The Luddites

This historical drama, based on documents (except for the emotional scenes of negotiations and the execution of John Butt), focuses on the Luddite movement in the early 1810s in the Northwest of England. Textile workers, who called themselves Luddites, destroyed mechanical looms in factories, as the spread of these machines led to mass unemployment and hunger among the working class. The film was released shortly after the 1984-1985 miners' strike and was seen as a historical parallel to this great class struggle, another act of dramatic resistance by workers to progress that was destroying their lives.