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9 Case Study: The Jarrow March, October 1936
XXX Case Study: The Jarrow March, October 19369
Caption
In this chapter we will examine the Jarrow March. This event has been seen to symbolise the unemployment and poverty of the Great Depression. We will look at the background to the march, the main events during the march and assess its impact. We will also explore how reflective the march was of conditions in Britain in the 1930s. ? KEY QUESTION What was the background to the Jarrow march? What were special areas? The improved economic picture we read about at the end of Chapter 8 was not universal. While declining in the rest of the country, the problem of mass unemployment still affected traditional industrial heartlands such as the north-east, Cumberland, central Scotland and south Wales. These were areas that had been dependent on industries such as coal mining, steelmaking and shipbuilding. These industries had been hardest hit by the Great Depression. In 1934 they were declared Special Areas and money was provided to help improve the local economy and attract new industries. Unfortunately, the financial aid was quite limited and did little to improve the position of these regions. Unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, remained stubbornly high. Matters were made worse by the system of unemployment benefit for the long-term unemployed. At this time, unemployment benefit was paid for 26 weeks before it was subject to a means test. This could lead to non-payment of further benefit if other people in the house were working or if there were any savings. The Unemployment Assistance Board was established in 1934. It made matters a little better and increased the number of people who received payments. However, it kept the means test and the payment was totally inadequate to maintain a decent standard of living. Many moved to the more prosperous south in search of work. The worst affected areas were those dependent on a single industry, for example shipbuilding in Jarrow or coal mining in the Rhondda in south Wales. It was the people of Jarrow that were to bring conditions in these areas to national attention. The Jarrow marchers stop off to eat on their walk to London. ©The Educational Company of Ireland
Conditions in Jarrow
Jarrow was a small town of 30,000 people near Newcastle upon Tyne in the north-east of England. On 5 October 1936 it became a household name throughout Britain when a group of 200 men from the town set out to march the 300 miles to London. They wanted to bring to the nation’s and to parliament’s attention the fact that there was 70% unemployment in their town. They hoped to get help to tackle poverty in the town. The main demand was for a steelworks to be built to ease unemployment in Jarrow. The town’s main employer, Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, had closed down the previous year with the loss of 400 jobs. Its closure reflected the decline in shipbuilding that was occurring throughout Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Opened in 1852, the shipyard had once so dominated Jarrow that it was unofficially known as Palmersville. At the turn of the century, over half of the world’s ships were built in British shipyards, which were located mainly in the north of the country. At the time, Palmers employed over 10,000 people in Jarrow. The industry went into decline after World War I in the face of foreign competition and this was made worse by the Great Depression. By 1933 Britain built only 7% of world shipping and Palmers was one of many shipyards badly hit by this downturn. In 1930 the government set up the National Shipbuilders Securities to tackle the problem of too many shipbuilding companies in Britain. It bought up shipyards in financial difficulties and then closed most of them. It was hoped that those left open would be better able to compete internationally. Palmers was one of the 28 shipyards that it closed in the 1930s. As a result, no other industry had a higher rate of unemployment than shipbuilding in the 1930s. This closure increased the problems of poverty, poor housing, overcrowding and high mortality (death) rates that already plagued Jarrow. The town had the highest unemployment and infant mortality rates in the country. The table below shows how poor health conditions were in Jarrow compared to the rest of the country. Of the 8,000 skilled workers in Jarrow, only 100 had jobs. Half of the shops in the town were forced to close due to the absence of customers. The local Labour MP, Ellen Wilkinson, nicknamed Red Ellen because of her former membership of the Communist Party, wrote about conditions in Jarrow at the time: There was no work. No one had a job except a few railwaymen, officials, the workers in the cooperative stores, and a few workmen who went out of the town … the plain fact [is] that if people have to live and bear and bring up their children in bad houses on too little food, their resistance to disease is lowered and they die before they should.
Source: The Town That Was Murdered, 1939. Jarrow National average
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 births) 97 38 TB mortality rate (per million deaths)
1,273 702 Infant mortality measures the number of children who die in their first year. TB (tuberculosis) is an infectious disease associated with poverty. ©The Educational Company of Ireland
Background to the march
Protest marches against the poverty caused by the Great Depression began in 1932. ‘Hunger marches’ were organised by the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM). These included a march of 2,000 people in 1932, two further national marches in 1934 and 1936 and also in 1936 a march of 200 blind people to London.
