Planning the Jarrow Crusade

Why this record matters

Date

October 1936

Catalogue reference

MEPO 2/3097

In October 1936, 200 hundred unemployed men from Jarrow marched nearly 300 miles to the Palace of Westminster. They carried a petition calling for jobs. ‘The Crusade for jobs’, as they named it, was an act of desperation.

After the First World War, Jarrow like many areas once dominated by heavy industry, suffered severe economic hardship. The 1934 closure of Jarrow’s main employer Palmers Shipyard was disaster for the town. Unemployment rose to over 75%. Hunger and sickness were rife.

The protest was the idea of Jarrow’s mayor, Alderman William 'Billy' Thompson, and David Riley, chairman of the local council. The 1,200 men who had volunteered were whittled down to 200. After passing a medical, each man was given a Jarrow Crusade badge, a waterproof, two pairs of socks and new soles for their boots.

They set off on their 26-day journey on Monday 5 October. As the record tells us, their first stop was Chester-le-Street, 12 miles away.

Now that we are used to rapidly travelling vast distances, it can be difficult to appreciate the sheer effort of the walk. This document helps us appreciate the military-style discipline with which the marchers assembled at 8.45 every morning. Their procession was followed by a second-hand bus which carried cooking supplies, blankets and tents. Five rest days were scattered between 21 pre-arranged stops.

This level of organisation was also an attempt to reassure the authorities. This plan and other information about the march was shared with the Metropolitan Police. Throughout the 1930s the National Unemployed Workers' Movement (a front organisation set up by the Communist Party of Great Britain) had organised a series of well-attended ‘hunger marches.’ By contrast the Jarrow Crusade was a self-consciously non-partisan (not tied to any political affiliation) ‘march for jobs’.

The Crusade's roots also belonged to older religious traditions of the labour movement. With rest days on Sunday, and the men occasionally sleeping in churchyards, ‘the Crusade’ might be considered something like a pilgrimage. Their petition to parliament read, ‘(we) humbly pray that His Majesty’s Government and this honourable House should realise the urgent need that work should be provided for the town.’ It was a protest of moral force rather than revolutionary fervour.

The marchers were not allowed to deliver their petition following their arrival to London, on 31 October. Instead, the men were taken on a boat trip along the Thames while their MP appealed on their behalf. ‘Miss Ellen Wilkinson, highly strung socialist MP for Jarrow,’ as The Daily Mail reported it, ‘laid her copper-coloured hair on the rails at the bank of the speaker’s highchair in the House of Commons tonight and wept.’ But Wilkinson’s dramatic gesture proved to be in vain. No concessions were made by government.

Not only did the Crusade fail to make an immediate impact, but Wilkinson’s association with the marchers saw her relegated to the political margins until the outbreak of the Second World War. As for the marchers, by making themselves unavailable for work they had their unemployment assistance withdrawn. It would be Second World War rearmament and the return of manufacturing, rather than peaceful dissent, that saved Jarrow.

However, images of the marchers suffering grew in resonance. While politicians at the time did not support the Crusade, during the Blitz, the spirit they had demonstrated began to capture something of the national mood. This document reminds us of a sobering historical reality before the Crusade became a simple post-war parable of Britain in the slump.