The First National Hunger March – 90th Anniversary

90 years ago today (November 17^th) the first National Hunger March reached London. It was organised by the National Unemployed Workers Movement (NUWM) and its demands included work or full maintenance and rent. The Programme of the Great National Hunger March on London said that the movement was struggling for “the general uplifting of the working class as a whole until emancipation from the clutches of a decaying system of society”.

The first group to move off was from Aberdeen, travelling by boat and bus to Glasgow via Leith.  The Scottish contingent marched from Glasgow on October 17^th 1922. As they passed through southern Scotland they held public meetings and collections. They were given food, boots and shelter by trade unionists, individuals, churches and others.

The Devon contingent were sent off from Plymouth with a concert. When they reached Yeovil a few days later the Mayor refused them accommodation so they slept on the steps of the war memorial. The irony being that many of the hunger marchers and unemployed men in general were veterans of the very war the memorial was built for.

The Barrow in Furness board of guardians paid for boots and clothes for the local contingent and told other boards along the way they would pay for the marchers to be put up in workhouses. Another Lancashire group started from Bolton on the last day of October and were given money, food and clothing raised from donations by, among others, the mayor, local trades people, and working class people. 200 more were to join this contingent from the Manchester area.

By the time the Bolton and Manchester marchers reached Staffordshire they had grown sick of the bland food so they complained to the chief marshal of the group, Tom McKay, who told them if they were sick of bread and cheese they could vary it with cheese and bread. When they reached Leek they were given bread and jam by the trades council. At other times they struggled to get enough food at all but in Derby they were given 100 tins of bully beef (the staple food of the British Army at the time) by the Sherwood Forester’s Regiment. They were joined by the Scots and had a good breakfast provided by a local hotel. 320 marched out of Derby.

This contingent lost 20 men in Loughborough due to illness after they were soaked. They had to leave them behind in the workhouse infirmary.

Another group marched from South Wales on November 3^rd while one of the Lancashire groups marched through Birmingham and Coventry. They too complained about the food. They ate little but Bully Beef and actually buried a tin of it in a cemetery with mock solemnity and a service was read “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Goodbye Bully, our bellies you’ve burst.”

War memorials and bully beef weren’t the only reminders of the First World War. When the Ramsgate and Dover groups linked up they marched behind a banner which read “In the Trenches Yesterday, Unemployed Today.”

Conditions on the march could be tough even for veterans of the trenches. Being late in the year it was often cold and wet and the accommodation wasn’t always good. There were even times when marchers would arrive in a town and have literally no where to sleep. According to Wal Hannington, the leading figure in the NUWM, the men (they were all men on the first march) knew before they set out the hardships they would face:

“On the cold and wintry roads, often to be soaked to the skin after marching in rain, but their spirit remained undaunted. They marched knowing why they marched, bearing within their breasts a feeling of hatred towards the system which was slowly starving themselves, their wives and their children.”

On November 15^th the various contingents from all over the country reached the outskirts of London. They then had to find accommodation. 526 from Scotland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Black Country, Tyneside, Lincolnshire and the Midlands were housed in Barnet. Half were put up in  the workhouse and half in army barracks. In Barnet there was no bread and cheese or even cheese and bread. They got shepherd’s pie, bread and margarine and tea – lots and lots of cups of tea. They were given money to pay for little things like haircuts or tobacco, there was a concert in their honour and some had their boots repaired for free.

One man, a war veteran, said “The last time I was in London was when my battalion crossed to Waterloo en route for France. Then luxuries of all kinds were pressed in my hands and pockets, and the flags were waving for us … I was thinking of the different reception we shall get tomorrow.”

On the 17^th there was a 20,000 strong rally in Hyde park to meet the marchers. The Welsh and Devon contingents marched into the park singing:

“Lloyd George won the war                                                                                                                                                                                         So let him win the next                                                                                                                                                                                                And we’ll all stop at home.”

Perhaps they hadn’t heard the news, while they were marching Lloyd George’s government had fallen and a new one had been elected.

When the Scottish contingent arrived at the park gates they were greeted with a great cheer. There were speeches and the NUWM leader Wal Hannington demanded that the new Prime Minister, Bonar Law, meet with the marchers.

