Ned Ludd mythical leader of the Luddites

Great Lives

BBC

History, Documentary, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

We don't even know if Ned Ludd was real, but perhaps that was the point. "You could say he was everyone and no one - and that's what made him so terrifying for the authorities." Leader of the Luddites, who often signed letters and proclamations Ned Ludd, he is shown in one engraving wearing mismatched shoes and a blue polka dot dress, suggesting a world turned upside down. He's been picked by the popular historian Alex von Tunzelmann, and joining her in studio to discuss Ned and the Luddites (and the neo-Luddites too) is Katrina Navickas, historian of protest; plus the playwright Joe Ward-Munrow who recently staged The Legend of Ned Ludd at the Liverpool Playhouse.

Alex von Tunzelmann is the author of Fallen Idols and presenter of The Lucan Obsession on Radio 4. The presenter is Matthew Parris and the producer for BBC Studios Audio in Bristol is Miles Warde

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, it's Lucy Worsley here and we're back with a brand new series of ladies swindlers.
0:07.5	Promise never to mention a word of what is going on.
0:10.1	Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we revisit the audacious crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men.
0:19.5	This is a story of working class women trying to get by in a world made for men. This is a story of working-class women trying to get by.
0:24.4	This is survival.
0:25.3	Join me for the second season of Lady Swindlers, where true crime meets history with a twist.
0:31.4	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:34.8	My guest today is the author and popular historian, Alex von Tonselman, who appeared most recently on this station presenting the Lucan obsession.
0:45.6	Alex, welcome to Great Lives.
0:48.0	Whose life have you picked?
0:49.8	And why?
0:50.7	Not Lord Lucan, who may possibly not yet be dead. And one of our rules on this programme
0:56.3	is we don't do people who are still alive. Who would you pick? Yes, he's been declared
1:01.8	dead, but we don't know it for sure. So I've picked somebody from earlier in history, an 18th
1:08.3	century figure. If he was born at all, it was probably around 1760. In the Midlands,
1:15.5	he was a knitting frame operator. And the reason we know of this man is that he gave his name
1:21.3	to a movement, the Luddite movement, and the man is known as Ned Ludd. Why was he so significant?
1:27.8	So the Luddite movement existed in the early 19th century, ran really between about 1811 and 1817.
1:33.8	And I think it's a movement that really deserves more attention today because I think it's
1:38.8	much more relevant to us than we perhaps imagine it to be.
1:42.6	We have this sense now if you call someone a Luddite.
1:45.1	That's quite an insulting derogatory word. That means they're very opposed to any kind of
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