The Jarrow Crusade: When 200 Men Marched on London

Two hundred men and a petition

On the morning of Monday, 5 October 1936, two hundred men lined up outside Jarrow Town Hall, shouldered their packs, and started walking toward London, 282 miles away^1,8. They called themselves Crusaders, not marchers, and that word choice mattered. This was not meant to look like a riot or a rabble. It was meant to look like a town asking, with its hat in its hand and its dignity intact, for the one thing it needed: work.

The reason they were walking was simple and brutal. Jarrow's entire economy had been built around one company, Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, founded in 1851, which at its peak employed thousands of shipwrights, engineers, and ironworkers^3,9. When Palmers collapsed in 1933 and its Jarrow works passed to National Shipbuilders Securities, a government-backed body set up to shrink Britain's shipbuilding capacity, the yard was closed and dismantled rather than kept running^3,10. Sources differ on the precise closing date, with the National Archives citing 1931 and other accounts putting the final shutdown in 1933 to 1934^11,5, but the practical result was not in dispute: a town of around 8,000 shipyard jobs was reduced to roughly 100 men on a temporary scheme, and local accounts put overall unemployment at about 70 percent^1,4.

The march itself was the product of a public meeting in Jarrow in July 1936, where the borough council agreed to petition Parliament again, this time backed by a march and signatures from across the town⁶. About a thousand men reportedly volunteered; organizers picked two hundred, favoring married men with families, men who would read, to anyone watching from a train window or a newsreel, as respectable and sober rather than radical⁶. Jarrow Borough Council chair David Riley helped lead them, and their Labour MP, Ellen Wilkinson, became the campaign's public face, walking stretches of the route herself and speaking at stops along the way^1,2.

For 26 days the men walked through towns across England, fed and housed along the way by local branches of all the main political parties, not just Labour^5,8. That cross-party welcome on the road stood in contrast to the chillier reception from organized labor's leadership. The Trades Union Congress and the national Labour Party kept their distance, wary of being linked to the Communist-organized 'hunger marches' that had crisscrossed Britain since the early 1920s under the National Unemployed Workers' Movement⁵. Jarrow's organizers went out of their way to separate themselves from that lineage, even as Special Branch reportedly tracked the march out of concern over political agitation⁶.

They reached Marble Arch on 31 October 1936, soaked through by heavy rain, having covered what some accounts round up to 290 or 300 miles^6,12. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin declined to meet them⁶. On 4 November, Ellen Wilkinson carried their petition, signed by somewhere between 11,000 and 12,000 Jarrow residents depending on the source, into the House of Commons^7,2. It was received. It was not debated. The men went home believing they had failed⁵.

A town built on one company

Jarrow's fortunes had been tied to shipbuilding since 1851, when Palmers established its yard on the Tyne; over the following eighty years the company launched more than a thousand ships from the town^5,9. By the 1920s, mismanagement and the collapse of postwar world trade had already put Palmers into decline, and a plan to replace the aging yard with a modern steelworks was blocked by the British Iron and Steel Federation, an employers' body protecting its own interests⁵. That blocked steelworks became the marchers' central demand: not charity, but a new industry to replace the one that had vanished.

The wider national picture made Jarrow's collapse feel especially cruel. Britain's economy had been recovering through the mid-1930s, with growth averaging around 4 percent a year and housing booms in the south, but that recovery was wildly uneven, leaving the old industrial regions of the northeast, Scotland, and South Wales far behind⁵. Jarrow, with no real industry left to fall back on, became the sharpest example of that gap.

Who's who

• Ellen Wilkinson: Labour MP for Jarrow from 1935, nicknamed 'Red Ellen'; organized and publicized the march and presented its petition to Parliament on 4 November 1936^7,2.
• David Riley: Chair of Jarrow Borough Council; a principal local leader alongside Wilkinson^1,2.
• Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Prime Minister who led the National Government and declined to meet the marchers⁶.
• Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company: Jarrow's dominant employer since 1851, whose collapse in 1933 triggered the crisis^3,9.
• National Shipbuilders Securities Ltd: Government-backed company that bought Palmers' Jarrow works and closed them rather than keep them running, as part of a national effort to shrink excess shipyard capacity^3,10.

By the numbers

• 200: men selected to march, out of roughly 1,000 who volunteered⁶.
• 282 miles: the march's commonly cited distance, though some sources round to 290 or 300^1,12.
• 26 days: duration of the march, 5 to 31 October 1936^1,5.
• 11,000–12,000: signatures on the Jarrow petition, depending on the source^7,2.
• 70 percent: commonly cited unemployment rate in Jarrow at the time of the march^4,3.
• 8,000 to about 100: the drop in shipyard-related jobs cited by Parliament's own account of the petition¹.

What the sources disagree on

Accounts diverge on exactly when Palmers' yard closed for good. The National Archives dates the shipyard's closure to 1931, while several other histories, including Wikipedia's and the Co-Curate archive, place the decisive closure and dismantling in 1933 to 1934^11,5,3. The discrepancy likely reflects different stages of the same slow collapse (sale, closure, demolition) rather than a real factual dispute.

The exact mileage of the march also varies by source, from 282 to roughly 300 miles, a difference that comes down to how the route was measured and whether figures were rounded for retelling^1,12. Petition signature counts likewise range from about 11,000 to 12,000 depending on which heritage source is cited^7,2.

Finally, how to read the march's reception in London is contested. Some accounts stress the warm public welcome the men received along the route and at their arrival; others emphasize the government's cold shoulder, Baldwin's refusal to meet them, and the TUC's and Labour leadership's wariness about the whole enterprise^6,5. Both things were true at once, which is part of why the Jarrow March became such a durable symbol: a popular, well-liked protest that still, in the moment, changed nothing.

Timeline

1. 1851Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company founded in Jarrow, becoming the town's dominant employer^3,9.
2. 1933Palmers collapses; its Jarrow works pass to National Shipbuilders Securities Ltd^3,10.
3. 1933–34Jarrow's shipyard and associated works are closed or dismantled, producing mass unemployment^3,5.
4. 1935Ellen Wilkinson is elected Labour MP for Jarrow².
5. July 1936A public meeting in Jarrow agrees to petition Parliament and send a march to London⁶.
6. 5 October 1936Two hundred marchers set off from Jarrow Town Hall^1,8.
7. 31 October 1936Marchers arrive at Marble Arch in London; Stanley Baldwin declines to meet them⁶.
8. 4 November 1936Ellen Wilkinson presents Jarrow's petition to the House of Commons⁷.

Pictures