When they learned of this a month later, in November 1936, what did the ordinary man and woman think? Chips Channon felt that the issue had divided the nation into Cavaliers and Roundheads again, into romantics and puritans. Letters to national newspapers seemed to show huge popular support for the King, but on the other hand the singing of the national anthem at public events was markedly less enthusiastic than normal. A women’s demonstration at Buckingham Palace carried placards reading ‘God Save the King from Baldwin’, whilst at Marble Arch, a banner read, ‘After South Wales You Can’t Let Him Down’. The notion of Edward being ‘a people’s King’ with a feel for the common man still held firm. Writer Harold Nicolson summed it up thus: ‘The upper-class mind her being American more than they mind her being divorced. The lower class do not mind her being American but loathe the idea that she has had two husbands already.’ Small children in the streets sang a new version of an old carol: ‘Hark, the herald angels sing/Mrs Simpson’s pinched our king!’
Back in Nottingham in October 1936, the marchers stayed at Sneinton House, euphemistically described as a ‘municipal hostel’ but in effect a workhouse. Two more men dropped out here. One had to have all his teeth removed, a common drastic solution to dental problems for many working-class people in the era before the NHS. Boots the Chemists, based in Nottingham, donated some essential medical supplies. The Co-Op gave them 32 pairs of socks and boots and 12 pairs of trousers. Two local textile firms provided 200 pairs of fresh underwear, and thus refreshed and emboldened, the Crusaders left the city and set out across the flat agricultural fields of Nottinghamshire bound for Loughborough.
Even if I had not been intending to replicate their route exactly, I would certainly have been drawn to Bunny just from seeing the name on the map. The village, named by the Saxons after their word for reed (‘Bune’), lies halfway between the two and here the marchers stopped for lunch and were rejoined by Ellen Wilkinson who had dashed off to Leeds on Labour Party business. I arrive a little later than they did after a fairly nondescript plod and take a look around. It is a charming spot, although clearly that’s helped by the name. Everything in Bunny sounds cute; Bunny Village Hall, Bunny Primary School, even the Bunny Trading Estate (home to Fine Finish Kitchens, Appliance City UK, units available to let). An information board on the village green details local walks in the area that sound appealing – Sid’s Seat, Bradmore Church, the Pineapple Gate – but which will have to wait till another day. I take a stroll down Moor Lane and Church Lane which are delightful but for the first time on the march to date I have a feeling of dislocation, homesickness even. I wonder if the marchers ever felt this way, or whether they were always buoyed by the camaraderie and adventure and the sheer selfish pleasure of getting out of Jarrow for a few weeks.
In the bar of the Rancliffe Arms the lights are coming on. A few tankards of foaming ale will be raised tonight and the issues of the day debated at the bar. Roughly 60 per cent of Nottinghamshire voted to leave the EU, although anti-EU feeling was strongest in former manufacturing towns like Mansfield rather than commuter villages like Bunny. Various signs tell me that CCTV is in operation, not anywhere in particular, just generally in the village. A man loading his Range Rover with rubbish for the tip eyes me with interest. For the first time, I get the feeling that I might be asked what exactly I’m doing snooping around here, and not entirely out of idle, genial curiosity.
Then a cheering encounter. A nice curly-haired lady with glasses and a big scarf is selling kindling by the roadside for one pound a bag. It’s a family tradition. ‘My father started to do it when he was 90 for something to do really. We said, “Why don’t you chop some of those old trees down and sell it for kindling. You could give the money to charity.” We change it around from time to time. We’ve done it for the church and Rainbows. You’re not from Bunny are you?’
‘No. I’m from the north.’
‘Ah, the north,’ she says, with a little mysterious laugh, as if it were Narnia. She’s heard of the Jarrow march but didn’t know that they stopped for lunch in Bunny. ‘Oh, at the Rancliffe?’ Well, no, probably a tin mug of tea and corned beef butty on the village green. ‘Well, there are worse places to have lunch. I’m biased as it’s my home village but I do think it’s beautiful.’
