Despite this activity being putatively legal, the Tolpuddle Martyrs were deported to Australia for allegedly swearing a secret oath to perform this action under an anti-secret oath law. For 10 points each:
[10m] Identify this activity, which was criminalized by the William Wilberforce-authored Combination Act of 1799, before it was legalized again in 1824, then re-criminalized the next year.
ANSWER: forming a trade union [or unionizing; accept any answers having to do with union activity]
[10h] This reformist journalist harshly criticized Wilberforce for his support of the Combination Acts. Raymond Williams’s Culture and Society pairs this man with Edmund Burke, noting their shared “sureness of instinct.”
ANSWER: William Cobbett
[10e] Cobbett later controversially supported the Swing Riots, despite rioters taking this action. Luddites broke into factories to take this action as a protest against industrial exploitation.
ANSWER: destroying machines [accept answers like destroying wool machines or destroying cotton machines; prompt on vandalism or destroying property]
<RR, European History>