Town that Was Murdered, The

Jarrow is best known as the town that gave its name to the Jarrow March of 1936. In November 1935 Jarrow chose Ellen Wilkinson as its Labour MP. A month later in a speech in parliament she challenged the government to address mass unemployment in the shipyards: ‘skilled fitters, men who have built destroyers and battleships and the finest passenger ships ... The years go on and nothing is done ... this is a desperately urgent matter… ’ The Town That Was Murdered is her well-researched survey of Jarrow: local and labour history, the impact of poverty, the hateful misery of state relief, the history of shipbuilding, and the combined power of city and bank finance and shipbuilding magnates – in the UK and abroad – who drove local firms into bankruptcy and destroyed jobs. The book helped the drive for a Welfare State, and the Labour government of 1945. It is a historical document, but as finance looks to relocate investments, it still resonates today. About the author: Ellen Wilkinson (1891-1947) was a key figure in the socialist and feminist movement. She was born in Manchester and became the first woman on the city council, she supported women’s suffrage, became Labour MP for Jarrow and helped lead the Jarrow Crusade. She was the first female Minister of Education, in 1945 government. The Town That Was Murdered was first published by Gollancz in the Left Book Club series in 1939. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Wilkinson#Communism Hear! Listen to Laura Beers lecture on Red Ellen at the 2017 London School of Economics Literary Festival Listen to a conversation with Beers about Ellen Wilkinson on the Reviews in History podcast About the Editor: Dr. Matt Perry, Reader in Labour History, Newcastle University; author of "Red Ellen" Wilkinson: Her Ideas, Movements and World, Manchester University Press, 2014, and Bread and Work: the experience of unemployment 1918-1939, London, UK: Pluto, 2000.”