ABSTRACT

The hunger marches remain one of the most emotive images of Britain in the 1930s. The most famous of all, the Jarrow march of 1936, has retained its power to symbolise the human consequences of mass unemployment. For some contemporaries the marches were part of an epic and widespread struggle against the policies of successive governments. Wal Hannington wrote:

The unemployed did not quietly suffer their degradation and poverty. They were hungry; their wives and children were hungry; they marched on the streets in mighty protest demonstrations, and savage battles were fought from day to day in one town after another against the police who were ordered to suppress these militant activities.