Fortitude in as hardship

ONLY the most senior of our senior citizens will remember the 1930s.

For the rest of us born later, the decade typically 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, one of which incorporated the fledgling Newcastle Airport.

In our region, as elsewhere, 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 global marketplace, 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 there are numerous archive images recalling jobless men marching for the right to work.

And then, scandalising the nation in 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated so he could marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

But the final kick in the teeth was to come. Many from afar 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 that 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.

Enjoy our selection of photographs recalling year-by-year some of what was going on in Newcastle during the decade.

■ The Scotswood works of Messers Sir W.G Armstrong, Whitworth and Co (Engineers) Ltd. The picture shows the 12 o’clock buzzer, a signal for a rush of workers for dinner, a main machine shop bay showing locomotive parts being handled in big quantities, assembling an Armstrong-sulzer Diesel railroad engine, a Steam Giant ready to test and a corner of a cylinder bay in the locomotive works on September 10, 1936

■ Air raid shelter sign on Northumberland Street, Newcastle. December 1939

■ A fly-past on the opening day at Newcastle Airport, 1935

■ Newcastle’s Stoll Picture House, Westgate Road, 1934

■ Northumberland Street, Newcastle, decorated for the coronation of George VI, May 6, 1937

■ Newcastle United v Arsenal at Wembley in the 1932 FA Cup final. United won 2-1

■ An unemployment march in Newcastle on September 29, 1931