The Jarrow March

Subject: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits
From: GUEST,The Jarrow March
Date: 04 Nov 12 - 09:24 PM

"The marchers were supported by a bus which carried cooking equipment and ground sheets for when the march had to stop outside. Many of the men marched in army style, walking for 50 minutes before a ten-minute break, and they held blue and white banners. A harmonica band and frequent singing helped to keep morale of the marchers high. Sometimes, the local Member of Parliament, Ellen Wilkinson, marched with the group to give higher profile to the crusade."

Do any of you UK people know of this?

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits
From: GUEST,999
Date: 04 Nov 12 - 09:26 PM

I started this thread, sorry for not saying. I'm Canadian.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 04 Nov 12 - 09:54 PM

I would imagine everybody who writes from England to Mudcat knows about The Jarrow Hunger March, how they were sneered at by Toty boys in University towns. How the sight of the marchers and the dignity of their bearing turned a few tory boys into KGB men.

All legengary stuff - the subject of a hit song The Geordie Lads written and performed by Alan Price (ex Animals keyboard player.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Nov 12 - 10:36 PM

What Al said, although I cannot vouch for the KGB bit.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Nov 12 - 11:17 PM

For info on this event, google ~~ wikipedia has quite an informative entry.

I just have a dim memory of it, and of the Abdication crisis the same year, & Geo V's Silver Jubilee the previous year, and the Coronation of Geo Vi the year after which occurred on my 5th birthday. Not of course that I was altogether aware of all that was going on, but ours was a political household [my father had been a potential Labour candidate in the election a couple of years before I was born], and I remember loving the word 'Jubilee', and my mother explaining the Abdication in terms I could get. I just heard the name 'Jarrow', as I recall it, & it stuck with me.

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Allan Conn
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 02:08 AM

"Do any of you UK people know of this?"

It is a noted event so most people will have heard the name; and many perhaps most will know the outline; though I can imagine only a minority will know the details. As per most historical events really.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: foggers
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 04:24 AM

My dad was a 15 year old lad in Easington (County Durham) in 1936 and he remembered very well both the Great Depression with its resultant effects (his own father lost his butchery business, and with that went their family house) and the Jarrow March. He used to tell us about seeing the Marchers as they passed through his area,where they were well received and supported by the local mining communities.

Ironically, whilst me dad himself was a lifelong old style Tory (preferring Ted Heath to Thatcher) his stories of poverty and resistance in the NE of England rather had the effect of turning my older sister and I towards leftist leanings.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 04:25 AM

Bruce - there's a good page here.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 04:27 AM

Here's a curio:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exMh_dzvJsQ

I especially like the pronuniation of 'bairns'.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Leadfingers
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 04:54 AM

The late Charlie Hardy came South with The March I believe , and never went back - Wrote some damn fine songs and was a regular singer at any Folk Event round Harrow .

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 05:10 AM

I might, perhaps, point out that it is an enduring symbol to the whole of England of the disdain that the toffs had and still have for the rest.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 05:21 AM

Trust the Asinine Brige to milk the sufferings of the 1930s unemployed to feed his own idiotic bourgeois self-hating agenda.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 05:49 AM

Oh Mike! Do leave off. Richard thinks what he thinks - quite sincerely. It gets a tad simplistic and repetitive - but so's these messages with you kicking him up the bum.

well okay = more than a tad. but we're all old. we're entitled to be weird.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 05:53 AM

For your information, Mr MGbloodyM, the Jarrow march is an iconic episode in British labour history. One little mentioned detail of that episode is that, when the march went past the Reform Club in London - yes, that Reform Club where all the well bred upper class toffs hung out - some of the members went outisde and pelted the marchers with stale bread rolls!

If that doesn't put me in mind of Messrs Cameron, Osborne and Co, I don't know what will.

Fuck you.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 06:01 AM

There are lots of places I could go with your "self-hating" remark, Myer, but the OP raised the point of the Jarrow march, and that was the bloody point of it. Toffs with no idea but the working class left in hopeless unemployment and starving. If you don't understand that you are even more senile and bigoted and smug than I thought.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: DMcG
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 06:09 AM

My wife's grandfather was one of the organisers and he left a lot of notes. They are not in her branch of the family but we can probably find out what his views were of any KGB links. However the waters are likely to be very murky when look at all the politics of the time

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 06:17 AM

Ok. I've calmed down. My apologies to everybody on this list - everbody that is except Michael Grosvenor Myer - for using the f word.

However, for anyone like me who was brought up in poor and difficult circumstances, the Jarrow march remains an important source of inspiration, and a very noble one at that.

