This article is about the threatening letters of the Swing Riots. For the Peter Whelan play, see
Captain Swing (play).
Captain Swing was the name appended to some of the threatening letters during the rural English Swing Riots of 1830. Like the Luddites of 1812, the movement had an imaginary leader with a multiple-use name. His name was no doubt chosen, in a form of morbid humour, to echo the gallows which awaited rebels who got involved in his movement.
The Swing Riots
Popular protests by impoverished farm workers occurred across the agricultural south of England, 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 600 rioters were imprisoned; 500 sentenced to transportation; and 19 executed.
The protests were notable for their discipline and the customary protocols favoured by the crowds, characteristics that 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: un- and 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.
For most contemporaries, the riotous, but largely bloodless actions of the crowds presented less cause for alarm than the high incidence of incendiarism during the period of Swing (October to December 1830). Swing the rick burner was not only more destructive, but infinitely harder to apprehend than the rioters in this heightened atmosphere of tension and hostility. The relationship between Swing the rick burner and Swing the protester is difficult to assess - although there is little doubt that a relationship existed. Whatever the immediate motivations of the arsonists of 1830 and 1831, their actions undoubtedly gave added strength to the demands of the protesting crowds.
Examples of threatening 'Swing' letters
Sir, Your name is down amongst the Black hearts in the Black Book and this is to advise you and the like of you, who are Parson Justasses, to make your wills. Ye have been the Blackguard Enemies of the People on all occasions, Ye have not yet done as ye ought,.... Swing
Sir, This is to acquaint you that if your thrashing machines are not destroyed by you directly we shall commence our labours. Signed on behalf of the whole ... Swing
this is to inform you what you have to undergo Gentlemen if providing you Don't pull down your mashines and rise the poor men's wages the married men give tow and six pence a day a day the single tow shillings or we will burn down your barns and you in them. this is the last notis from .... (illegible)
Contemporary usage
The eponym 'Captain Swing' is still in use to the present day in music and fiction, most often as a tribute to the pseudonymous rebel.
An early version of the New Wave rock group the Cars was called Cap'n Swing. Captain Swing has been used as a band name by two radical folk groups, and as an album name by singer/songwriter Michelle Shocked. Folk group Norcsalordie sang the praises of the rioters in their song "The Machine Breaker."
Captain Swing is a prominent character in the steampunk novel The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. A Captain Swing is also featured in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Night Watch which features riots and risings. In this book, however, Captain Swing is a corrupt servant of the government. Captain Findthee Swing, of the Cable Street Particulars, a form of secret police, caused many of the riots on and around the Glorious 25th of May, by sending in his "particulars" to incite attacks against police and military in the city to justify the use of martial law.
Another Captain Swing appears in the play The Chester County Automatons by Brad Cupples. In the play Swing is described as "a crusty old fisherman, constantly riding an extremely fine line between fanatical puritanism and violent schizophrenia." After news of an automaton being developed Swing leads a church group to attack a local scientist that he believes to be Satan.
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