With unemployment at 2,750,000,[7] the 1932 National Unemployed Workers' Movement organised "Great National Hunger March against the Means Test" included about 3,000 people[8] in eighteen contingents of marchers,[9] mainly from economically depressed areas such as the South Wales Valleys, Scotland and the North of England designed to meet up in Hyde Park in London.
A petition containing a million signatures demanding the abolition of the means test and the 1931 Anomalies Act[10] was intended to be presented to Parliament after a rally in the park.
[16] Serious violence erupted in and around the park, with mounted police being used to disperse the demonstrators,[17] and across central London in the days to come with 75 people being badly injured.
Its founder, Ronald Kidd, set up the Council as he was concerned about the use of agent provocateurs by the police to incite violence during and after the 1932 marches.
Alexander went onto become the commander of the British Battalion of the International Brigades during the late portion of the Spanish Civil War.