Jarrow March

Around 200 men, or "Crusaders" as they preferred to be called, marched from Jarrow to London, carrying a petition to the British government requesting the re-establishment of industry in the town following the closure in 1934 of its main employer, Palmer's shipyard.

During their journey the Jarrow marchers received sustenance and hospitality from local branches of all the main political parties, and were given a broad public welcome on their arrival in London.

[7] Britain's adoption of generally deflationary economic policies, including a return to the gold standard in 1925,[8] helped to ensure that the percentage of the workforce without jobs remained at around 10% for the rest of the 1920s and beyond,[2] well above the normal pre-war levels.

Because of the concentration of these industries in the north of England, in Scotland and in Wales, the percentage of unemployed persons in these regions was significantly higher, sometimes more than double, than in the south throughout the interwar period.

[11] From 1922 until the late 1930s, under its charismatic leader Wal Hannington, the NUWM organised regular marches in which unemployed workers converged on London to confront Parliament, in the belief that this would improve conditions.

[12] The same pattern was followed with subsequent NUWM marches; successive prime ministers—Stanley Baldwin in 1929, Ramsay MacDonald in 1930 and 1934—declined to meet the marchers' representatives, and the Labour Party and the TUC continued to keep their distance.

[25] The idea of marching as a means of expressing political or social grievances had by now become an accepted and well-established tactic, and there was a growing awareness of the problems complained of, which counterbalanced their exploitation by the Communists.

The church and mouldering monastic walls on the green hill, sloping to the bay, the long silvery expanse of water, the gentle ripple of the advancing tide ... Jarrow is 'a romancy spot'."

Jarrow, situated on the River Tyne in County Durham,[n 2] northern England, entered British history in the 8th century, as the home of Bede, the early Christian monk and scholar.

[49] By December 1933 rumours of NSS interest in the yard were appearing in the press,[50] and in the House of Commons Walter Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade, told members: "There is nothing to be gained by giving Jarrow the impression that Palmer's can be revived".

"[54] Following the Palmer's closure, a small hope of relief and some industrial resurrection was offered by the industrialist Sir John Jarvis, who held the ceremonial office of High Sheriff of Surrey.

[56] On 4 October 1934, Jarvis announced the "adoption" of Jarrow by the county of Surrey, and promised to bring new industries to the town; he mentioned ship breaking, bottle manufacture and furniture-making.

[57] While acknowledging the generous principle behind Jarvis's scheme, Betty Vernon, the biographer of Jarrow politician Ellen Wilkinson, described it as ultimately superficial, offering little more than patchwork assistance.

[59] In the 1931 general election, in the nationwide rout of Labour, the Jarrow constituency was won by the National Government's candidate, William Pearson,[60] a Conservative borough councillor and former mayor.

[68] In the opening debate of the new parliamentary session, on 9 December 1935, she pleaded on behalf of her new constituents: "These are skilled fitters, men who have built destroyers and battleships and the finest passenger ships ...

Only one of the large steel firms in the region, the Consett Iron Company, offered support for a Jarrow steelworks, while other BISF members put pressure on London's financial institutions to withhold capital from the new scheme.

In a reassuring speech shortly before the November 1935 general election, Baldwin, now leading the National Government, informed his listeners in Newcastle: "There is no truth in any of the reports that either the banks or any other authorities ... are making a dead set to prevent anything of the kind being done in the area".

"[80] His insistence that "Jarrow must work out its own salvation",[47] was described by Blythe as "the last straw in official cruelty";[81] to Wilkinson, the phrase "kindled the town", and inspired it to action.

Henson, a severe critic of socialism and trade unionism, described the march as "revolutionary mob pressure",[85] and regretted his colleague's association with "these fatuous demonstrations, which are mainly designed in the interest, not of the Unemployed, but of the Labour party".

[1] Cross-party support was important in maintaining the march's non-partisan ethos, a factor that led Riley to refuse a donation of £20 from a communist group, stating: "We are determined at all costs to preserve the non-political character of this Crusade".

[112] The cabinet issued a statement that emphasised the constitutional means for expressing grievances, and condemned marches for causing "unnecessary hardship for those taking part in them"[113]—"crocodile tears", according to Wilkinson.

[123] To maintain the timetable for arrival at Marble Arch, the marchers took an extra rest day on Tuesday before marching, in teeming rain, the 19 mi (31 km) to Luton.

[126] On the final day, for the short 8 mi (13 km) stretch, large crowds watched the column proceed through the London suburbs towards Marble Arch, marching to the accompaniment of their own mouth-organ band despite relentless rain.

The Communist Party was holding a general rally in the park against unemployment; Wilkinson records that they "generously gave way for an hour and asked their great audience to swell our Crusade meeting".

"[135] In the brief discussion that followed, Runciman said that "the unemployment position at Jarrow, while still far from satisfactory, has improved during recent months", to which James Chuter Ede, the Labour backbencher representing South Shields, the neighbouring constituency to Wilkinson's, replied that "the Government's complacency is regarded throughout the country as an affront to the national conscience".

The marchers' case was heard sympathetically; the meeting was warned that, given international uncertainties, they might come to regret the dismantling of an important shipbuilding facility for reasons of private profit.

[147] The historians Malcolm Pearce and Geoffrey Stewart provide a positive perspective, arguing that the Jarrow March "helped to shape [post-Second World War] perceptions of the 1930s", and thus paved the way to social reform.

[152] The 75th anniversary in 2011 was marked by a "March for Jobs",[153] that drew the ire of a Conservative MP, Robert Goodwill, who noted the high level of withdrawals in its early stages and dismissed it as "an insult to the memory of the Jarrow marchers ...

[154] Shortly after the return home in November 1936 Riley, together with three other Jarrow councillors who had led the march—James Hanlon, Paddy Scullion and Joseph Symonds—left Labour to form a breakaway group committed to a more direct fight for employment.

A reviewer for The Economic Journal found the book "not quite as polemical as one might have expected", but felt that in her denunciation of the BISF Wilkinson had not taken full account of the state of the iron and steel industry in the 1930s.