This photo was taken of a Canadian hunger march forming up in 1932 in Alberta. A short time later, as it set off to the legislature a few blocks away, it was dispersed by billy-club-wielding constables on foot and horseback.
Hunger marches are a form of social protest that arose in the United Kingdom during the early 20th century. Often the marches involved groups of men and women walking from areas with high unemployment to London where they would protest outside parliament. Sometimes they would march instead to the offices of regional authorities in cities closer to home. Protesters would try to make the point that lack of work meant they were unable to buy sufficient food to avoid hunger for themselves and their families. The first such march took place in 1905. The term "hunger march" was coined three years later in 1908. In the first two decades of the 20th century, there was relatively little unemployment in the UK, but it could still become a severe problem in various areas after disruptive changes to the local economy. Hunger marches became much more prominent in the 1920s and 1930s during the Great Depression in the United Kingdom.[1]
During the widespread Great Depression of the 1930s, hunger marches also occurred in Canada and other countries.
Many of the UK hunger marches were supported by the British wing of the Communist party. While communism was at this time far more respectable than it was to become during the Cold War,[2] authorities often regarded the Communist-organized hunger marches with hostility. The marches were often brutally oppressed, and by the late 20th century had been mostly forgotten. An exception is the Jarrow crusade. This march had fewer than five hundred participants, with religious rather than political overtones. It did not provoke a hostile response from the authorities and was therefore not tinged with violence. Michael Portillo has said this caused the Jarrow march to be well-regarded and remembered, in contrast to other marches that often had many more thousands of participants and had had a greater impact.[1][3]
In the decades that followed World War II, there was much less unemployment in the UK and throughout the industrialized world, due in part to the Keynesian revolution. Even those without work or savings found it easier to feed themselves, due to the establishment of the welfare state. As a result, hunger marches were no longer needed. There were incidents where thousands of people embarked on marches to draw attention to hunger in the developing world, as happened for example during the 1973 Ethiopian famine, but the term "hunger march" was not often used to describe these events.[1]
September 5, 1931. 112 people, including 12 women, took part in a hunger march to the TUC offices in Bristol, under the slogan "Struggle or Starve". A third of the marchers were from Rhondda. The TUC refused to listen to the deputation and the march was broken up in Bristol by mounted police.[5]
Jarrow is a town in South Tyneside in the county of Tyne and Wear, England. Historically in County Durham, it is on the south bank of the River Tyne, about 3 miles (4.8 km) from the east coast. The 2011 census area classed Hebburn and The Boldons as part of the town, it had a population of 43,431. It is home to the southern portal of the Tyne Tunnel and 5 mi (8.0 km) east of Newcastle upon Tyne.
The Jarrow March of 5–31 October 1936, also known as the Jarrow Crusade, was an organised protest against the unemployment and poverty suffered in the English town of Jarrow during the 1930s. Around 200 men, or "Crusaders" as they preferred to be called, marched from Jarrow to London, carrying a petition to the British government requesting the re-establishment of industry in the town following the closure in 1934 of its main employer, Palmer's shipyard. The petition was received by the House of Commons but not debated, and the march produced few immediate results. The Jarrovians went home believing that they had failed.
The Great Depression in the United Kingdom also known as the Great Slump, was a period of national economic downturn in the 1930s, which had its origins in the global Great Depression. It was Britain's largest and most profound economic depression of the 20th century. The Great Depression originated in the United States in late 1929 and quickly spread to the world. Britain did not experience the boom that had characterized the U.S., Germany, Canada and Australia in the 1920s, so its effect appeared less severe. Britain's world trade fell by half (1929–33), the output of heavy industry fell by a third, employment profits plunged in nearly all sectors. At the depth in summer 1932, registered unemployed numbered 3.5 million, and many more had only part-time employment. However at the same time, from 1929 to 1933 employment dipped only to 94.9% relative to 1929 employment metrics and recovery was seen as early at 1933. The positive trend continued across real national income and wages. New houses built increased by 33% from 1929 to 1933, while profits, prices, export volume and value, and imports volume and value dropped. Overall, while all these metrics were concerning to parliament and businessmen along with devastating industrial regions, the common person especially in areas around London did not experience major hardship and even prospered.
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), also known as the American Communist Party, is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution.
Ellen Cicely Wilkinson was a British Labour Party politician who served as Minister of Education from July 1945 until her death. Earlier in her career, as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Jarrow, she became a national figure when she played a prominent role in the 1936 Jarrow March of the town's unemployed to London to petition for the right to work. Although unsuccessful at that time, the March provided an iconic image for the 1930s and helped to form post-Second World War attitudes to unemployment and social justice.
