Do subscribe to this and read Paul Kingsnorth’s eloquent defence of the Luddites: they were no technophobes but coherent protestors against the needless subordination of people to machines which has now increased exponentially and disastrously.
https://twitter.com/johnmilbank3/status/1402546441755807746
Kingsnorth also sees how enclosure in the widest sense is the main driver of the processes of modern capitalist and bureaucratic tyranny. He well grasps just why figures like Cobbett, Ruskin and Chesterton were more radical than Marx in denying its inevitability and rationality.
The relationship of enclosure to empire is perhaps a difficult topic: yes on the whole enclosure and colonisation are continuous and yet without empire wild enclosing and ravaging was often still more uncontained. And older modes of empire sometimes protected the regional.
Just as, for all its imperfections, the EU did far more for eg Cornwall than Westminster is likely to do, even given a need to retain votes.
The Luddites had one of their key centres in Nottinghamshire. The figure of Ned Ludd was specifically linked to that of Robin Hood. I discussed this a bit in my essay in the original Blue Labour collection.
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