I agree and though I have no need of a bag of kindling I give this kindly welcoming lady a few quid for whatever charity she’s currently supporting and head off. As I go, I reflect on how very old fashioned the encounter was – the travelling fellow, the roadside stall. Once, and not that long ago, travellers on the road were much more common than today and would pitch up in villages for work or leisure. Reading Alfred Wainwright’s A Pennine Journey, I was struck by how the author, then a young man on a walking tour two years after the Jarrow march, would simply knock on doors and ask whether the residents could put him up for the night in return for a few shillings. He even offers some advice on this matter: ‘Avoid the hotels, choose the lowly homesteads. Be one of the company, do as they do. If the family goes to bed early, be the first upstairs. If the host eats with his fingers, do the same. If he repeats loudly after his meal, make the attempt. He’ll love you as a brother and take you into his confidence.’
In Loughborough, the marchers stayed at another drill hall. According to the nice lady in Bunny, Loughborough’s is still here and I noted its address in case I got the chance to make a visit. The skies were darkening though and I wondered again how 200 men (actually 192 by this time) often managed to make better time than me. Perhaps I needed to get myself a harmonica band. Somewhere between Bunny and Loughborough, the marchers’ supply bus driver stopped to help a motorist who’d broken down on the main road. He turned out to be an ex Jarrow man himself; 20 years a resident in the town who had left to find work like so many Tynesiders had been forced to do. Between the General Strike of 1926 and the Jarrow march, South Tyneside lost almost 100,000 people. London and the home counties gained a million.
As the Nottingham road finally slides into the outskirts of Loughborough, my eye is caught by two buildings. Firstly, a city pub that promises ‘Netbuster Carp Fishing Here’ (which brings forth visions of men in waders splashing about struggling with slippery tench amidst girls drinking spritzers and blokes watching SkySports). Secondly, a glorious building built around the time of the Jarrow march and a fabulous example of art deco thirties architecture. Lynne Dyer, who blogs about Loughborough, tells me this would have been newly opened when the marchers passed by and is still going strong as Beacon Bingo (a great-granny won a quarter-of-a-million pounds here a few months before I set off).
It’s said that when a visiting Aussie saw Loughborough on a road sign he announced ‘What kind of place is Loogabarooga?’ This has now become the affectionate nickname for the town, which for me will always be associated with Human Groovers. Back when I was at college in the mid-1980s, the campus was a sea of tribes. There were swots doing chemistry who liked the Alan Parsons Project and Marillion. There was a new wave of British heavy metal-heads into the Tygers of Pan Tang, who generally got kicked out after a term. There were girls who loved Rush who wore cheesecloths and girls into Dollar who wore headbands, and pale young oiks like me with a copy of Camus’s L’Etranger in his overcoat pocket and an obsession with the first Human League album.
But perhaps most noticeable of all were the PE students who would come down to the bar en masse in tracksuits at nine o’clock, put Rod Stewart on the jukebox and drink pints of ‘still orange’. Their course was officially called Human Movement but we hipsters obviously renamed them Human Groovers.
One of the few things I knew about Loughborough was that it had built a worldwide reputation as a capital of excellence in the field of sport thanks to the brilliant facilities at the university. Alumni include Paula Radcliffe, Seb Coe, Monty Panesar, Tanni Grey-Thompson and former Arsenal goalie Bob Wilson. Today, the university attracts Human Groovers from all over the world. I did see a few athletic-looking types knocking around in leggings
and lycra but if I was expecting to see anyone lobbing a javelin down the high street or doing squat thrusts in Pizza Hut I was disappointed.
‘Loogabarooga’ is now the name given to a festival of children’s literature, which was in full swing when I arrived. The local Waterstones was festooned with promotional materials and classic children’s books from Black Beauty to Judy Blume. Sometimes festivals and their host towns have only the most tenuous of links but a jamboree celebrating kids’ literature makes perfect sense in Loughborough, which was for many years the home of Ladybird books. There’s a green plaque in Angel Yard at the site where books were printed from 1915 to 1973. Local printers Wills and Hepworth decided to try their hand at ‘pure and healthy literature for children’ during the First World War, and the publishing house grew to be one of the most distinctive and best-loved British brands.
