Maconie - Long road from Jarrow a journey through Britain then and now

The Sunday Times Bestseller

A tribute and a rallying call - Guardian

Three and half weeks. Three hundred miles. I saw roaring arterial highway and silent lanes, candlelit cathedrals and angry men in bad pubs. The Britain of 1936 was a land of beef paste sandwiches and drill halls. Now we are nation of vaping and nail salons, pulled pork and salted caramel.

In the autumn of 1936, some 200 men from the Tyneside town of Jarrow marched 300 miles to London in protest against the destruction of their towns and industries. Precisely 80 years on, Stuart Maconie, walks from north to south retracing the route of the emblematic Jarrow Crusade.

Travelling down the countrys spine, Maconie moves through a land that is, in some ways, very much the same as the England of the 30s with its political turbulence, austerity, north/south divide, food banks and of course, football mania. Yet in other ways, it is completely unrecognisable.

Maconie visits the great cities as well as the sleepy hamlets, quiet lanes and roaring motorways. He meets those with stories to tell and whose voices build a funny, complex and entertaining tale of Britain, then and now.

Stuart Maconie is a writer, broadcaster and journalist familiar to millions from his work in print, on radio and on TV. His previous bestsellers have included Cider with Roadies, Pies and Prejudice and Adventures on the High Teas, and he currently hosts the afternoon show on BBC 6music with Mark Radcliffe as well as weekly show The Freak Zone. Based in the cities of Birmingham and Manchester, he can also often be spotted on top of a mountain in the Lake District with a Thermos flask and individual pork pie.

Cider with Roadies

Pies and Prejudice

Adventures on the High Teas

Hope and Glory

The Peoples Songs

The Pie at Night

For Tracy Brabin and Jo Cox, Members of Parliament for Batley and Spen, West Yorkshire

Going far, son?

I turn to meet the voice, somewhat awkwardly since Im still getting used to the graceless choreography required when travelling laden with a large, bulky modern rucksack. Its made in Colorado and according to the manufacturer, delivers serious function while looking great, featuring Axiom 5 technology, front entry and stretch mesh front and side pockets. It can hold 65 litres should I ever be tempted to fill it with liquid. Nonetheless, its this highly visible piece of kit which has presumably prompted the question from behind me. That and my remorseless, solitary plod along an unlovely stretch of northern trunk road on a quiet weekday morning.

London, I answer.

Bloody hell! he replies.

Hes a big man in his late fifties, Id guess; Geordie accent, close cropped hair, brisk, active. He moves alongside me, clutching a thick rope leash wound around his wrist at the end of which strains a large German Shepherd dog; enthusiastic, curious, increasingly aware I feel that there is half a meat and potato pasty in either the stretch mesh front or side pocket (I forget which) of my great-looking, yet seriously functional pack.

Its 5 October 2016 on the A167 between Pelaw Grange and Chester-le-Street. A rinsed fresh autumn morning in CountyDurham; a sky of rippled, downy cloud and a low gauzy sun over the far blue smudge of fells. Nearer to hand, less lovely, the buffeting, thunderous, continuous rush of articulated lorries along the noisy arterial road.

London? Theres pity in his voice, with a hint of disbelief and perhaps a dash of admiration. Elsa! He yanks the boisterous dog to heel.

Yes, Im retracing a famous journey I pause. If I were to say the Jarrow march to you, would that mean anything?

He smiles and looks me up and down, as if wondering what kind of response might go down best. Over the next month of walking almost the length of England, Ill ask many people this question and get all kinds of responses to that word Jarrow and the famous march of 1936. Some will be knowledgeable, some vague, some apologetic, some impassioned, many wildly inaccurate. A few faces will be blank and sheepish, offering an embarrassed shrug or a wild guess. Others will have learned about it at school, especially up here on this first northern stretch, where many will have treasured, polished stories to tell. Some will have had family members on the march. Others will claim to.

Ill meet people whose granddads cooked the marchers breakfast in a drill hall in Leicester and a lady whose mum watched them stride past her cottage down a country lane near Bedford. A taxi driver in Darlington will talk of knowing old miners who had walked with them through Manchester and Birmingham. A sweet, older woman in Newton Aycliffe will tell me that she still has a tent peg that she found as a girl left behind after they had taken down their camp in her village. They didnt pass anywhere near Birmingham or Manchester and they never pitched a tent in Newton Aycliffe but as Frank Lloyd Wright once said, the truth is more important than the facts.

The man on the A167 between Pelaw Grange and Chester-le-Street thinks for a second or two, then with a jutting jaw, a sly look and an eye on my reaction says, Aye, it means something. A bunch of bloody left wingers who went to London to stir up trouble because they had nothing better to do.

Certainly the last of this is true. It was having nothing to do no work, nor money, security or purpose, just long, empty repetitious days of hardship, boredom and despair that sent the marchers all the way down to London 80 years ago. In a sense then, my dog walking companion is absolutely right. He registers my surprise though, which is genuine. You dont find many north easterners wholl trash the Jarrow marchers. Respect for Jarrows great collective effort is coiled into the DNA of the region, embedded in its still proud sense of self.

Every bugger in County Durham claims their dad or granddad or budgie was on that bloody march. Sorry, son, but Im a bitter man. Worked in the steelworks in Consett and it was never the same after nationalisation in 67. Labour let me down. Im a rarity round here in talking like that. This is Labour country, Country Durham. Mining country with no mines. Well, I wish you luck. Youll see some places I almost wish I was going with you Cheerio, son.

He crosses the road gingerly, Elsa recalcitrant still, odour of pasty still lingering on the breeze perhaps. As he gets to the other side he yanks on the dogs chain, halts her and turns around on the opposite verge. He shouts something across the road back at me with a wry grin.

I hope you get a better welcome than they did anyway all five hundred thousand of them.

A joke. A good one. I want to ask him more, but a speeding convoy of huge vehicles flicker and rumble past like a strip of film, and when they have passed he too is gone. But to answer his first question, which I dont think I did: yes, I am going far. Three hundred miles, give or take.

To London. A long road from Jarrow.

They denied us the future we wanted, but that doesnt mean they can deny us our past

Matt Perry, The Jarrow Crusade: Protest and Legend

Who cares? The worlds moved on

Software Consultant, Kent, via Twitter

The Shields Gazette, established in 1849, is the oldest evening paper in Britain. It still appears nightly, in print and online, and remains the voice of home and the journal of record for generations of Geordies, Mackems, Wearsiders and for thousands across the north east of England. On New Years Day 2013, in amongst details of the Queens Honours List and drunken revelry in Hebburn, it carried these notices: