel very reassuring.

Klarna did something similar, though a little differently. They slimmed down their customer service team. Then in early 2024, they started talking about how their AI chatbot was now handling two-thirds of service chats. And supposedly doing it better than people. Satisfaction scores, speed, all the usual stuff. The team that used to do that work, though?

It’s not just the usual suspects either. Microsoft announced big new AI features in early 2023. ChatGPT was being integrated into Word, Excel, Outlook. About the same time, they let go of 10,000 employees. Google did something similar. Amazon too. Each one made noises about focusing on growth, investing in the future, all of that. But real people were losing their jobs while AI was being rolled out.

BuzzFeed shut down its entire news division, right after announcing it would use AI to help with quizzes and other content. Reach PLC, which owns a number of UK local papers, has been using AI to generate short articles. They cut 450 jobs in 2023. No one said the two things were directly linked. But they didn’t have to. Most people can do the maths.

There’s clearly a pattern here. A tool arrives. A few months go by. The job starts to disappear. Not always in one go. Sometimes it’s just a reduction in hours. Often a restructure. Or a vacant role not being refilled. At the top, the tone is always optimistic. They say it’s progress. They say it frees people up to do more interesting work. But when you ask where those people went, things get vague.

What we are seeing from those who highlight their concerns isn’t panic. It’s an encouragement for caution. Based on experience. And history.

Unfortunately, we’ve been taught to see resistance as backwards. The “yes man” is often promoted while those who challenge are ignored or removed. But not all resistance is anti-progress. Sometimes it’s a necessary warning flare. A plea to step back and think. Yes, a tool in itself is neutral; it has no feelings, no understanding, no malice. But we need reminding that the same tools are not neutral once they're in the hands of people with targets to hit.

You see, the Luddites weren’t wrong about the social damage. The damage to the industry, its eventual disappearance. They just didn’t get to write the history books. They weren’t the victors. And to the victors go the spoils, including being seen as on the right side of history.

So now it’s our turn to decide, just as those early workers and mill owners did. Decide whether we want to brush off today’s warnings as fearmongering. To put them alongside the “doomsayer” and ignore them. Or do we want to stop and think, properly, about the kind of future we’re building? And more importantly, who’s building it.

Jobs that seemed safe (white-collar, knowledge-based, professional) are being squeezed. Paralegals are being replaced by legal AI. Customer service agents are swapped out for chatbots. Designers are told that the AI can generate logos on demand. Writers are finding their articles recycled by tools trained on their own work. Teachers are being nudged into using AI lesson planners.

Even sectors like finance and healthcare, which once felt a bit immune, are being restructured. The HMRC is apparently trialling AI-based chat and automation systems, and it’s reportedly looking at further workforce cuts over the next few years. The language is careful. It always is. But the outcome feels pretty familiar.

There’s something hollow about how all of this is being framed. Efficiency always sounds like a good thing. But efficient for whom? It’s easy to celebrate faster outputs and lower costs when you’re not the one being replaced. For those on the receiving end, it’s not just about money. It’s about comfort in the routine. It's about confidence, status. purpose. Its about those tiny details that make up a working life.

The press releases are always upbeat. But behind every bit of cheerful PR is someone who got quietly erased from the system.

What makes this majorly different from earlier changes is the speed at which it’s happening. The spinning jenny didn’t replace weavers overnight. Computers didn’t wipe out admin roles in six months. There was usually time to adjust. Time to train. Time to shift gears. But what we’re seeing now feels different. Everything is moving at speed, with no time to breathe or to retrain. It seems the rug has already been pulled from under our feet.

Of course, some still argue that new jobs will appear. And maybe they will. But for whom? And when? And doing what, exactly? And if the new roles pay less, offer less stability, or demand constant retraining, do they really replace what was lost?

Back in Milnsbridge, the mills are mostly silent now. You can walk along the canal and hear only the water, and the occasional duck. If you look up, you can still see the old windows and picture the looms inside. The heat. The sweat. The rhythm of the frames. The noise. None of it is coming back. Those skills, that experience is mostly resigned to history. But the pattern of what happened is still visible.

People who don’t understand the past aren’t necessarily doomed to repeat it. But they’re certainly more likely to get blindsided again. To miss the signs. Or worse, to think there’s nothing that can be done.

But there always is, if we can take the time to step back and learn from history.