captain fred

Watch on YouTube

"see the sky go red at midnight, you can hear the hammers ring
Ricks are burned machines are broken, its only work for Captain Swing!
and it's 'O Captain Swing!' They will never catch you, none of their dogs will run you down
Oh, Captain Swing! They will never catch you. You're over the hills and gone to ground. You're gone to Ground."
- Robb Johnson Band

SWING RIOTS, 1830
Captain Swing was the name appended to some of the threatening letters during the rural English Swing Riots of 1830.
Popular protests by impoverished farm workers occurred across a wide swath of agricultural England, from Sussex in the south to Kent in the east,[1] and they had a number of structural causes. The main targets for protesting crowds were landowners/landlords, whose threshing machines they destroyed or dismantled, and whom they petitioned for a rise in wages. They also demanded contributions of food, money, beer, or all three from their victims. Often they sought to enlist local parish officials and occasionally magistrates to raise levels of poor relief as well. Throughout England, 600 rioters were imprisoned, 500 sentenced to transportation, and 19 executed.