The Times is officially no fan of machine breaking and Luddism. Indeed its Editorial on 10th April 2024 warned ‘Luddism helps nobody’
In 1830 and 1831 agricultural labourers were engaged in breaking threshing machines which were destroying their already meagre livelihoods. The Times was the cheer leader for severe sentences and indeed as E P Thompson notes in the Making of the English Working Class numbers were hung. It was in the same period in 1834 that the Tolpuddle Martyrs were sentenced to transportation, on this occasion for the different strategy of organising a union.
The Times in the 2020s has from time to time backed a modern Luddism even though of course still condemning the historic movement. The Editorial on 10th April calls for smartphones to be banned in schools and limited in workplaces. Its not quite got to the smashing stage yet but one senses the revenge of history at work.
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