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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey everyone, I'm Eves and welcome back to

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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class, a podcast where we unwrap

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Speaker 1: a piece of history candy every day. Today it's October.

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Speaker 1: The day was October ninety six. Around two hundred people

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Speaker 1: began their march from Jarrow to London as part of

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Speaker 1: the Jero March. They were protesting the unemployment and poverty

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Speaker 1: in Jaro, a town in northeast England on the south

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Speaker 1: bank of the River Time. None of the march's goals

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Speaker 1: were immediately met, but in the longer term it did

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Speaker 1: contribute to changing attitudes regarding welfare and social reforms. When

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Speaker 1: the Great Depression hit the UK in the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: industry declined an unemployment increased. The economic downturn was particularly

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Speaker 1: bad and industrial and mining places like southern Wales, northeast

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Speaker 1: England and parts of Scotland were hit hard because of

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Speaker 1: the dominance of the coal, iron, steel, and shipbuilding industries.

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Speaker 1: So the places that had flourished due to these industries

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Speaker 1: took a huge fall during the depression. Throughout the nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenties and nineteen thirties, people organized hunger marches to protest

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Speaker 1: unemployment and poverty in the hopes of improving their conditions.

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Speaker 1: One of those places greatly affected by unemployment was Jarro,

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Speaker 1: which had an economy that was largely built on coal

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Speaker 1: and shipbuilding. In eighteen fifty one, Charles Mark Palmer established

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Speaker 1: a shipyard at Jarrow with his brother George, calling the

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Speaker 1: company Palmer Brothers and Co. By eighteen sixty five, the

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Speaker 1: company had expanded to include an iron rolling mill and

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Speaker 1: blast furnaces. In the early nineteen hundreds, the company was

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Speaker 1: a major builder of warships for the Royal Navy, cargo

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Speaker 1: liners and anchors, but when the depression hit, the company

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Speaker 1: suffered losses and shut down in nineteen thirty three. Since

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Speaker 1: Jerald depended so heavily on the ship building industry, a

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Speaker 1: lot of people were unemployed. About sevent of the local

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Speaker 1: workforce was out of work by nineteen thirty three. In

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Speaker 1: a speech she gave in the House of Comments in November,

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Speaker 1: Jerald's Labor Party MP Ellen Wilkinson said that only one

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Speaker 1: hundred men were employed on a temporary scheme where eight

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Speaker 1: thousand people had previously been employed. Wilkinson, who was elected

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Speaker 1: as Gerald's MP in November of nineteen thirty five was

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Speaker 1: sympathetic to the struggles of unemployed workers. People in Jerald

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Speaker 1: were eager for the government to do something about the unemployment.

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Speaker 1: They organized a meeting with a Cabinet minister, but they

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Speaker 1: were told that Gerald had to work out its own salvation.

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Speaker 1: So the gerald Borough Council decided to present a petition

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Speaker 1: to Parliament for help establishing work in jarre Oh. The

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Speaker 1: petition got eleven thousand signatures. It would be marched from

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Speaker 1: Jairo to London to be shown to the House of Commons.

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Speaker 1: They hoped that the non political march would get a

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Speaker 1: lot of publicity and earned the sympathy of the public

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Speaker 1: so that industry would be re established in the town

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Speaker 1: and unemployed men could work. After attending at Eckymenical Dedication Service,

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Speaker 1: two hundred men deemed fit set off on the three

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Speaker 1: hundred mile journey to London on October five, nineteen thirty six.

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Speaker 1: They had the support of Wilkinson and Gerald's mayor, Billy Thompson.

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Speaker 1: On October thirty one, they made it to London. A

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Speaker 1: group of blind veterans also organized a march to London

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Speaker 1: to arrive at the same time as the Gerald March.

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Speaker 1: A National hunger March also coincided with the Gerald March.

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Speaker 1: Wilkinson presented the petition to the House of Commons four

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Speaker 1: days later, but no immediate help was given to Jaral

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Speaker 1: or the protesters, who soon headed back to their hometown.

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Speaker 1: Though they got a warm welcome when they returned, the

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Speaker 1: marchers felt that their efforts were unsuccessful. There was no

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Speaker 1: immediate increase in employment, but the Second World War soon

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Speaker 1: brought industry back to the town. Some historians have said

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Speaker 1: that the Gerald March and other unemployment protests help shape

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Speaker 1: later perspectives of the nineteen thirties, and that they contributed

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Speaker 1: to support of social programs after the war. I'm each

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Speaker 1: Jeff Coote and hopefully you know a little more about

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Speaker 1: history today than you did yesterday, and give a warm,

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Speaker 1: warm birthday shout out to our producer Alexis, who worked

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Speaker 1: very hard and it's also very awesome. You can find

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Speaker 1: us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at t d I

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Speaker 1: h C podcast. If emails your thing, send us a

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Speaker 1: note at this day at I heeart media dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening and we'll see you tomorrow. M

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