28.09.2011
They obeyed the rules
Mark Fischer busts the myths of the Jarrow Crusade
On Saturday October 1, Youth Fight for Jobs - a front group of the Socialist Party in England and Wales - will set out from Jarrow, a small town in Tyne and Wear, to march the 300 miles or so to London, where there will be a demonstration on November 5. The action is being packaged as an attempt by YFJ at “recreating the Jarrow march of 75 years ago” in order to highlight the large rise in youth unemployment today.[1]
We have previously written on the increasingly important question of unemployed organisation and, specifically, what tradition we should look to learn from in this complex and challenging field of work.[2] As regular readers will know, we have been very clear about our stance - we reject the legacy of Jarrow and counterpose to it that of the communist-led National Unemployed Workers Movement.
Now history is a contested arena - and not simply between our class that the ruling elite. Comrade Dave Douglass has twice taken up the polemical cudgels against us on behalf of the original Jarrow march.[3]However, in last week’s paper the comrade dismissed as a “silly question” the challenge I posed to him in my original reply - how to explain the fact that, while the militant mass actions of the NUWM have been systematically expunged from history, the tiny Jarrow stunt has been embraced, officially lauded and actively manufactured by the establishment as “the epitome of the plight of the depressed areas” in the 1930s.[4]
Given the prominence of Jarrow, perhaps the comrades of the SP/YFJ believe it is a clever piece of marketing to brand their own march in this way - and there is no question that, despite the political criticisms we would have of the YFJ’s platform of demands, it is way to the left of the politics of the 1936 action and deserves the support of all working class activists. Claiming the mantle of Jarrow is an important political mistake, however. This event was framed as a direct, more or less explicit, alternative to the type of militant, class-war unemployed movement we actually need to be agitating for. Why do we say this?
First, because of the anti-communist ethos that surrounded an action that was strenuously promoted as ‘non-political’. Known members of the CPGB were excluded from the march and chief marshal Dave Riley even promised “if necessary [to] call the authorities to assist us” in enforcing this ban. This paranoia had objective roots. The Labour Party in conference in Edinburgh that year attacked local MP Ellen Wilkinson for her involvement with the march “on the grounds that hunger marches were associated with communist organisations such as the NUWM and their use might lead to disorder and disrepute”.[5]
The organisers of Jarrow thus rejected the offer of Wal Hannington, the communist leader of the NUWM, to merge with the north-east contingent of its sixth national hunger march partially because of their fears of being associated with the militant actions of that movement and the ‘extreme’ political stance of its leaders. Also, the political nature of the platform of Jarrow ’36 itself dictated a ‘go it alone’ stance.
In contrast to demands of the NUWM, which were national and addressed the needs of unemployed workers across the country, Jarrow actually represented a sectional response framed to bring to the attention of the authorities the dire state of the town after the closure of its largest employer, the Palmer’s shipyard, and to plead for Jarrow-specific measures of relief and aid.[6] As such, as much as we empathise with the despair and desperation that sparked the protest, its demands were narrow and inward-looking.
The nature of this political platform - which was more akin to charity-mongering than militant class action - informed the whole method and demeanour of the march. To emphasise its ‘non-political’ nature, the two agents tasked with making sleeping and feeding arrangements along the route came from the Tory and Labour parties. The home office - drawing on favourable special branch reports detailing the expulsion of communists and the general non-militant ethos of the marchers - recommended that they be allowed to have tea in the House of Commons, since “the marchers show every sign of being orderly [and] it would be a good way of encouraging and placating them”.[7]
As part of their official welcome in London, the marchers were placed at an advantageous vantage point opposite the Duke of York steps when the king, Edward VIII, passed down the Mall and they “showed their enthusiasm by cheering lustily”, according to a special branch report.[8]
Stevenson and Cook conclude that, aside from genuine concern for the terrible plight of the unemployed in the town, “the Jarrow marchers also became a folk legend because they obeyed the rules; they conducted their march in cooperation with the authorities and did not seek to challenge them. Above all, they disclaimed any political intentions and clearly rejected communist involvement.”[9] Despite the general ‘revisionist’ project of these two professional historians in relation to the 1930s as a decade, it is hard to disagree with this assessment.
Lastly, it has to be stated that the crusade achieved absolutely nothing tangible - not even for the town that was its narrow focus. Indeed, the men’s supplicant approach simply aroused contempt from the establishment. The prime minister of the day, Stanley Baldwin, refused to meet them, as he felt it would establish a dangerous precedent. Their petition was formally accepted by parliament in a simple sentence, which then went on with its previous business. The marchers even had their unemployment benefit stopped while they trekked down the country, as they were ipso facto judged not available for work in Jarrow! The day after the petition flopped, they were given £1 each for their fares and their troubles then packed off back to despair and destitution up north.
A 1936 Scottish NUWM hunger marcher, John Lochmore, noted that “the Jarrow march which took place at the same time as ours equally was of significance, but over the years the media and the establishment have put it to the fore and virtually ignored the NUWM march.”[10] In truth, the Jarrow crusade of 1936 only has any significance whatsoever because of the ideological use to which its politics have been put by the ruling elite and the labour movement bureaucracy - to ‘disappear’ the militant organisation of the unemployed.
We wish the comrades of the YFJ success on their march and protest. However, they should not be seeking to ‘recreate’ the example of Jarrow. We should repudiate it and look to critically assimilate the lessons of a movement that sent both the authorities and the official leadership of the workers’ movement into apoplexy: the National Unemployed Workers Movement.
Notes
1. www.youthfightforjobs.com.
2. ‘Lessons of the NUWM and UWC’ Weekly Worker January 28 2010.
3. Weekly Worker September 1, September 22 2011.
4. J Stevenson, C Cook The slump: society and politics during the depression London 1979, p184. The authors characterise this as “rather curious”, given that the Jarrow crusade was “one of the smallest hunger marches” to make its way to the capital in the 30s.
5. Ibid p185.
6. The Jarrow petition was presented to the House of Commons by Ellen Wilkinson, who said: “I beg to ask leave to present to this honourable house the petition of Jarrow praying for assistance in the resuscitation of its industry … The town cannot be left derelict, and therefore your petitioners humbly pray that his majesty’s government and this honourable house should realise the urgent need that work should be provided for the town without further delay.” There were a total of 12,000 signatures.
7. J Stevenson, C Cook The slump: society and politics during the depression London 1979, p185.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid p188.
10. I MacDougall (ed) Voices from the hunger marches Edinburgh 1991, p327.