The Thirties: An Intimate History of Britain. Juliet Gardiner
the hell does this happen?” He says, “Well, they’re so accustomed to giving tips, this doesn’t mean a thing.” They may have intended well, they may not, but they just gave tips.’
‘Eighth day,’ wrote Joseph Albaya, who was marching in a Sheffield contingent on 17 February. ‘Kettering — one of those towns that didn’t know what unemployment was — also where the inhabitants looked at us if were dogs.’ The marchers were put up in the workhouse. ‘Speech by Mayor to welcome us — (he said he believed in action by constitutional means).’ The next day it was ‘on to Bedford our longest trek to date — never been so tired as on this day — feet in a terrible condition … the trek was about 32 miles on hard roads — admittedly may have done rambles this length but never with the necessity of keeping in step — dark before we reached Bedford — five miles out the leaders had to keep encouraging the marchers — kept telling us we were there — these to my mind were silly tactics as the result was disappointment — had one final rest on the side of the road — utterly fagged out — was stretched out in a ditch — a Good Samaritan came out and dished cigarettes out.’
Aware that the Home Secretary, Sir John Gilmour, and the Attorney General had both warned mothers along the marchers’ route to keep their children indoors and shopkeepers to shutter their windows, hinting at the prospect of ‘grave disorder, public disturbances’, even ‘bloodshed’, the NUWM was determined to avoid confrontations. ‘We’re here to demonstrate against the operation of the Means Test and the economy cuts and not to have a diversion or fight with the police which would misrepresent the whole idea of the March,’ warned Harry McShane. ‘We’re here to protest peacefully and with discipline.’ Any transgressor would usually be packed off back home — though only after a meeting had been held with all the contingent to decide his fate. Misdeeds might include drunkenness (though according to most marchers this was rare: ‘There was no money for drink anyway in the first place.’ It took Frank McCusker six weeks to march from Scotland, and ‘I could say I had about six pints o’ beer frae Glasgow to London’), scrounging, brawling, stealing another man’s boots, pilfering the collection boxes or pulling off a scam such as arriving in a town in advance of the main body of marchers, collecting money from sympathetic onlookers and pocketing the proceeds before rejoining the march.
If the marchers were organised, so were the authorities. Instructions were reiterated that any soft-hearted local PAC thinking of offering food or loans of blankets to the marchers would be surcharged for this largesse. Chief Constables along the route were required to file reports about the number, progress and behaviour of each contingent, and whether any marchers had previous convictions for breaches of the peace.
In fact both sides were concerned to avoid any aggressive confrontation as the marchers streamed into Hyde Park on Sunday, 25 February 1934. Unknown to police or marchers, a vigilante committee had assembled in a small flat behind Selfridges, watching the action and hovering by the telephone to report any police brutality among the crowd of over 50,000 marchers. It was a distinguished posse, ‘rather like the members of a cultural, intellectual and progressive Who’s Who’: E.M. Forster, Professor Julian Huxley, Vera Brittain, her husband, Professor George Caitlin, and her friend the novelist Winifred Holtby, ‘tall, calm and big-boned’, and Dr Edith Summerskill were there, as were a couple of barristers, two young solicitors and Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman. Claud Cockburn brought H.G. Wells, who had been unwell, and was ‘wrapped in mufflers’. The assembled group were either members of, or distinguished left-wingers who had been invited as observers by, the National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL), since previously reports of acts of harassment by the police had been easy to discredit since they came mainly from the victims themselves.
The NCCL (now Liberty) had been set up by a one-time actor and freelance journalist, Ronald Kidd, who also owned a radical, free-thinking bookshop, the Punch and Judy, in Villiers Street, where unexpurgated copies of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness could be purchased, as well as books about the Soviet Union which were not ‘full of hysterical anti-communism’, and the barrister, writer and soon-to-be Independent MP, A.P. Herbert, as a result of Kidd’s disquiet at the behaviour of police agents provocateurs during the 1932 Hunger March, and Herbert’s unease at the police acting as ‘bandits’, ordering drinks in nightclubs after hours in order to secure convictions. The civil libertarians peered down at ‘the sea of hats in the Park — caps, trilbies, hard felts and the occasional bowler’ marching through the grey, slanting drizzle, and some ventured down to the edge of the crowds to get a closer look. The music of the pipe and flute bands of the Scottish marchers (Glasgow’s contingent alone boasted eight flute bands) hung in the air, interspersed with much shouting of slogans and singing of ‘The Internationale’ as the lines of unemployed marched in step, watched by lines of police, one unit atop Marble Arch with a telephone, ready to direct operations and summon reinforcements in case of trouble.
Joseph Albaya, who had been on the road for sixteen days, recorded:
Got up late for the GREAT DAY … put on clean shirt … long boring wait at Friends’ Meeting House where leaders entertained us in usual fashion by usual speeches — fell in outside, raining on my new outfit … put on selling Hunger March Bulletins — papers not counted so had plenty of chances of making a dishonest penny — rather alarmed by the reports of the older marchers of not keeping to the ranks consequently rather felt like a hero [sic] lined outside for ration of oranges and cigarettes and the singing of the daily ritual (the ‘Internationale’) — set off in fine style — rather impressed by the military bearing and dignity of the comrades — the consciousness that it was their Great Day had made the marchers buck themselves up — the contingent headed by Scottish pipers, fifes and drums … raining lightly all the time — my papers getting wet and not selling — soon picked up a companion who was trying to convey the usual idea that we were in for a blood bath — crowds increasing — also police contingent headed by three mounted policemen … under the command of a military-looking old bastard … Noticed that comrades’ London banners are much bigger and better than provincial ones and that London comrades are much more militant and less apathetic than provincial comrades [possibly partly because they were less exhausted] … the police led us into a better class district off the main traffic roads — blocks of imposing flats — I went berserk … yelling obscenities at the occupants of the flats — I was sobbing with rage — I never knew what class consciousness was until that moment — I was ready to do anything, charge the police, smash up everything in sight — it was the way the occupants of the flats looked at us … every flat seemed to have a balcony from which they laughed at us and then contemptuously threw down money — their contempt was so open that even the dullest of the marchers could see it. Christ! … if they had been on a level on us and not above us on their balconies well … I should have taken part willingly in my first riot.
Jack Gaster, a young lawyer, was the ILP representative on the London reception committee:
I was based in Marylebone and we were always organising the Hyde Park meetings … we used to go down to some stables behind Great Ormond Street owned by the Co-op and arrange for eight or ten horse drawn vehicles to come to Hyde Park to form a platform. In those days … there were no loudspeakers or anything like that … I had to marshal [the marchers] out of Hyde Park which was a very important job because we were determined to march down Oxford Street. The police were determined that we shouldn’t. They wanted to keep the marchers off the main streets. There were hundreds of thousands in the Park. We arranged for part of the march to leave Hyde Park by the Bayswater Road entrance … and another part to go out via Park Lane … and both to converge … There were police lined up, very senior officers because it was a very important thing, ‘mounties’ too. They said ‘Sorry, Mr Gaster, you can’t go down Oxford Street.’ I said ‘We’re going down.’ I was trembling in my shoes … but I very carefully put the Scottish marchers behind me. They were the real tough ones. I said, ‘These lads haven’t walked from all over England to be pushed into the back streets.’ ‘Sorry, we can’t allow it.’ I said, ‘Very well. We’re going down Oxford Street and the responsibility is yours … There’s going to be a fight. Do you want a fight? Does the government want a fight?’ They withdrew and we marched