ABSTRACT
For most people, Newton Abbot is a town near Torquay on the outskirts of which they are likely to get stuck in a traffic jam if they go on holiday to the south Devon coast. Yet to the many holidaymakers who visit Newton Abbot during the course of their fortnight on the Devon coastline, these industrial encrustations do not obscure its function as a shopping centre and a market town. Newton Abbot is, by Devon's standards, an industrial town, but its industries have fallen on hard times. In May 1971 there was a public meeting in Newton Abbot, called by the Urban District Council, to discuss unemployment. The meeting to form a Claimants' Union in Newton Abbot was held at the Labour Rooms on a May evening. The beginnings of the Newton Abbot Claimants' Union were not particularly promising. Unlike the Newton Abbot Union, the Torbay Union was born in a spirit of bitterness, directed against the Social Security.
