Harrogate welcomed the Jarrow marches to-day as cheerfully as if they were a relief column raising a siege. The music of the mouth-organ band might have been that of the bagpipes so surely did it bring the people flocking, and when the two hundred reached the Concert Rooms there were hundreds of folk drawn up on the slopes around to cheer them. The police were in attendance and there was a big banner raised saying, ╥Harrogate workers welcome the Jarrow marchers.╙ At the Drill Hall, the headquarters for the night, the crowd was even denser.
It was the same to-day all along the road from Ripon. The villagers of Ripley and Killinghall rushed to their doors to see the marchers pass; motorists waved as they went by; one shouted, ╥How are you sticking it?╙ and a woman cried, ╥Hello, Geordies.╙ And the ╥Geordies╙ themselves were in great form, so that every moment I expected the band to change from ╥Annie Laurie╙ and ╥Swanee River╙ to ╥Cheer, Boys, Cheer.╙ Contributions to the ╥kitty╙ fell in as we went; here it was a pound there it was a penny, the penny specifically being the offering of an ecstatic little girl who ran across the road to meet us as if no one less than Bonnie Prince Charlie was at our head.
There can be no doubt that as a gesture the march is a bounding success. I fell in with it this morning on the Ripon road. Under its two banners (╥Jarrow Crusade╙), with its harmonicas, its kettledrum, and its four hundred feet, it was going strong. The marchers have with them two doctors, a barber, a group of pressmen, a Labrador dog mascot, and for a great deal of the time so far the Mayor of Jarrow (Alderman J. W. Thompson), who keeps travelling back to Jarrow to maintain touch with his civic duties and then south again to maintain touch with the marchers. It is an example of civic spirit probably without parallel anywhere else in the country.
This is not a hunger-march, but a protest march. The unanimity of the protest that Jarrow is making to the rest of the country is indicated in the fact that the political parties represented on the Jarrow Town Council have agreed to bury the political hatchet to the extent of holding no elections this November. Further, although the town cannot by law spend a farthing of the ratepayers╒ money on this demonstration, the labours of its Mayor in the despatching of about 200,000 letters to other corporations, trade unions, co-operative societies, and similar bodies at the expense of the march fund has raised that fund to ú850, and it is hoped to have the round ú1,000 before the marchers reach the Marble Arch on October 31.
The more fortunate classes of Jarrow, where not 15 per cent of the employable population is at work, have contributed, but the bulk of the fund has come from the country at large, and more than money. I, for one, had no conception of the cost of organising such a march until I heard about the value of the gifts in kind that ease the drain on the march fund so considerably. Take cigarettes, for instance, and calculate the cost of distributing two twopenny packets per day per man to 200 men. I will not vouch that ╥fags╙ are among the gifts, but it illustrates the point. Any little article costing sixpence means five pounds when distributed to 200 men, and soap, tobacco, and all sorts of things have been given. Before the men set out they all had their boots soled and heeled, and two pairs of socks and two iodine soles were also issued.
With eggs and salmon and such sandwiches as I saw to-day being consumed on the menu it is emphatically not a hunger-march. The men are doing well on it, and only two of them have fallen out for reasons of health in nearly 90 miles of marching. All the time communication is maintained with Jarrow, and if work turns up for a man on the march back he will go to it.
The organisation seems well nigh perfect. It includes a transport wagon ╤ a ╒bus bought for ú20 and converted ╤ which goes ahead with the sleeping kit, waterproofs for every man worn bandolero fashion, 1s. 6d. pocket-money and two 1p. stamps a week, medical attention, haircutting (and shaving for the inexpert), cobbling, accommodation at night in drill halls, schools, church institutes, and even town halls, and advance agents in the persons of the Labour agent at Jarrow, Mr. Harry Stoddart, and the Conservative agent, Mr. R. Suddick, who work together in arranging accommodation and getting halls for meetings.
There is no political aspect to this march. It is simply the town of Jarrow saying ╥Send us work.╙ In the ranks of the marchers are Labour men, Liberals, Tories, and one or two Communists, but you cannot tell who╒s who. It has the Church╒s blessing; in fact, it took the blessing of the Bishop of Ripon (Dr. Lunt) and a subscription of ú5 from him when it set out to-day. It also had the blessing of the Bishop of Jarrow (Dr. Gordon).
With the marchers goes, prominently carried, the Jarrow petition for work, a huge book with about 12,000 signatures, which Miss Ellen Wilkinson, M.P. for Jarrow, is to present at the bar of the House of Commons on November 4. Miss Wilkinson met us outside Killinghall this afternoon and became the only woman in the procession. She had motored from Manchester to-day but had met with petrol trouble and had been delayed. It was interesting to watch motorists who passed us on the road recognise her and lean out of windows as they went by. Like us all she made friends with Paddy, the Labrador dog who accompanied the procession uninvited for five miles from Jarrow before anyone realised that he intended to go all the way. When the marshal╒s whistle goes he goes too and there is no holding him.
It is interesting, too, to watch men employed on the road rest on their spades to watch men unemployed but also on the road go by. Their eyes spoke their thoughts. Most interesting was the meeting at lunch-time between some of these untravelled men and a real knight of the road who seemed to rejoice in his adventures and who on his way to Ripon told us on our way to Harrogate which were the best casual wards, how bugs make an eightpenny bed unbearable, and what are the duties of a ╥tramp major.╙ One could write columns about it, but we are at Harrogate, and a meeting is to be held at the Winter Gardens with Miss Ellen Wilkinson as one of the speakers. At every stopping-place there is such a meeting so that the world shall know of Jarrow.
