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The Swing Riots, 1830
‘The lane down to your farm is dark. We will light it’. A ‘Swing’ letter sent to a farmer in Kent, c.1830 The Enclosures Acts of the late 1700s enabled large land owners to acquire common land. The agricultural workers lost this important source of income, forcing them to sell their labour to these very same landowners. Many families became dependent on local relief, the Poor Law. They also had to pay the tithe, a tax, to the Church. Mechanisation threatened jobs. Rural families faced abject poverty. In 1830 the agricultural workers confronted land owners with demands, often signed by “Captain Swing”, and used arson and sabotage to reinforce their case. This invented character, regarded as the figurehead of the movement, may have been inspired by landowners’ threats that protestors would ‘swing’ (be hanged) for their actions.