Ten Per Cent Ballads and the ‘Shodeocracy’: Labour, Violence, and Humour

Abstract

This article is based on the ‘ten per cent’ ballads contained in scrapbooks held in Lancashire Archives. The ballads were composed, printed, and sold on the streets during the Preston Lockout of 1853-54, and were eventually collected by the union leaders Thomas Banks and George Cowell, and the mill owner Henry Ashworth. The article analyses examples of the ballads to interrogate topics including literature as labour, the role of women in the dispute, the use of violent language in permissible contexts, and the use of humour to emotionally offset these violent threats. The Preston Lockout occurred during what W. L. Burn famously defined as the ‘Age of Equipoise’ (c.1850-67), and the political function of the ballads is considered in relation to this. Ten per cent ballads are found not just to reflect attitudes, but to be integral to the social connective tissue. Functions included enhancing solidarity, maintaining the good humour of strike meetings, as well as the economic necessity of raising funds for suffering workers. It is also argued that the singing of the ballads represented emotionally imperative voicing of physical threat in a controlled mode, and that this contributed to the relative lack of violence during the lockout.