Next week, Paul Benstead will achieve something his great-grandfather never did. He will travel from his home in north-east England to Downing Street, where he will meet the Prime Minister.
90 years ago, Paul’s great-grandad Charles, walked three weeks and 290 miles from Jarrow for the same privilege. But when the exhausted dockworker reached London on October 26 1936, alongside 200 weary men and their inspirational Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, the Tory Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was “too busy” to meet with them.
On their long journey to highlight the desperate poverty that followed the closure of the town’s main employer, Palmers’ Shipyard and Steelworks, the men had carried a wooden petition box for Parliament containing a document signed by 12,000 townspeople. The petition was received in the Commons but never debated – and the men were housed in a disused workhouse in south London before returning home by train.
It was a disgraceful way to treat 200 people who set off hungry and endured bleak conditions to reach London, and, as Wilkinson said, “an insult to the people of Jarrow”. Some of the men, wrongly believed they had failed, not knowing their dignified walk would become a foundational journey that continues to inspire future generations.
On Tuesday, Paul will be among dozens of relatives of the Jarrow Marchers who will bring a replica of the petition back to Parliament, once again in lock step with their Labour MP, Kate Osborne. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has signalled he is willing to right the wrongs of the past by meeting the families, and Westminster will also host a special exhibition of photographs, some never seen before, that tell the story of the march.
“When the marchers got to Yorkshire, they were given ham sandwiches and some of the men ate the bread and posted the ham home,” Paul, who grew up on stories of the Jarrow March says. “My great-grandad left with a knapsack. They lived off the land. It was a feat of endurance but I know they were shocked by the goodwill of strangers.”
He says the marchers understood they were taking a stand not just for their own community, but for the dignity of all workers. “They just knew they had to do something – anything,” Paul says. “They wanted to find the dignity that was being taken from them. And he just wanted his job back. As simple as that.”
Charles had been a 36-year-old father of six when he joined the march, after whole families and entire streets were thrown out of work. “He was a gregarious man, full of craic,” Paul says. “But when Palmers closed down all the jobs and supporting jobs went, leaving thousands of families out of work.”
Bronwyn Mogie, 33, who works in marketing, and her dad William, 67, a retired plater – the last in his family to work in the shipyards – discovered their connection to the Jarrow Marchers when researching their family tree. The anniversary brings up a lot of emotion,” Bronwyn says. “Our ancestors went to meet a government who weren’t interested in Jarrow.”
Bronwyn’s two great-uncles, Robert and Henry Mogie, were 24 and 31 when they joined the march. “1,000 people signed up, and Robert and Henry were two of the 200 who passed the medical to go,” she says. But she says the courage of those who were left behind should also be remembered. “When they were on the march their benefits were stopped so the women, the ones left behind, had to make do, to find ways to feed their kids and that must have been really hard.
“I honestly don’t know how they did it. They would have been struggling even more. So when we remember Jarrow it’s about remembering them too, sacrifice and community – you literally had to stand together on the march and stand together at home. What does it tell us today? That you still have to stick together, that there is power in numbers. We’re very proud of our family and what they believed in.”
Bronwyn is behind a campaign to create a Shipyard Heritage Museum celebrating the region’s culture and heritage. “It’s part of being from Jarrow – that passion and pride is something we feel now – so you have to think it’s something that’s been passed down the generations, it’s part of being from here, a link from them to us.
“Today – with Number 10 North – I do feel more connected to government as a northerner. And when Andy Burnham did the Great North Run he mentioned Jarrow – he said when he passed it helped him keep going. To have a Prime Minister mention Jarrow, to know Jarrow, was really important.”
Kieran Maxwell, 30, works for ASLEF and lives in London, but grew up in Jarrow. He found out he was related to the Mogie brothers while untangling a family tree with his dying grandfather. “Growing up in Jarrow of course I knew about the March but this was the first I’d heard about our own relatives,” he says. “I’m very proud. I look back and think it’s a story that still means a lot today – because it’s about a group of people not willing to put up with what was happening.
“They wanted to make themselves heard and try and win back the dignity they’d lost. They felt they had to do something, to say we’re not taking this lying down and we will be seen. Whenever people ask where I’m from I’m always very proud to say I’m from Jarrow.” When Paul and the other proud Jarrow relatives deliver the replica of the petition to Westminster, he knows he will feel the echo of his ancestors, and the sense that history is repeating.
“People are facing these challenges and threats again aren’t they?” He says, thoughtfully. “That’s what makes it so important. The working man is a pawn, they’re suffering while the wealthy ones at the top make money. Then it was industrialists, now it’s tech billionaires, but it’s still the working man that’s suffering.
“So many people are finding it hard just to pay the bills. For the first time I can remember people aren’t expecting things to get better, the younger generations aren’t necessarily thinking things will keep progressing. So many of the challenges they faced in 1936 are back. Ninety years on we’re still facing the same battles – the battle to be treated with dignity, to be treated fairly, no-one wants anything extra just to be treated with fairness.
“It’s more relevant now than it’s ever been. We have economic deprivation, we have money and wealth and power in the hands of a few people. The men on the march believed in fairness and fair play. And if you want to define Englishness it’s fair play.”
In 1939, Ellen Wilkinson MP wrote a book called ‘The town that was Murdered’, to try again to bring attention to the deep poverty being endured in Jarrow. Kate Osborne MP publishes a book today, ‘The People’s History of the Jarrow March’ that calls Jarrow “town of heartbreak, town of hope”.
In it, she argues that her town’s journey is a sustaining story for us all “of heroism, of sacrifice, and of the power and politics of hope”. Far from a dry history lesson, Osborne says the march was “a vision of the past that speaks directly to our present, of the pressing need to strive to secure the future prosperity of all our children and of our entire community. Tomorrow can be better than today. If you fight for it hard enough, plan, organise and argue for it, then it will materialise.”
On Monday, Paul will be thinking of his great-grandfather and a historic wrong righted. “It will be such a privilege to be there, to share that pride and that hope of doing things better, to finally present the petition and have our relatives’ efforts recognised,” he says. “It’s marvellous that we can do that. If my great-grandad was looking down, I think he would enjoy that.”