Long Road From Jarrow by Stuart Maconie
I cancelled my Country Walking magazine subscription about a year ago and the only thing I miss is Stuart Maconie's column. His down-to-earth approach and sharp wit belie an equally sharp intellect and a soul more sensitive than he might be willing to admit. Let's be honest, though, I picked this one up because of someone else's review, in which I spotted names like Ferryhill and Newton Aycliffe. Places I grew up in. Like Maconie I have no connection (that I know of) to the Jarrow Crusade but when he talks about it being a whole matrix of events reducible to one word like Aberfan, Hillsborough, or Orgreave then somehow it does become part of my history too. Tangentially, at least.
| Long Road From Jarrow by Stuart Maconie | |
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| Category: Travel | |
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Reviewer: Lesley Mason
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| Summary: Follk familiar with Maconie's column in Country Walking mag will recognise the style: personal, reflective, humourous, occasionally wicked (in both senses of the word). This isn't a history of the Crusade; the anniversary was really just an excuse for a long walk through parts of his own country that Maconie was unfamiliar with. The result is a thoughtful reflection on what has changed since the 1930s and what hasn't. It's a warning about where we might be headed, and a hopeful assessment of why we might not be. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 368 | Date: July 2017 |
| Publisher: Ebury Press | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1785030536 | |
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We had no-one at Aberfan or Orgreave either, but the family are from the North-east and South Wales – two generations back they were all farmers or pitmen. Both of my grandfathers were gone long before I came along – both of them, and two uncles besides, lost to the mines. And when the miners went on strike, my mam's blood would boil in passionate support. It was dark, damp, dangerous work and she swore she'd keep any son of mine on the dole, before I let him go down the pit. As for Aberfan…her school was located much like that one, and as children they surfed the slag heaps on tin trays. That was the better off side of the family. My dad's side, saw Nana bring up her boys on a pit-widow's pension – they were I was told soup-kitchen poor – but things did change. I was brought up on the shiney New Town, where we know the Crusaders never camped – the place didn't exist then – but still the history of what the area once was (and by my time was no more, and was heading into its next recession) Jarrow was more than part of the local mythology, it was part of the DNA of the places, if not the people.
Of course Jarrow had nothing to do with the pits. It was the closure of Palmer's Shipyard that was the final straw. Most of the two hundred who set off were formerly employed in Palmer's Shipyard, which closed down in 1931 – but they were the tip of a dark and desperate iceberg. Long term unemployment in the town was at 80%. The local steelworks, employing 2,500 men at its height shut down in 1921. The blast furnaces (1,500 peak employment) had a short-lived and limited reprieve between 1926 and 1930, but only finding work for 400 men. But the mentality is the same: close communities, hard thankless work, and what little joy you found where you could. With the town suffering from long-term unemployment and men desparate for work, the point was to petition the government for help in the establishment of new industry. As lobbying activity goes, it failed.
The men got to London, but if the petition was actually presented to parliament that was done in their absence, and has since been lost. It was scarcely debated. And, the real shocker, is that the Labour party completely disowned the Crusade. The marchers themselves took great care to be a-political – perhaps that was their failing – but as it was largely the non-labour boroughs whose folk gave them the warmest welcome on their way south, perhaps it was the best thing they could have done.
On the 80th anniversary of the march in the autumn of 2016, writer and broadcaster Maconie decided to recreate the crusade – sticking as closely as possible to the original route – partly, he honestly admits, just because he fancied going on a very long walk. He is also up-front about the fact that this isn't a book that came out of a walk, the walk was deliberately research for the book and if that meant he hitched a lift or got on a bus now and then, he makes no bones about it and I for one am able to forgive him for that, because of what he learned and what he shares with us as a result about England now, about England then, and about England's secrets scraps and footnotes. What he learns about the march itself is almost incidental.
What he learns about England, the parallels he draws between 1936 and 2016 are frightening if history really does repeat itself, and given our inability as a species to learn from our mistakes, one can but fear the worst – even as our man finds reasons to hope in every uplifting encounter he has along the way. Maconie is the kind of man who has uplifting encounters. He seeks them out. Pretty well goes out into the twittersphere and asks for them.
And I don't blame him for that either – I learned a lot about Sikhism as a result and that Bedford has a thriving Italian community and that there is both live music and political debate still to be had on the backstreets up and down the country if you know where to look.
Some books (even when you've bought them) you know you really have on a kind of loan, you will be passing them on one way or another once read. Others, you find unexpectedly you want to keep. But the third category are those that you know are keepers even before you've begged or borrowed them (the former in my case). In that category – those I know I'll be keeping even before I've opened them (unless the author does something unspeakable between the pages) – those tell of how much I've enjoyed them by how many corners are turned down. Well into double figures, which means that in virtually every chapter there was something that made me smile or laugh or think enough to know I'd want to come back to it, to share it, to steal it…
Often they're snippets of conversation (especially in the early northern stages) where I can substitute people I've known and loved and hear the conversation playing out exactly as rendered, there's his description of my birth-town (no longer my 'home town' – that's the one I decanted myself to when I bugged-out, as my brother puts it, 30 years ago) but the place I was born and raised in, which was a happy enough, green enough, hearty enough place back then, but isn't any more, is a description I can sadly relate to…but then he gives me uplifting historical information about the village down the road and the local market town, about which I knew nothing. How come I don't know this stuff already? (Maybe because I did move south all those years ago.)
It's all written in typical Maconie conversational style – all backed up with the research both academic and personal. It's light humorous touch that includes my new favourite parlour game: place names as 1950s Hollywood actors, but doesn't skimp on political comment. Whatever your politics, Maconie doesn't pretend to be the man with the answers, but at least he's one of those asking the right questions.
If you have any connection with any of the places on the map: Jarrow, Chester-le-Street, Ferryhill, Darlington, Northallerton, Ripon, Harrogate, Leeds, Wakefield, Barnsley, Sheffield, Chesterfield, Mansfield, Nottingham, Loughbrough, Leicester, Market Harborough, Northampton, Bedford, Luton, St Albans, or Edgware – then read it, for snippets of your own local history. If you don't, then read it for insight into our national psyche, then as now, national as in people who live in this nation that is.
For more reading on the between the wars, Jarrow and the rest, we can recommend We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars by Martin Pugh – for a foreigners view of walking through Britain I still don't think you can beat Bryson's original Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
Many thanks to the publishers for this one. Loved it. Click the video link and bear with it…you'll only get Maconie's side of the conversation but worth it all the same – and stay there for the Fool's Gold song about the march. Lovely.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Long Road From Jarrow by Stuart Maconie at Amazon.com.
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