In case MGM has forgotten those people, 207 of them, marched the 300 miles from Jarrow to London, in all kinds of atrocious weather, living off whatever local soup kitchens could muster, and sleeping more often than not in workhouse casual wards, to deliver a petition to the government. They weren't a bunch of upper class ill-bred parasites, and they weren't looking for handouts. They were looking for work. They were looking for paid employment. They were looking to the government to do something about the 70% unemployment which was then plaguing the town of Jarrow.

To GUEST,The Jarrow March. There is quite a lot on the Internet about the Jarrow march. See especially http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwone/jarrow_01.shtml , which also includes some hard copy references.

To Michael Grosvenor Myer, and all who think like him. Go hang your heads in shame.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 06:20 AM

DMcG. If you've got any papers relating the march, could I suggest that they should be in an archive somewhere? That's if you haven't done so already of course. Even better if they could also be put on the Internet.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 07:36 AM

"However the waters are likely to be very murky when look at all the politics of the time"
Aren't they always when it comes to workers protesting at the situation they find themselves in due to political incompetence indifference and corporate greed.
Many of the workers who marched from Jarrow to protest at not being able to feed their families were among those who fought in the trenches in 'The War to End All Wars'
The fact that they were treated with contempt the way they were by the Reform Club parasites deserves a mention - it certainly seems to have served to get the maggots scuttling out of the apple here.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 08:04 AM

As an indication of the contemporary relevance of episodes like Jarrow. I heard Melvyn Bragg recently, claiming that the survivors of the 1934 Gresford mining disaster had been docked for the last quarter of the shift on the day the disaster happened. This despite the fact that most of the survivors immediately went back underground to rescue their trapped mates.

At the time, I was inclined to dismiss this as an urban myth. Surely, even by the standards of the times, and the notorious cruelty of the coalowners, a bit more compassion would have been shown than that.

Recently however, I was talking to a welfare official from the National Union of Seamen about Somali pirates. He told me that immediately a British crew is taken hostage, their pay is terminated and they are not taken back on the payroll until they are freed and able to start working again. Thus, their dependents are left high and dry with only state benefits to keep them going through no fault of their own. What was that about welfare scroungers Mr Osborne?

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 08:10 AM

I'd like to point out that The Jarrow March isn't Folklore - certainly not in the prissy Mudcat sense of the word anyway. It is, in fact, as shameful an episode in the recent class-ridden history of our most Hideous Isles as you could wish for. 76 years on and we are still a class-ridden shithole, getting shittier by the day as the present ill-elected government carries on the great Toff Tradition by dismantling the country bit by bit.

The Alan Price song is, alas, a ghastly example of the 1970's Folk Zeitgeist. It ended up becoming near-anthemised for the FA Cup final of 1974 - still, it could have been worse: Liverpool got Little Jimmy Osmond - but they also got the cup. Ho hum. Alan Price's earlier cover of Tommy Armstrong's Trimdon Grange Explosion is of a higher order entirely, packing it's brassy non-folky power-pop punch with a style and dignity that still sounds pretty cool today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id2zIWwBCUU

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 08:10 AM

I have said nothing in disrespect of the March to provoke Mr Woodson's abuse & obloquy. I feel, and have spoken, most respectfully of it; my family supported it at the time, and my father, I repeat, was an active member of the Labour Party working for the betterment of such conditions as provoked the March. My only adverse comment was in response to the selfrighteous Mr Asinine Bridge predictably extrapolating from it to present, and entirely different, circumstances, in order to keep class resentments well alive to feed his own crises of conscience at his own bourgeois prosperity, which, as even Al has hinted, are becoming increasingly tedious.

But then skill in comprehension or clarity of thought have never been things which Mr Woodson has been noted for. He may likewise copulate, or be copulated, or whevs, if so inclined.

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 08:25 AM

MtheGM. What you said was insulting to the memory of the marchers, because you used that memory to get a cheap and wholly unwarranted jibe in at Richard Bridge. Some of us are getting pretty fed up at your peurile carping and sniggering at everything you disagree with; to say nothing of the terms of abuse you keep hurling at other Mudcatters.