After a proposal to open a steelworks employing 2,000 people in Jarrow fell through in the summer of 1936, Jarrow Borough Council decided to act. They would stage their own march and present a petition to parliament in faraway London. It would be delivered by men who would march the 300 miles to London in 22 stages. The mayor of Jarrow, Billy Thompson, said: In every town and village on our way to London we are going to put to the people of this country the plight of our depressed town, so that public opinion which is the greatest factor in this country … may make itself felt. Jarrow had been termed the most depressed town in the country, but we are here on behalf of all towns in a similar position to our own. They called their march a ‘crusade’. The name was chosen to emphasise the seriousness of their situation and to distinguish their march from those of the NUWM, whose connection with the Communist Party raised the fear of revolution among many people. The Labour Party had refused to support the NUWM as a result of this connection. In contrast, the Jarrow Crusade attracted broad political support in the town, including that of local Conservatives. As historian Juliet Gardiner wrote: The Hunger Marches had been organised by the communist dominated NUWM, but the Jarrow Crusade was intended to be non-political, and the Conservative party in Jarrow, conscious that unemployment impacted on its members too … supported it.
Source: Juliet Gardiner, The Thirties: An Intimate History, Harper Press, 2010, page 446
What were the main preparations for the march? The marchers were carefully chosen. After a medical examination, 200 men were selected to participate. Many men were disappointed they were not chosen. Women were not invited. Numbers had to be kept low, as the men would need food and accommodation en route to London. A second-hand bus was bought to carry cooking equipment and ground sheets were provided for outside rests. An advance guard was sent out to arrange overnight stops and public meetings. Finally, a religious service was held on the eve of departure and the marchers were blessed by the Bishop of Jarrow.
?KEY QUESTION What impact did the march have? ©The Educational Company of Ireland
The shaded areas are the Special Areas that received extra financial help from the government from 1934. They included southern Scotland (marked 1 on the map), Cumberland (2), South Wales (3), and Tyneside (4) where Jarrow was located.
Chester-le-Street Jarrow
Ferryhill
Darlington Ripon Northallerton Harrogate Leeds
Wakefield Barnsley Sheffield
Chesterfield Mansfield Nottingham
Loughborough Leicester Market Harborough Northampton Bedford
Map of the march showing the main places along
the route: Jarrow, Leeds, Sheffield, Leicester, Luton Northampton, London St Albans Edgware
Marble Arch (London)
Glasgow 4 Jarrow
2
Birmingham
3
London
1 ©The Educational Company of Ireland
The marchers covered 280.5 miles in 22 stages. They rested on Sundays.
1 Jarrow to Chester-le-Street (12 miles) 2 Chester-le-Street to Ferryhill (12 miles) 3 Ferryhill to Darlington (16 miles) 4 Darlington to Northallerton (16 miles) 5 Northallerton to Ripon (8½ miles) 6 Ripon to Harrogate (10½ miles) 7 Harrogate to Leeds (15½ miles) 8 Leeds to Wakefield (9 miles) 9 Wakefield to Barnsley (9¾ miles) 10 Barnsley to Sheffield (13½ miles) 11 Sheffield to Chesterfield (11¾ miles)
Source: British National Archives
What happened on the march? Carrying blue-and-white banners and led by the only woman to participate on the march, MP Ellen Wilkinson, they set off to London. The petition, signed by 11,000 people from Jarrow, was carried in an oak box with gold lettering. Further signatures were collected along the way. According to a police report on the march, the petition said: During the last fifteen years Jarrow has passed through a period of depression without parallel in the town’s history. Its shipyard is closed. Its steelworks have been denied the right to reopen. Where formerly 8,000 people were employed, only 100 men are now employed on a temporary scheme. The town cannot be derelict, and therefore your petitioners humbly pray that His Majesty’s government ... should realise the urgent need that work should be found without further delay. Every day the men assembled at 8.45 in the morning. They marched army style: 50 minutes’ marching every hour with 10 minutes’ rest. On average the men walked between 10 and 15 miles a day. As they marched they sang and a mouth organ band played music; ‘keeping the men swinging along all the time’, according to a report in the Shields Gazette (a local newspaper from the north of England). A public meeting was held at every town along the way, at which Ellen Wilkinson and the mayor of Jarrow usually spoke about conditions in their town. They received an enthusiastic reception in most towns, although the crowds greeting the El El len len Wi . A lkinson former (1891–1947) Communist, was she nick was named Red the local Labour marchers declined the further south they travelled. In Leeds MP and a strong supporter of the march. the Jarrow men received a donation to pay for their return trip by train. In Barnsley, the men were able to relax in the specially heated public baths. In Bedford they were given gifts of cigarettes and meat. From time to time some of the marchers needed medical aid and this care was provided by student doctors from the Inter Hospital Socialist Society.
