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Jarrow Jarrow is a small town located about five miles east of Newcastle. It is well worth a visit as it has a very interesting history dating back centuries, and today it is home to, among other things, Bede's World and St Paul's Church. And of course Jarrow was the focus of the famous Jarrow Crusade, an event that has gone down in British history as a defining moment in the development of a welfare state. The Jarrow Crusade Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries Jarrow had been a prosperous town whose industry was centred around the thriving shipyard and steelworks owned by local MP Charles Palmer. But then in the early 20th century the shipbuilding industry went into decline, which left towns such as Jarrow in a precarious position. By the early 1930s the world-wide economy was in depression, Palmer's shipyard had closed and over 70% of Jarrow's men were unemployed. The subsequent poverty and despair resulted in 200 men from Jarrow marching nearly 300 miles to London to protest about the lack of welfare for those suffering as a result the depression - the so-called Jarrow Crusade of 1936. Although things didn't change immediately, the event was still central to the subsequent development of a welfare state in Britain. However, it still took many years for the city to fully recover - some would say it never has. Copyright © 1995 to 2016 Smooth Hound Systems Smooth Hound Systems accepts no liability with regards to the accuracy of the information on this site. Users are advised to double check information such as dates, times, prices etc. | |||||