Originally Ladybird published children’s fiction of a rather folksy, cutesy bent like Tiny Tots Travels and Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales. Bunnikins and Downy Duckling were very popular comfort reading during the Second World War. But following this, Ladybird took a defining decision to expand into educational non-fiction. The Learnabout books of the 1960s introduced children to everything from metalwork to heraldry. Thanks to Ladybird, I became mildly obsessed with the latter whilst still at primary school and am still fluent in terms like sable, gules, chevron, dexter, sinister and lions couchant – knowledge which has thus far proved entirely useless outside pub quizzes. Ladybird’s Keywords reading scheme taught generations of British kids to read.
There were other less predictable results. How it Works: The Motor Car, published in 1965, was used by Thames Valley police driving school as a general introductory guide for rookie cops. Their Charles and Diana wedding book in 1981 was the first to be published and on the shelves within five days. It sold one and a half million copies. Ladybird is now an imprint of Penguin books and publishes Peppa Pig and Hello Kitty. But the classic look of Ladybird lives on in the adult versions produced by the brilliant Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris using the beautiful original illustrations and covering such topics as The Hangover, The Hipster and The Zombie Apocalypse. By happy coincidence, the second tranche of these were published on the day I arrived and piled high on the tables of Waterstones.
It is possible then that the marchers’ kids would have had a Ladybird book or at least have seen them. But they would have been spoiled for choice for a good read if they’d had access to a decent library. The 1930s were a boom decade for children’s literature. One might even say it was the decade in which children’s literature as know it really began; in the sense of novels and stories set in a believable world or a newly minted fantastical milieu and written by contemporary writers, rather than fairy stories and folk tales. Children’s authors began to move away from producing dull, adult-approved morality tales to stories that would appeal directly to children. The thirties brought us Swallows and Amazons, The Sword in the Stone, Professor Branestawm, Charlotte’s Web, The Hobbit, National Velvet and Mary Poppins as well as some classics of what was almost social realism for kids: Alison Uttley’s richly evocative study of rural Derbyshire life The Country Child and, the year after the Jarrow march and perhaps influenced by it, The Family from One End Street, a sentimental but sympathetic account of life among the working classes in the fictional town of Otwell.
Beyond the metaphorical and actual warmth of the bookshop, a chilly Friday night in Loughborough was warming up socially. A smart middle-aged couple meet, kiss, embrace under a street light and he says ‘Shall we see what’s on at the pictures?’ It could be a twenty-first century Brief Encounter, except the huge Cineworld here has a lot more to offer than a Lyons Corner House or a rock bun in the station waiting room, including a Bella Italia, Nando’s and Pizza Express.
At the big Sainsbury’s, I finally met two Human Groovers, sports science students Lucy and Dawn. They wear tracksuits and their basket is definitive (smoothies, filtered water, wholegrain baps) but Dawn is wearing a t-shirt of the uber cool German jazz label ECM records. This suggests far better taste in music than the rugger buggers on my course, who were Queen fans to a man. ‘They’re all into hip hop now,’ laughs Lucy. ‘They think they’re gangsta rappers. But they still take their rugby gear home to Surrey for mum to wash.’
Whether Dawn, Lucy or the sports scientists of Loughborough Uni would have approved I doubt, but I decide to take the weight (and rucksack) off in the warmth of the Nepalese curry house and the Swan in the Rushes pub, both of which had been recommended to me. The advance press was no hype; the curry was breathtaking and the range of beers in the boozer mind boggling. But the saloon bar was raucous and crowded and I couldn’t shake that feeling of being out of place and at a loose end. So I left Loogabarooga to its own Friday night devices. A good band called The Wave Pictures have a lovely, observational indie song called ‘Friday Night in Loughborough’ – witty, sad, pitch perfect. The line, ‘With the girl from Bakers Oven holding back your hair,’ is both brilliant and poignant; fans of the fast-food retail scene will know that Bakers Oven was taken over by Greggs in the mid-1990s. Sic transit gloria mundi.