12 Chesterfield to Mansfield (12 miles) 13 Mansfield to Nottingham (14½ miles) 14 Nottingham to Loughborough (15 miles) 15 Loughborough to Leicester (14¼ miles) 16 Leicester to Market Harborough (17 miles) 17 Market Harborough to Northampton (21 miles) 18 Northampton to Bedford (19 miles) 19 Bedford to Luton (10½ miles) 20 Luton to St Albans (11 miles) 21 St Albans to Edgware (11 miles) 22 Edgware to Marble Arch, London (8½ miles) ©The Educational Company of Ireland CASE STUDY: THE JARROW MARCH, OCTOBER 1936 ❘ 93
News coverage of the Jarrow March was extensive. It received a lot of publicity, unlike the NUWM hunger marches. Pathé newsreel filmed the march, while BBC Radio broadcast nightly reports. National and local newspapers ran stories – most, though not all, were sympathetic to the march.
What happened when they arrived in London?
The march eventually reached London on 31 October. On 4 November the petition was presented to parliament. The prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, refused to see the marchers or their representatives, claiming he was too busy. Delegates from the protest, including Ellen Wilkinson and Mayor Thompson, addressed a group of MPs from all parties in the largest committee room in the House of Commons. Raising his chain of office in front of them, Thompson said: Its links form a cable, its badge is an anchor … symbols in gold of the cables and anchors of the thousand ships we built at Jarrow. If you are not going to help us then this means nothing. A small delegation of the marchers later met the Minister of Labour. What were the effects of the march? There were few immediate effects of the march for Jarrow. While the march had attracted much public sympathy, it made little impact. There had been no government action on the marchers’ demands. To add insult to injury, when the marchers returned home they found that their unemployment assistance had been cut for the period they had been away. This was on the grounds that they had been unavailable for work. One marcher said, Our march didn’t do us a bit of good – we were out of work at the end.’ Fifty years later the oldest survivor gave his verdict: ‘It was a waste of time. It had no effect on unemployment. The only thing that saved Jarrow was the war when the shipyards were needed again. Source: Juliet Gardiner, The Thirties: An Intimate History, Harper Press, 2010, pages 452–3 Andrew Marr commented on the immediate effect of the march: At the end of the nearly 300 miles of tramping and singing, the nation pretty much ignored the marchers. They were met with sympathy but only small crowds and in London achieved nothing at all. Source: Andrew Marr, The Making of Modern Britain: From Queen Victoria to VE Day, Pan Books 2009, page 310 Despite its lack of response to the plight of Jarrow, the government’s policies had improved the British economy overall. A ship-breaking yard and engineering works were established in Jarrow in 1938 and a steelworks in 1939 that provided some employment. However, unemployment remained high until World War II, when the town’s fortunes improved as a result of the country’s need for weapons. The march represented the determination of one community to deal with the social and economic problems it faced. It helped to raise awareness of the poverty that existed in the north of the country. To later historians, it came to symbolise the human consequences of mass unemployment and the poverty of the 1930s – a decade some historians refer to as the ‘Hungry 30s’.©The Educational Company of Ireland
The Jarrow march: summary
Poverty and mass unemployment (as high as 70%) caused by the Great Depression. Tyneside,
West Cumberland, Scotland and south Wales most affected.
