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There are certain British place names that carry an enduring weight of meaning; a deep and sonorous ring, and not always a pleasant one. Hillsborough<\/a>, Orgreave, Aberfan<\/a>, Armagh\u2026 these are all places that have become synonymous with some great and profound emotion or event, woven into history through accident, struggle, tragedy, wickedness or bravery. Jarrow is another. In 1936, this industrial town in the northeast of England became, in the words of its MP, \u201cthe most famous town in England\u201d; a byword for hardship and misery, but also for defiance, fortitude and dignity.<\/p>\n Jarrow\u2019s MP was Ellen Wilkinson, better known as \u2018Red\u2019 Ellen, a brilliant and passionate firebrand who later became a pillar of Clement Attlee<\/a>\u2019s post-war Labour administration as Minister for Education. But much of her lasting fame rests on her movements in October 1936, when she led 200 of Jarrow\u2019s unemployed men 300 miles to London. The intention was to publicise Jarrow\u2019s plight and to deliver a petition of 10,000 signatures to Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin<\/a>, pleading for help for their dying town in the form of a steelworks, or a similar shot in the arm. Baldwin refused to see them; the petition was taken from them by the Special Branch and then it vanished, and the aid the town needed was never properly given.<\/p>\n But the Jarrow \u2018crusade\u2019 lives on as a remarkable, romantic, contentious piece of our social history. In Matt Perry\u2019s excellent, definitive historical account The Jarrow Crusade: Protest And Legend<\/em>, he cites some of its varied legacy: \u201cFive plays, two musicals, an opera, three pop songs, two folk songs, several paintings and poems, a short story, performance art, a mural, two sculptures, glassware, four television documentaries, four radio programmes, a children\u2019s story, a cuddly toy, a real ale, a public house, an election poster, street names, innumerable pieces of journalism and historical references and of course hundreds of often reproduced photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This list is probably not exhaustive, and to it I would add several exhibitions and thousands of citations in pop culture. It remains a central module of the GCSE syllabus and the Learn English Network. Jarrow may not always be remembered accurately \u2013 many think that it was a miners\u2019 protest and explicitly sought to bring down the government. It was neither, but the name and the story have echoed down the decades since.<\/p>\n On the podcast | Stuart Maconie reflects on the iconic 1936 protest against poverty and unemployment and offers comparisons with modern Britain:<\/strong><\/p>\n