STAGE FIFTEEN
LOUGHBOROUGH TO LEICESTER
22 October, 11 miles
With the same sense of purpose, though less sense of impending catastrophe, the Jarrow men left Loughborough bound for Leicester as the embattled Spanish Republican government moved to Barcelona, driven north before Franco’s remorseless advance. Europe’s other two leading Fascists, Hitler and Mussolini, were preparing to meet and sign the Rome–Berlin Axis and bring the Second World War a little nearer. If you were trying to forget all this and relaxing at home on 21 October 1936, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson were attempting to solve the mystery of the Bruce-Partington plans in a new series on BBC Radio. Vying for column inches in the papers of the day was the Jarrow march itself; Scullion, Riley and Paddy the dog were becoming household names and Ellen Wilkinson one of the most famous women in Britain. The Leicester Evening News met the march en route and were much taken by Wilkinson’s blue suede shoes. The coverage was extensive and constant but often trivial and even patronising. Five of the marchers had set up a committee specifically for dealing with the press and they were keen to maintain an upbeat, positive and non-political image of the march. It worked, but inevitably led to a lot of chattily inane columns about dogs and shoes.
The 15 footsore miles from Loughborough to Leicester as the main road are unremarkable to the point of a walking stupor. With two important appointments later this cold, bright afternoon, I make no apology for hopping on the Kinchbus No. 2 around Quorn (which is a real place) and letting it do the hard work for a few miles. Eighty years ago, when the Jarrow Crusade came to Leicester, the shoe workers of the town mended their boots overnight for them. When Ellen Wilkinson went to see them and thank them at 2am, she found them happy in the charitable work they were doing. ‘There was such a gay enthusiasm for this unusual bit of help that it was fun to be among the men. One boot repairer, pulling to pieces an appalling piece of footwear remarked, ‘It seems sort of queer doing your own job just because you want to do it, and for someone you want to help instead of doing it because you’d starve if you didn’t. I wonder if that’s how the chaps in Russia feel about it, now they’re running their own show.’
Sidney Sterek, one of the reporters who walked with the marchers, reported, ‘If the wives and families of the Jarrow pilgrims to London could have seen their men folk last night, they might have mistaken our sturdy and well-nourished army for a huge theatrical male chorus. The Crusaders have been rigged out in new flannel trousers, new boots and underwear. If Leicester had done no more than this for the marchers, it would have been said … that it just about topped the list of the most hospitable cities, towns and villages through which we have so far marched.’ But according to the day’s North Mail, back on Tyneside, Leicester did much more. ‘It fell around our necks and hailed us as friends in dire need of assistance.’
Perhaps it could remember its own recent past and privations. While Jarrow’s steelworks and shipyards were booming in 1905, Leicester’s shoe and hosiery industries were being badly hit by a trade downturn and organised their own hunger march. A group of 440 men were sent on their way to Trafalgar Square by an estimated 20,000 townspeople. Many newspapers and commentators remarked on the similarities between the two marches. The Leicester men were well drilled and disciplined, much was made of their non-political and spiritual nature, and the Labour Party would have nothing to do with them.
In 1936, when the Jarrow marchers arrived in Leicester, one of the most curious aspects of the whole Crusade occurred, or rather probably didn’t occur. The Church of St Marks is now, I discovered deflatingly, the Empire Conference and Banqueting Centre, having been ‘decommissioned’ as a place of worship in 1986. But in 1936 it was one of the main Anglican parish churches of the district and a strange, spurious tale grew up that the marchers had come here and had their feet symbolically washed in a religious blessing. They in return gave the church a crucifix made from wood hewn in Jarrow. None of this seems to be true, but the story gained credence to the degree that 52 years later, the Mayor of Leicester returned the cross (or at least, a cross) in a civic event attended by a hundred or so people including many parishioners (who said they had been at the original ceremony) and six Jarrow marchers, all of whom remembered something that seems to have been completely fictional. One marcher, Jimmy Foggon, even remarked, ‘I don’t remember it very well but it’s part of the march and that’s all there is to it.’
Long Road from Jarrow Page 24
