5 October: The Jarrow March

On this date in 1936, the Jarrow march began. 10 things you might not know about the Jarrow March:

1. Why did it happen? It was a peaceful protest march against unemployment in the Tyneside town of Jarrow. A shipyard which had been the town’s major employer, had closed, so most people in the town were out of work. At the time, unemployment benefit only lasted 26 weeks, so people were poor and hungry and dying before their time.
2. The purpose of the march was to deliver a petition to Parliament, 291 miles away, signed by 12,000 people asking the government to re-establish some industry in the town so that people could find jobs.
3. One of the major players in the protest was the local MP, Ellen Wilkinson, one of four women MPs in the Labour government at the time. She constantly sought to draw the plight of Jarrow to the attention of party leaders, but to no avail. She joined the march for some of the way, but left it in order to speak at the Labour party conference. She gave an impassioned speech, but party leaders still weren’t interested. In fact, they even lambasted her for "sending hungry and ill-clad men on a march to London".
4. Wilkinson led nearly 200 marchers out of town accompanied by a mouth organ band.
5. Also with the marchers pretty much from the star was a stray Labrador called Paddy. At first the marchers thought the Dog would soon wander off, but after about five miles, realised he was going to stick with them, so they took good care of him as they went.
6. At the end of the first day they reached Chester-le-Street. Other towns and cities they passed through included Darlington, Ripon, Harrogate, Leeds, Barnsley, Sheffield, Chesterfield, Mansfield, Nottingham, Loughborough, Leicester, Northampton, Bedford and St Albans. They also took five rest days, finally arriving in central London on 31 October, having been on the road for 22 days.
7. In most of the towns they overnighted, they were made welcome. People gave them gifts of clothing and clean underwear; local councils, mayors and even bishops greeted them warmly. In Leicester, the Co-operative Society's bootmakers worked through the night without pay, repairing the marchers' boots. In Market Harborough, however, nobody greeted them at all and they had to spend the night on the stone floor of an unfinished building. In light of the public support the marchers were getting in general, the local press denied the town had been anything less than welcoming.
8. They didn’t march on Parliament itself, but did hold a demo in Hyde Park on 1^st November. They tasked Ellen Wilkinson with presenting their petition three days later, with just a handful of the marchers observing from the public gallery. In spite of it all, nothing was done. Wilkinson asked the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, if he would meet some of the marchers, but her refused, claiming he was too busy. Which goes to show UK governments do not change. They still couldn’t care less about the hardships people suffer as a result of their policies and blatantly ignore petitions.
9. That said, the public support and other similar protests did eventually lead to a change in attitudes and the setting up of the social security system. The marchers, meanwhile, went home by train to a hero’s welcome in Jarrow.
10. The march inspired a hit record (The Jarrow Song by Alan Price in 1974) a play (Whistling at the Milestones (1977) by Alex Glasgow) and an opera (Burning Road (1996), by Will Todd and Ben Dunwell). In Jarrow there is a tile mural at the railway station, designed by local schoolchildren, and a bronze sculpture—The Spirit of the Crusade by Graham Ibbeson—in the town centre.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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