From Jarrow Crusade to World War II
Nostalgia Editor WE step back in time to a decade that is slowly slipping from living memory.
Only people well into their 80s, or older, will remember the 1930s.
For the rest of us born later, perhaps it comes across as a rather grim era characterised by economic hardship and poverty, political extremism, and the slow march towards World War II. But was it all like that? The 1930s saw the recently-formed BBC go from strength to strength, while British pilots pioneered new aviation routes.
Here in the North East, cinema audience figures went through the roof, new dance halls attracted thousands of young people, and some - even if not all - of the slum housing began to come down and new estates were built
Families flocked to seaside spots like South Shields and Whitley Bay, while the first Butlins opened down in Skegness (for those who could afford it).
Even in football, if the last 50 years have delivered slim pickings for North East clubs, both Newcastle United and Sunderland won major trophies in the 1930s.
But for the most part, history will recall the decade as a time of turmoil - and the industrial North East would suffer badly.
The nation’s traditional heavy industries – coal mining, shipbuilding, iron and textile manufacture – were increasingly uncompetitive in the world market, a market that was even more depressed after the 1929 Wall Street crash.
It became a time of economic decline and domestic hardship for many in our region, and nowhere better summed up that hardship than Jarrow.
When the town’s giant Palmer’s shipyard and steelworks closed early in the decade, more than 80% of people there found themselves unemployed and hungry.
Photographs and film footage of the 1936 Jarrow Crusade, when 200 men marched to London in search of jobs and a future, are some of the most striking images from the last century.
And then, scandalising the nation, King Edward VIII abdicated so he could marry the American divorcee Wallace Simpson.
But the final kick in the teeth was to come. Many had viewed the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany with alarm as the 1930s rolled on.
As the decade drew to a close, it was clear conflict was imminent. In September 1939, little more than 20 years after the First World War ended, the whole thing erupted again with a vengeance. Front: An aerial view of the River Tyne and its bridges, and Newcastle and Gateshead quaysides, c1935 (Historic England)