In the United States, the Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and then spread worldwide. The nadir came in 1931–1933, and recovery came in 1940. The stock market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth as well as for personal advancement. Altogether, there was a general loss of confidence in the economic future.
The National Unemployed Workers' Movement was a British organisation set up in 1921 by members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. It aimed at drawing attention to the plight of unemployed workers during the post-First World War slump, the 1926 General Strike and later the Great Depression, and at fighting the Means Test.
Victor Grayson Hardie Feather, Baron Feather, was a British propagandist and General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress in Great Britain from 1969 to 1973. During his time as assistant secretary of the TUC, he was secretly being paid to write anti-communist propaganda by the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret branch of the UK Foreign Office which dealt in weaponised disinformation, anti-communism, and pro-colonial propaganda. Feather's book Trade Unions:True or False was published via Background Books, a propaganda front for the IRD. British propagandists also used Feather's services to promote anti-communist propaganda from within the TUC.
The actions by governments of communist states have been subject to criticism across the political spectrum. Communist party rule has been especially criticized by anti-communists and right-wing critics, but also by other socialists such as anarchists, democratic socialists, libertarian socialists, orthodox Marxists, and Trotskyist communists. Ruling communist parties have also been challenged by domestic dissent. According to the critics, rule by communist parties has often led to totalitarianism, political repression, restrictions of human rights, poor economic performance, and cultural and artistic censorship.
Unemployment was the dominant issue of British society during the interwar years. Unemployment levels rarely dipped below 1,000,000 and reached a peak of more than 3,000,000 in 1933, a figure which represented more than 20% of the working population. The unemployment rate was even higher in areas including South Wales and Liverpool. The Government extended unemployment insurance schemes in 1920 to alleviate the effects of unemployment.
The Great Depression (1929–1939) was a severe global economic downturn that affected many countries across the world. It became evident after a sharp decline in stock prices in the United States, leading to a period of economic depression. The economic contagion began around September 1929 and led to the Wall Street stock market crash of 24 October. This crisis marked the start of a prolonged period of economic hardship characterized by high unemployment rates and widespread business failures.
The National Hunger March of September–October 1932 was the largest of a series of hunger marches in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s.
International Unemployment Day was a coordinated international campaign of marches and demonstrations, marked by hundreds of thousands of people in major cities around the world taking to the streets to protest mass unemployment associated with the Great Depression. The Unemployment Day marches, organized by the Communist International and coordinated by its various member parties, resulted in two deaths of protestors in Berlin, injuries at events in Vienna and the Basque city of Bilbao, and less violent outcomes in London and Sydney.
The Unemployed Councils of the USA (UC) was a mass organization of the Communist Party, USA established in 1930 in an effort to organize and mobilize unemployed workers.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is a national trade union centre, a federation of trade unions that collectively represent most unionised workers in England and Wales. There are 48 affiliated unions with a total of about 5.5 million members. Paul Nowak is the TUC's current General Secretary, serving from January 2023.
The Workers Alliance of America (WAA) was a Popular Front era political organization established in March 1935 in the United States which united several efforts to mobilize unemployed workers under a single banner. Founded by the Socialist Party of America (SPA), the Workers Alliance was later joined by the Unemployed Councils of the USA, a mass organization of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and by the National Unemployed Leagues originating with A.J. Muste's Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) and successor organizations.
The Housing Protests on the South Side of Chicago in August 1931 began as a clash between white police and African Americans over the eviction of Diana Gross, a seventy-two year old black woman. Police were sent to enforce the eviction and encountered direct conflict with the crowd that had assembled and who were attempting to place her furniture back inside her home. The ensuing confrontation between police and the protesters led to the shooting deaths of two black men during the event, one black man killed later in the aftermath, as well as several injuries to policemen.
The 1920 blind march was a protest march from across the United Kingdom to London of 250 blind people. It was organised by the National League of the Blind (NLB) to protest poor working conditions and poverty experienced by blind people. In particular the NLB raised concerns over the conditions in workshops run to provide employment to the visually impaired by various charities. The marchers assembled at Newport, Manchester and Leeds on 5 April and marched to London, assembling at Trafalgar Square on 25 April. They were greeted by a crowd of 10,000 who listened to speeches from Herbert Morrison and trade union leaders. The march leaders met with prime minister David Lloyd George on 30 April, who made few promises apart from to pay for the marchers' rail tickets home. A subsequent Blind Persons Act 1920, the first disability-specific legislation in the world, compelled local authorities to ensure the welfare of blind persons and reduced the pension age for blind men. The march served as inspiration for the more famous 1936 Jarrow March against unemployment, in which the NLB also participated.
Emily Elizabeth Swankie was a British activist and campaigner who participated in the National Hunger March from Glasgow to London to protest against poverty and unemployment in the United Kingdom.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
