What added colour to the difficult 1930s?
IT WAS NOT ALL DOOM AND GLOOM IN THIS DECADE – THERE WERE GOOD TIMES FOR SOME
SOUP kitchens, unemployed men queueing for work, and the defining image of the North East in this particular decade – the Jarrow Crusade.
We’ve reached the 1930s in our lookback at the life and times of the region.
It was an era characterised by mass unemployment, extremist politics and the menacing shadow of an approaching war.
The country’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.
A time of economic decline and domestic hardship for many in our region, nowhere better summed up the strife than Jarrow.
When the town’s giant Palmer’s shipyard and steelyard closed early in the decade, more than 80% of people there found themselves unemployed and hungry.
Photographs and flickering 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. Meanwhile, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany provided a chilling portent for the future. But were the 1930s all doom and gloom? Amidst the undoubted hardship, demolition began on many of the nation’s – and indeed region’s – slums, with new properties popping up in their places. On Tyneside, for example, the notorious area of Pipewellgate in Gateshead was torn down and families were given
Cinema ‘picture palaces’ opened in nearly every town and city, while new dance halls attracted thousands
spanking new homes in Beacon Lough and Wrekenton.
New cinema ‘picture palaces’ opened in nearly every town and city of Britain, while new dance halls attracted thousands of young people.
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).
As for our football teams, Newcastle United lifted the FA Cup for the third time, beating Arsenal at Wembley in 1932.
And at Roker Park, in 1936, Sunderland became the last North East team – to date – to win the league title.
As the decade came to its conclusion, however, war exploded in Europe before engulfing the globe after fears over Germany’s massive military buildup were finally realised.
Pictured left is a copy of the Chronicle’s front page on September 4, 1939, as the Second World War started to ramp up.
We had been promised “peace in our time”, but the world was entering an unprecedented age of ‘total war.’
What would the 1940s bring?