English Language Day - Annual Lecture

English Language Day annual lecture - Finding Captain Swing: voice, protest and people in the 1830 riots

Every year on or close to 13 October - English Language Day - the English Project holds a lecture to explore an aspect of the English Language. This year we have launched a new initiative - The Captain Swing Riots and the Grand Assize in Winchester of 1830 The Captain Swing Riots and the Grand Assize in Winchester | English Project - and the annual lecture connects with this period of our history.

In the year 1830 under the banner of the mythical figure Captain Swing there was widespread rioting across almost all of Southern England. During the month of November more than sixty villages in Hampshire saw rick-burning, the destruction of threshing machines, the pulling down of factories and Poor Houses, intimidation of the farmers and clergy as well as theft and general riot. More than 300 ‘Swing Rioters’ were rounded up to be charged with a variety of crimes including attempted M**der at an extraordinary ‘Grand Assize’ held over the Christmas period in the Great Hall in Winchester. At this trial men were sentenced to be hanged or transported to Australia.

This year we are delighted that the English Project annual lecture will be given by Professor Jane Hodson.

Finding Captain Swing: voice, protest and people in the 1830 riots

'JAMES THOMAS COOPER, HENRY ELDRIDGE and JOHN GILMOUR you stand severally convicted of having, with several others, destroyed, pulled down, and demolished certain machinery: what have you to say why you should not die according to the law?

The prisoners made no answer, and neither of them at this moment evinced any particulate marks of distress.[Sentencing speeches from the Grand Assize, 30 December 1830]'

In the early part of the nineteenth century poets and novelists provide evidence for a growing public interest in hearing the voices of the labouring poor. From being figures “out there” in the landscape, they begin - at least in some texts - to become people who might have perspectives and experiences worth listening to. These tentative developments were interrupted by the Swing Riots of 1830. Generally understood as a response to low wages, enclosure and mechanisation, a series of violent events broke out across the South-East of England, with threshing machines smashed and ricks burned.

The symbolic name Captain Swing derives from threatening letters sent to landowners signed “SWING”. But where in the surviving official records, newspaper reports and letters can we find evidence of the voices of the rioters? In this talk Jane will explore the various sources that we have available for hearing directly of the lives and voices of ordinary people involved in the Swing riots, and consider what the imbalance of voices in the written record means for how we understand these events.

She also considers the potential for creative works to provide the missing voices, both at the time as with the fictional autobiography The Life and History of Swing, the Kent Rick-burner (1831) and more recently works such as Beatric Parvin's Captain Swing and the Blacksmith (2018).

Jane Hodson is Professor of English Language and Literature and Head of School at the University of Sheffield. Her research interests lie at the interface of language and literature, and she is particularly concerned with ways in language relates to issues of representation and power. Her first book, Language and revolution in Burke, Wollstonecraft, Paine, and Godwin (2007), was about the role of language in the French Revolution debate. Her current research focuses on the ways in which nonstandard varieties of English are represented in literature, film and television. Recent publications include Dialect in Literature and Film (2014), the edited volume Dialect and Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century (2017) and articles in English Language and Linguistics and Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics.

Time/date - 5.30 for 6pm start, Friday 11 October

Location - West Downs Centre Auditorium, University of Winchester, Romsey Road, Winchester, SO22 5FT

Ticket price - £12, including pre-event glass of wine

Host or Publisher English Project