In 1956 in World 294, when the government ended its flax subsidy and closed Ripley’s processing works, women, miners, farmers, Indian soldiers and Italian former prisoners of war marched to Parliament in the radical spirit of Pentrich, carrying flax stems and banners and singing protest songs. Their movement, The Long Thread, kept Derbyshire growing flax.
Today Derbyshire dresses in its own linen, grown, retted, spun and woven within walking distance. Clothes carry the name of the field they came from, are mended rather than replaced, and visible repair is worn with pride. Seed, skills, stories and songs are shared freely between neighbours.
What if …
… Derbyshire had refused to let its flax industry die?
Issue targeted:
How far our clothes have travelled from where and how they’re made, and the loss of local textiles.
Inspiration:
The Pentrich Revolution of 1817; the closure of the government flax factory at Ripley in 1956; the Derbyshire Times report of 4 October 1940 on Indian soldiers harvesting flax near Matlock; the Riddings Community Flax Project; the Venice Biennale 2026.
This World was contributed by Amanda Haran (located in Riddings, Derbyshire, UK), using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the author and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.
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