In protest, 200 men from Jarrow, near Newcastle, marched 300 miles to London.
The march had cross-party support and the marchers carried a petition containing 11,000 names. The march was widely covered in the press. There was a lot of public support along the route. The crusade ultimately made little real impact. In London they delivered the petition to parliament asking for a steelworks. Prime Minister Baldwin refused to meet them. In areas of traditional industry, the Depression continued until the rearmament boom of World War II. EXAMINE THE SOURCES Source 1 A description of Jarrow by the English writer J. B. Priestley in 1934 My guidebook devotes one short sentence to Jarrow: ‘A busy town (35,590 inhabitants), has large ironworks and shipbuilding yards.’ It is time this was amended into ‘an idle and ruined town (35,590 inhabitants, wondering what is to become of them), had large ironworks and can still show what is left of shipbuilding yards.’ There is no escape anywhere in Jarrow from its prevailing misery, for it is entirely a working-class town. One little street may be rather more wretched than another, but to the outsider they all look alike. One out of every two shops appeared to be permanently closed. Wherever we went there were men hanging about, not scores of them but hundreds and thousands of them. The whole town looked as if it had entered a perpetual penniless bleak Sabbath. The men wore the drawn masks of prisoners of war. A stranger from a distant civilisation, observing the condition of the place and its people, would have arrived at once at the conclusion that Jarrow had deeply offended some celestial emperor of the island and was now being punished. The only cheerful sight I saw there was a game of follow-my-leader that was being played by seven small children. But what leader can the rest of them follow? Excerpt from The English Journey by J. B. Priestley. Reprinted by permission of United Agents on behalf of the late J. B. Priestley. QUESTIONS (a) According to Priestley why should his guidebook be amended? (b) How does Priestley describe the streets of Jarrow? (c) According to Priestley what would a visitor from a distant civilisation conclude on visiting Jarrow? (d) What was the only cheerful sight Priestley saw? (e) Do you think this account is an objective source? Give evidence from the extract to support your©The Educational Company of Ireland
answer.
EXAMINE THE SOURCES
Source 2
An edited article from the Western Morning News on Friday 23 October 1936
The Jarrow marchers spent last night in Leicester. Miss Ellen Wilkinson MP said at a tea provided by the Co-Operative Society that members of the boot-repairing staff had volunteered to work overtime without pay that night to make all repairs necessary to the marchers’ boots. The marchers were accorded a welcome by the Lord Mayor of Leicester and the casket containing the petition was handed to him and remained last night in the council safe. “I have marched from Loughborough today and shall march to London,” Miss Wilkinson told a reporter. Source: Western Morning News QUESTIONS (a) According to the article, what had the boot-repairing staff volunteered to do? (b) Where had the marchers come from and where was their destination? (c) What evidence is there from the source to show that the march attracted a lot of support in Leicester? ©The Educational Company of Ireland
EXAMINE THE SOURCES
Source 3
Edited table showing percentage unemployment by county in the UK 1929–1936
County 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 Glamorganshire 23.8 20.0 31.4 38.2 40.0 38.8 37.6 35.9 Monmouthshire 24.8 21.7 32.8 39.6 43.0 39.0 33.9 33.3 Pembrokeshire 23.1 24.9 27.0 28.4 34.5 34.4 34.3 36.4 Durham 22.8 17.8 33.6 36.9 41.2 35.8 35.7 33.3 Cumberland 19.0 19.2 29.6 33.3 36.4 32.1 30.8 33.6 Carmarthenshire 19.7 18.5 30.1 29.1 23.9 21.5 24.9 25.6 Denbighshire 11.4 15.3 20.4 23.8 29.9 28.4 30.9 31.5 Northumberland 19.9 17.2 24.7 29.6 31.7 26.8 26.9 25.1 Lancashire 13.8 15.9 31.0 25.2 25.2 22.4 22.5 12.1 Worcestershire 13.3 13.5 25.8 25.7 26.9 15.9 13.9 13.6 Somersetshire 10.7 10.2 15.4 15.5 18.9 15.9 14.6 12.5 Essex 10.6 11.5 17.7 21.2 17.0 14.4 13.2 11.7 London 6.4 6.6 10.7 12.2 14.2 11.9 11.1 9.8 Leicestershire 7.0 7.5 14.1 11.3 14.8 11.1 12.3 10.3 Kent 9.0 9.7 14.9 17.4 17.3 13.0 12.4 11.5 Sussex 6.2 6.0 10.2 13.2 13.4 10.0 9.5 8.9 Surrey 4.9 5.2 10.4 14.0 12.6 9.1 8.7 8.6 Oxfordshire 6.4 7.1 11.5 13.5 13.6 8.6 10.9 11.6 Middlesex 6.1 6.6 13.3 17.8 14.3 8.2 7.7 7.2 Source: Report from the Pilgrim Trust on Unemployment Enquiry, March 1937-October 1937 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/topics/thirties-britain.htm QUESTIONS (a) On examining the data in the table, which year has the highest rate of unemployment for most counties? (b) Give evidence from the table to show that the Great Depression had a major impact on the United Kingdom. (c) Identify two other conclusions a historian could draw from examining the figures for the different counties. ©The Educational Company of Ireland CASE STUDY: THE JARROW MARCH, OCTOBER 1936 ❘ 97