As I have just pointed out, the experiences of the 1930s are still extremely relevant. Indeed they are probably more so now than at any time since the second world war. Eg., I for one never expected to see the re-emergence of, or a need for, food distribution centres in 21st Century. But then I never thought I'd live to see another government as unfair and callous and uncaring as this one.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 08:50 AM

MtheGM seems to draw attention to himself in this way because he believes that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 08:57 AM

'to say nothing of the terms of abuse you keep hurling at other Mudcatters'....
.,,.
Apart fom a lapse some months ago, for which I have apologised, that is something I have sedulously avoided doing for, literally, years. Give me some citation, or define where some of my mild apostrophes such as 'scoundrel', 'bourgeois', &c can be classed as 'terms of abuse'; or have the honour and decency to withdraw this denunciation, please, Mr Woodson.

You, OTOH,charmingly address me above as 'Mr MGbloodyM', and exclaim 'fuck you', for which you apologise to all readers except, specifically, me. And then you accuse me of 'hurling abuse'.

I fear, Mr Woodson, that you do not receive a pass mark in rationality or moderation. In fact, to hurl as much abuse as I generally do, I consider you a most foolish and misguided young fellow.

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 09:12 AM

My father who was an active communist in the 1930s ,and was sentenced to hard labour in prison for making a speech about king edward the eighth, told me about the Jarrow march, and his comments were much the same as Owen Woodson.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 09:29 AM

Moreover, Mr OW; I would remind you that you once attempted to send me [what I took to be] an abusive PM; to which I replied that I had deleted it unread as I had no intention of engaging in correspondence with you. I repeat that here, and shall refrain from reading, let alone replying to, any further posts you may address to me; so you might as well spare yourself the effort unless you want to grandstand to such as make brilliant comments like that oh-so-original insight from DaveH above. As Jane Austen put it in re Elinor Dashwood's attitude to her suitor's foolish brother, I do not think you deserve the compliment of rational opposition.

Kind regards

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 09:31 AM

...or is that hurling terms of abuse?

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 09:35 AM

I've never liked the Trimdon Grange song. Wth its funereal pace and expectation of us all to be sad about people we didn't know - i reckon its sent more folk club audiences scuttling off to the bog than Ansells bitter did in its hay day.

Whereas the Alan Price geordie Boy got people talking about Jarrow. Credit where its due. Price seemed an arrogant prick when I went to see him in concert. But the song communicated. when its lost the zeitgeist, the spirit to move - I reckon songs have lost the right to be called folksongs. they are for those careful curators of the folk tradition. folk museum pieces perhaps.

i might be wrong - but i seem to reckon there was a mining museum near Trimdon - and they don't even know about the song there.   I seem to recall asking them.

mind you - they don't have any mention of Sam Larner or Peter Bellamy in the fishing museum in Yarmouth. Or even a tea towel with the Rufford park poachers at Rufford park.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 09:46 AM

Leadfinger - re Charlie Hardy. I don't think he came down with the Jarrow marchers. IIRC he told me he was already in London before the march (he first took a job as a barman "with lots of experience", although he'd never even been in a pub before!). I think he said (though this was a long time ago so I might be misremembering) that he went to see (and possibly sing for) the marchers when they were just North of London. Mike Sparks would probably know the details better.

Mick

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 09:57 AM

Or even a tea towel with the Rufford park poachers at Rufford park.

A gap in market, eh? Go for it - I'd certainly buy one, even if only a couple of verses of the song are traditional...

Tommy Armstrong is well remembered outside of the Folk Scene, happily. His name graced (graces??) a council building in Stanley and his grave in Tanfield Village is a place of remembrance & pilgrimage for those who see in his songs the sort of direct relevance to life one rarely finds in folk circles. Armstrong was a well versed traditional song-maker - a cunning craftsmen & local eccentric whose songs are masterpieces of his vernacular craft.

What I love about the Price version is that it's devoid of Folksy mawkishness. Armstrong wrote the song for his people. When you see the names he mentions in the song turn up on a roll of the victims then it begins to make sense, especially to those of us who grew up in the coalfields of the North East where such disasters aren't exactly uncommon. Had not my own grandfather been invalided out of the pits at the age of 12 (as oppose to killed outright) chances are I wouldn't be here to ponder such things...

