by Ian Stewart
As reported in the press, Con Shiels, the last participant in the Jarrow Crusade died at the age of 96 on Boxing Day. With him dies perhaps the last living link to the great interwar struggles of the Labour movement against government indifference to suffering and want under the Tory and coalition governments of Baldwin, Macdonald, and Chamberlain.
No doubt Atul and Pete will come up with something more iconoclastic and humorous for this period soon, but I feel like sticking to the story right now.
I suppose that many of us, at least if we are over thirty, “did” the Jarrow march at school. I seem to remember it being of the same set of lessons when we were told that the then Prince of Wales visited depressed areas and murmured “something must be done”. We certainly did NOT learn at school that proud Edward thought that the answer to unemployment lay with Mr Moseley and Mr Hitler.
We did learn about “red” Ellen Wilkinson, and Jarrow, and unemployment, and “buddy can you spare a dime?” What we didn’t learn was that the 1936 Jarrow march was part of a bigger picture of resistance to unemployment and vicious cuts in outdoor relief.
From its creation by the Communist party, the national unemployed workers movement (NUWM) sought to do something that many trades union and Labour leaders thought undesirable, if not impossible – organise the unemployed to fight for a better deal.
And they did it. The NUWM had a life of its own, for despite leadership opposition, ordinary trades unionists and Labour members worked alongside the communists to make it work. There were marches to London in1922,1929,1930,!931,1932,1934, and 1936. From Cardiff and Glasgow they marched, to Bristol from the Rhondda in their tens, hundreds and thousands.