The workhouses were not applying the rules strictly at this time despite attempts by the government to have them do so and despite the government trying to whip up the press against the march and unemployed workers generally. The newspapers talked of a communist plot and some printed the criminal records of march organisers. It later transpired that this information had come to the press from Special Branch via the Prime Minister’s office and that much of it was wrong and included information on men who weren’t even involved in the march or the movement. The government was later heavily criticised in parliament and even by the Home Office which described it as a “deplorable business”.

When the great rally in Trafalgar Square came it was so large that three speakers used different sides of the plinth at the same time. Hannington again demanded to speak to the PM while the communist MP Shapurji Saklatvala said “We have been telling you since the revolution in Russia in 1917 that mankind has discovered another cure for unemployment.” Jack Riley, from the Kent contingent, said “The time will come when the workers will organise their own army … we will be prepared to meet force with force.”

This rally was soon followed by a march of 50,000 and a delegation was sent to speak to the Prime Minister. Bonar Law still refused to meet them so they refused in turn to speak to the government ministers he sent in his place.

This process of marches, rallies and delegations continued right through the end of the year and into the next. Soon reinforcements were needed and new contingents set off from Dundee, Sheffield and several other places. The strain was showing. There were arguments within contingents, some wanted to go home, some wanted to stay and a few just left of their own accord. One man, walking home alone, was so exhausted he smashed a sweetshop window to get a bed in a police station for the night after which he was sent home by train.

In parliament Bonar Law was attacked  by MPs sympathetic to unemployed workers for refusing to meet a delegation of marchers. He responded in much the same way as we would expect his current heir in Downing Street to saying “I am sick and tired of hearing about the unemployed marchers and  do not want to have anything more to do with them.”

100 marchers, led by Hannington, later staged a protest inside parliament. They sang the Red Flag but got no joy from the government.

The new contingents on the road often received better support from the towns they passed through than the earlier marchers. Individuals, labour clubs and trades councils as well as churches and even sympathetic small business people gave generously.

The TUC called a demonstration in support of the marchers and against the problem of unemployment on January 7^th (1923). The demonstration was called Unemployed Sunday. On the back of this they also formed a joint committee with the NUWM on unemployment. Perhaps a similar committee could be useful today bringing together unions, unemployed and disabled groups and other community activists opposed to the current government’s austerity lies.

Unemployed Sunday was a big demo of employed and unemployed demanding action on unemployment. But the number of hunger marchers in London was declining so two marches left London to try to bring in new recruits. They didn’t succeed to any great extent but even when big victories eluded them a small win could keep them going.

On one of these marches the contingent arrived in Rugby where they argued with the board of guardians about the food on offer. The marchers warned the guardians that they were determined to break the regulations laid down by the Home Office. The guardians warned the police and reinforcements were brought in to guard the houses of the guardians and the hall where the marchers were to sleep but the marchers had a plan.

They called a protest and that evening they marched through the town in force, but not quite all of them were present. Some went off to the workhouse with a rough plan they had been provided with by a local worker sympathetic to the cause. 14 ‘direct actionists’ stormed the workhouse and forced the storeroom door. From there they took 28 pots of jam. Hannington then hurried to the protest where he spoke and announced they would be having jam for breakfast.

Despite small wins like the jam heist the First National Hunger March came to an end in February 1923, Bonar Law never met with a delegation but the unemployed marchers of the 1920s had embarrassed and harangued the government in parliament, marched down streets in almost every corner of the country, held protests, public meetings and mass rallies in London and elsewhere and had kept the issue of unemployment in the press and in people’s minds for months. Perhaps more importantly from a historical perspective they had created a legacy that lives on defiantly to this day. 90 years on I salute the hunger marchers of 1922/23 and I’m sure I’m not the only one who is still inspired by them.

[This (very) brief history of the First National Hunger March is largely drawn from The Hunger Marchers in Britain 1920-1940 by Peter Kingford with some supporting information from other sources including Unemployed Struggles 1919-1936 by Wal Hannington. These are good sources for the unemployed movement of the whole period of the 1920s and 30s. I also recommend No Mean Fighter by Harry McShane and Voices from the Hunger Marches which is a collection of interviews with Scottish hunger marchers edited by Ian MacDougall.]