Harmonica players walked with the marchers, belting out There’s a Long, Long Trail, Tipperary and their ilk
There are certain British place names that carry an enduring weight of meaning; a deep and sonorous ring, and not always a pleasant one. Hillsborough, Orgreave, Aberfan, Armagh… these are all places that have become synonymous with some great and profound emotion or event, woven into history through accident, struggle, tragedy, wickedness or bravery. Jarrow is another. In 1936, this industrial town in the northeast of England became, in the words of its MP, “the most famous town in England”; a byword for hardship and misery, but also for defiance, fortitude and dignity.
Jarrow’s MP was Ellen Wilkinson, better known as ‘Red’ Ellen, a brilliant and passionate firebrand who later became a pillar of Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour administration as Minister for Education. But much of her lasting fame rests on her movements in October 1936, when she led 200 of Jarrow’s unemployed men 300 miles to London. The intention was to publicise Jarrow’s plight and to deliver a petition of 10,000 signatures to Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, pleading for help for their dying town in the form of a steelworks, or a similar shot in the arm. Baldwin refused to see them; the petition was taken from them by the Special Branch and then it vanished, and the aid the town needed was never properly given.