Lecture – The Jarrow Crusade and the Right to Work

The Jarrow Crusade and the Right to Work

 Dr Matt Perry (Newcastle University)

7.30pm Free

The most famous protest of the unemployed was the Jarrow Crusade which took place in 1936. It has a global celebrity. The march demanded work for a town that had the highest unemployment in the country. This demand for the right to work has a long history and needs to be understood the context of the long battles of the working day and the historical emergence of unemployment. The right to work connects the protest of the unemployed shipyard workers to the struggles of Martin Luther King.  It was written into the United National Declaration of Human Rights. It remains a crucial question for today, even though governments have long since abandoned policies of full employment.