Who was Ned Ludd?
The story of the machine-breaking Luddites
5 min readJan 12, 2022
General Ned Ludd never existed, but his followers wreaked havoc in the factories of early 19th-century Britain and provoked strong reprisals from the government of the day. The Luddites played a role in the development of the working-class movement that led eventually to the formation of legal trade unions.