Trimdon Victims, February 1882

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 10:03 AM

Myer - if you do not see the relevance of the Jarrow march to today you are even more senile and bigoted and smug than I thought.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,999
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 11:19 AM

Thanks to you all for your input about the March and various links to the history of it. My choice of Folklore in the thread title was unfortunate and certainly not intended to belittle it. My grandfather was a coal miner in the late 1800s and I'm sure he'd have been with the marchers had he still been living in England at that time.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,Jack Sprocket
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 12:39 PM

Al, the Trimdon Grange tune as commonly sung now was I believe a revival composition- by Anne Briggs I think. I understand it was originally sung to a brass- bandy sort of march tune which may also have been one of the more muscular hymns, and sung to the tune I have in mind (which I can't remember if it is the original one, or just something I've gathered and thought would fit) doesn't sound half so snivelling. U.N. Ma Colle did a similar groanifying job on Poor Cotton Weaver.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 01:49 PM

"present, and entirely different, circumstances"

Present circumstances are different, as is always the case - but "entirely different" is going far too far. We are in the middle of a depression comparable in many ways to the depression of the Thirties - with probably less prospect of coming out of it than back then. "The poor" may be less subject to total destitution, so far at least - but the rich are even richer. And the same people are in charge.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 01:55 PM

The tune originally specified was Go And Leave Me If You Wish It. You can see a copy of a sheet of the song at the Farne archive: Trimdon Grange Explosion, where that tune is specified.

The tunes used for it were posted in the thread: Lyr Add: Trimdon Grange Explosion (see links in the post by Alan of Australia and the following post by Gary Gillard)


Mick

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: henryclem
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 02:20 PM

One of the more fascinating (or disgraceful) aspects of the Jarrow story is the reason behind so many men of the town being unemployed. Imports of steel from Germany, heavily subsidised by the Nazis !

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,TA
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 03:08 PM

There's a nice sculpture depicting a group of Crusaders outside of Morrisons in the Viking Centre in Jarrow. Pub names also remember the March. The govt. of the day didn't give them the time of day when they reached no.10 but it's a testement to the hardships the marchers and their families endured that their efforts are remembered today.
Tommy Armstrong was born in Wood Street, Shotley Bridge and liked a pint by all accounts.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 03:44 PM

the original tune to T GRANGE Ex was the march tune, the other tune[go and leave me, which i happen to like as well was used by lou killen, and is not the original

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 04:26 PM

I'm unsure why there's a 'folklore' prefix remaining on this thread as the mods are usually so diligent about correcting such misattributions. I believe the Jarrow march was a real historical event, not some folk tale :)

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 04:48 PM

"Folklore" includes real events which are popularly remembered in this way. In fact that kind of popular memory is literally what the word means.

It was good that the Jarrow March was included in the iconic Olympic opening ceremony.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,999
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 05:52 PM

"I'm unsure why there's a 'folklore' prefix remaining on this thread as the mods are usually so diligent about correcting such misattributions."


'Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,999
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 11:19 AM

Thanks to you all for your input about the March and various links to the history of it. My choice of Folklore in the thread title was unfortunate and certainly not intended to belittle it. My grandfather was a coal miner in the late 1800s and I'm sure he'd have been with the marchers had he still been living in England at that time.'

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,999
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 05:54 PM

CS, go to the 'Create a new thread' and tell me what YOU would have entitled it, svp.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 07:52 PM

Since the question asked was whether people in Britain still remember the Jarrow March, which happened before they were born?" it actually was about whether it is part of our folklore here, so the term was perfectly correct.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,999
Date: 05 Nov 12 - 08:16 PM

Thank you, McG of H.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: theleveller
Date: 06 Nov 12 - 03:01 AM

If not part of folklore, certainly a well-documented part of history. Not sure where the two overlap.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 06 Nov 12 - 03:30 AM

Do Canadians know about The Heights of Abraham ?

Dave H

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,Mavis Enderby
Date: 06 Nov 12 - 03:51 AM

There was an ill-considered idea to invoke the Jarrow March as part of protests over fuel prices in 2000: Link

Without wishing to wade in to the arguments above I'd say the conditions of hardship and hunger mentioned in the article are more relevant today than in 2000.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Nov 12 - 04:22 AM

Re The heights of Abraham

Several Canadians have visited The heights of Abraham tourist spot in Matlock.

The less famous one involving General Woolf probably has ben dropped from the curriculum. Like a lot ofthese British military victories, we probably won something not worth having. We're not there now. I bet they haven't got a kiddies playground.

Subject: RE: Folklore: I have to ask the Brits-The Jarrow March
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 06 Nov 12 - 05:20 AM

Not sure where the two overlap.

On Mudcat it appears to be in some hinterland of mawkish nostalgia when even the sufferings of the past become a cause of a cosy feel-good sentimental glow. So Folklore = Lore o' the Folkies. I've lost count of the times I've opened up threads here with a genuine Folklore prefix only to have it pulled by some cretinous moderator secretly empowered to strike out anything that offends their prissy sensibilities.

One is reminded of those Horrible History books - only a matter of time (well a few gundred years anyway) before they do one on The Nasty Nazis or the Terrible Tories. I wonder, is the Holocaust Folklore too?