Jarrow March began - October 5, 1936

On this day in 1936, people protesting unemployment and calling for the establishment of work in Jarrow, England, began their march to London. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey everyone, I'm Eves and welcome back to
This Day in History Class, a podcast where we unwrap
a piece of history candy every day. Today it's October.

(00:23):
The day was October ninety six. Around two hundred people
began their march from Jarrow to London as part of
the Jero March. They were protesting the unemployment and poverty
in Jaro, a town in northeast England on the south
bank of the River Time. None of the march's goals
were immediately met, but in the longer term it did

(00:45):
contribute to changing attitudes regarding welfare and social reforms. When
the Great Depression hit the UK in the nineteen thirties,
industry declined an unemployment increased. The economic downturn was particularly
bad and industrial and mining places like southern Wales, northeast

(01:05):
England and parts of Scotland were hit hard because of
the dominance of the coal, iron, steel, and shipbuilding industries.
So the places that had flourished due to these industries
took a huge fall during the depression. Throughout the nineteen
twenties and nineteen thirties, people organized hunger marches to protest
unemployment and poverty in the hopes of improving their conditions.

(01:29):
One of those places greatly affected by unemployment was Jarro,
which had an economy that was largely built on coal
and shipbuilding. In eighteen fifty one, Charles Mark Palmer established
a shipyard at Jarrow with his brother George, calling the
company Palmer Brothers and Co. By eighteen sixty five, the
company had expanded to include an iron rolling mill and

(01:51):
blast furnaces. In the early nineteen hundreds, the company was
a major builder of warships for the Royal Navy, cargo
liners and anchors, but when the depression hit, the company
suffered losses and shut down in nineteen thirty three. Since
Jerald depended so heavily on the ship building industry, a
lot of people were unemployed. About sevent of the local

(02:15):
workforce was out of work by nineteen thirty three. In
a speech she gave in the House of Comments in November,
Jerald's Labor Party MP Ellen Wilkinson said that only one
hundred men were employed on a temporary scheme where eight
thousand people had previously been employed. Wilkinson, who was elected
as Gerald's MP in November of nineteen thirty five was

(02:38):
sympathetic to the struggles of unemployed workers. People in Jerald
were eager for the government to do something about the unemployment.
They organized a meeting with a Cabinet minister, but they
were told that Gerald had to work out its own salvation.
So the gerald Borough Council decided to present a petition
to Parliament for help establishing work in jarre Oh. The

(03:00):
petition got eleven thousand signatures. It would be marched from
Jairo to London to be shown to the House of Commons.
They hoped that the non political march would get a
lot of publicity and earned the sympathy of the public
so that industry would be re established in the town
and unemployed men could work. After attending at Eckymenical Dedication Service,

(03:23):
two hundred men deemed fit set off on the three
hundred mile journey to London on October five, nineteen thirty six.
They had the support of Wilkinson and Gerald's mayor, Billy Thompson.
On October thirty one, they made it to London. A
group of blind veterans also organized a march to London
to arrive at the same time as the Gerald March.

(03:45):
A National hunger March also coincided with the Gerald March.
Wilkinson presented the petition to the House of Commons four
days later, but no immediate help was given to Jaral
or the protesters, who soon headed back to their hometown.
Though they got a warm welcome when they returned, the
marchers felt that their efforts were unsuccessful. There was no

(04:07):
immediate increase in employment, but the Second World War soon
brought industry back to the town. Some historians have said
that the Gerald March and other unemployment protests help shape
later perspectives of the nineteen thirties, and that they contributed
to support of social programs after the war. I'm each
Jeff Coote and hopefully you know a little more about

(04:29):
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(04:50):
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(05:10):
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