ABSTRACT
Most of the sources in this chapter come from a National Archives Metropolitan Police folder, ‘Meeting of the Unemployed Marchers in Hyde Park, 1905’. A Times article published the day after the march calls the event ‘distressingly successful’ in its display of poverty, with at least 10,000 marchers and 30,000 at the demonstration in Hyde Park, where the march ended. There is every prospect that the march of the unemployed on Monday next will be memorable in the history of the Labour movement. The police having objected to the procession passing up Bond-street, owing to its narrowness, an alternative route – possibly Regent-street – may be decided on at to-day’s meeting of the Central Workers’ Committee. Of the demonstration of the unemployed that took place yesterday one thing may be asserted without any hesitation – that in dimensions it far exceeded the expectations of its organizers.