?KEY QUESTION
Did the Jarrow march reflect
The 1930s have traditionally been portrayed as a decade of grinding poverty and economic hardship. This was highlighted by the Jarrow Crusade and in books such as George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier. While this was true for some of the country, it does not reflect the experience of all of Britain. As historian A.J.P. Taylor has pointed out, in the 1930s most of Britain was enjoying a richer life than ever before. There were a number of reasons for this:
conditions in Britain in the 1930s?
The nature of the British economy had been changing in the inter-war years. While traditional industries such as shipbuilding and coalmining were in decline, industries based on new technologies, such as car manufacturing, light engineering, chemicals and electricity, were growing. The traditional industries were mainly located in the north of the country, while the new industries were to be found in the south and the midlands, e.g. Birmingham. The traditional industries were the ones that had been hardest hit by the economic downturn, while the number of jobs in the new industries grew. For example, the numbers employed in the motor industry grew from 227,000 in 1920 to 516,000 in 1938. This was more than those employed in steelmaking and shipbuilding put together. Over 500,000 cars a year were being manufactured. The number of workers in electrical engineering almost doubled between the wars. There was also growth in professional, retailing and clerical employment – so-called ‘white collar’ jobs. Between 1932 and 1937, national income rose by 20%, industrial production by 40% and income per head of the population by 18%. Average weekly earnings were twice as high in 1938 as they had been in 1913. In addition, there had been a significant fall in the price of goods, especially of food. Real wages rose steeply in the 1930s, meaning that workers could buy more goods and services with their pay. Other factors contributing to prosperity included smaller families, cheap mortgages and the wider availability of consumer goods, such as cars, music records and radios. A small family car was half the price it had been 10 years earlier. It was also a period in which mass culture developed, such as listening to the BBC radio and popular music. By the end of the 1930s, two-thirds of houses had electricity, rising from one in 17 in 1920. Large numbers of Britons could now afford new pastimes, such as visiting the cinema once a week or going on holiday every year.
A car plant in the Midlands. New industries such as car manufacturing grew in the 1930s.©The Educational Company of Ireland
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1 What were conditions like in the town of Jarrow in 1936?
2 Was the march a non-political event?
3 ‘The march was well-organised.’ Do you agree? Support your answer with evidence.
4 What sort of reception did the marchers get on the route to London?
5 What impact did the Jarrow march have?
6 Why was the south of England not affected as badly by the Great Depression?
1918 End of World War I 1919–1920 Wave of strikes and labour unrest 1924 Formation of the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald 1926 The general strike 1929 Wall Street Crash and the start of the Great Depression 1931 Formation of the National government led by Ramsay MacDonald Britain abandoned the Gold Standard 1932 Unemployment rose to over 2.5 million 1935 Worst of the Great Depression over, although some regions still heavily affected 1936 Jarrow March 1938 Munich Conference – the high point of appeasement 1939 Britain declared war on Germany Britain, 1918–1945 – a timeline The effects of the Wall Street Crash were felt globally, causing an economic depression in Great©The Educational Company of Ireland
