Chapter 64, London, 1 November 1936
The marchers, 185 ‘official’ crusaders, men of Jarrow (of whom 175 had started the journey a month ago and the remaining 10, like the stage posts of old, replacements kept at readiness to relieve tired or injured walkers) and then a dozen or so supporters (ranging from the essential to the useful to, in Reg McKay’s case, the useless, mere followers at this stage) were in striking distance of their destination, the Communist Party’s ‘rally for jobs’ in Hyde Park to which they had been invited. As Reg trudged through the drizzle he reflected on how much had occurred since their departure a month ago, both personally and nationally. Reg would have adopted his dad’s biting, mocking cynicism if the march was described as his ‘coming of age’ but it had nevertheless been close to a formative experience. Whether it was the optimistic, determined send off from Jarrow or the beauty of Ripon Cathedral, the shockingly bright, airy new towns or more recently the growing sense of anticipation as they neared the capital, he felt as though he had experienced a lifetime of memories in a month. Whitburn, his sleepy coal mine and fishing village home, felt a world away. He hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, but he wasn’t going back.
How to slip away was the thought constantly on his mind as they neared central London, as well as where he would go or what he would do. He strongly suspected that his dad would have somehow reached out (through gritted teeth and operatic reluctance) to Uncle Vernon, his mam’s younger brother and something of the ‘black sheep’ of the family. Reg had always liked Uncle Vern, with his flashy suits, new cars and occasional Americanisms he was like a visitor straight out of the pictures, liberally showing off his wealth and splashing his relatives with gifts before vanishing to wherever it was that he went. Dad thoroughly disapproved, Reg could tell, but tolerated the visits as they were rare and fleeting. But as the crowds thickened as they trudged through the grey sprawl of the London suburbs, Reg half expected to see the whip thin moustache of Uncle Vern under a broad brimmed hat.
“Penny for them lad, you were away with the fairies,” Albert Briggs, one of the tougher of the marchers, said in gentle mocking.
Reg shrugged. “Just thinking of what comes next.”
Briggs nodded. “Aye, it’ll be a canny joke if all we get in London is ignoring.”
Reg shook his head. “I meant after London.”
“Train home and back to staring into the street,” Briggs said with grim resolve, as if the matter had long been pre-ordained. He looked shrewdly at Reg. “Or are you staying down here?”
Reg shrugged again, an after a pause decided that this interest from Briggs made a welcome change from endless introspection. “I’m not sure yet.”
Briggs was quiet, clearly thinking through the problem. “What about our Ellen?” This was said as if Ellen Wilkinson MP was not Jarrow’s elected member but a niece who was doing well for herself. “She might need a lad who is good with a pen. Or she might know someone else.”
It was a good idea, and a more attractive one than the emerging default plan of making for the nearest recruiting Sergeant. And that wasn’t because he had a yearning for being shot at in Palestine (the news of the British Army’s ‘surge’ into the Palestine Mandate had been acquired through hasty glances of newspapers and all too brief conversations with well-wishers when they rested) but because he couldn’t for the life of him think of an alternative. His fondest memory of the march had been the balmy, tranquil evening spent in Ripon Cathedral where the Dean, a kind man, had taken it upon himself to give a guided tour of the building and grounds to any marcher who wanted it (they all had, unanimously). It had damn near converted him to a career in the Church (not that was really an option for a working class lad from Tyneside).
“Ere, Ms Wilkinson, what do you think,” Briggs shouted up to the front of the march where Ellen Wilkinson was happily engaging with the crowds, “what do you think about taking young Reg on?”
Wilkinson turned awkwardly to see who had made the comment, realised she didn’t quite recognise the voice, and instead seemed to focus upon her worries.
“Don’t fret about her lad,” Briggs said calmly, although his eyes were darting around the crowds, "she’s just worried about the rally.”
The Jarrow marchers, arriving from the North, were a slow, plodding mass, not unlike something large, and bovine. Their pace regulated by, of all things, a harmonica band, they trudged toward their destination. Reg noticed that the usually sombre, middle class crowds had almost imperceptibly become younger, edgier. Insults, in a broad accent that some of the march supporters identified as that of East London, were hurled angrily by this crowd, many of whom, Reg realised, were shadowing the marchers.
Briggs was exchanging muttered comments with some of the other older Jarrow men. “Lads, keep calm, don’t shout back. That’s what they’re after.” His eyes darted around the crowd again. “The bloody Polis are doing nothing,” he said angrily.
To Reg’s untutored eye the London Police looked woefully unprepared and undermanned. Probably expecting some minor fringe clashes as the majority of the marchers went around their task placidly, a hostile crowd of spectators was palpably not part of their plan. “Surely Mr…”
“No lad,” Briggs said sadly, “they’re outnumbered. They’ll only get stuck in if there is a proper fight.”
The crusade, like a wounded animal assailed by a swarm of predators, staggered on; if anything the marchers increased their pace as if nearly two hundred tired North Easterners could outrun these fresher, younger hecklers.
The crusaders finally reached Marble Arch and turned a sharp right towards Hyde Park. The bystanders were more numerous here, the denser crowds providing some relief from the mockery. Finally, one of the younger Jarrow men snapped, though only when a young man in black shouted that they should “fucking well go back to the pit.”
“We’re bloody shipbuilders you thick Cockney,” he quipped, causing the crusaders to chuckle and their morale to improve. They entered the park, and the wary welcome from the Communist Party members was enough to make them relax.
“Comrades!” An announcer called. “Here they are, having walked all they way from Newcastle…”
“…Jarrow, for Christ’s sake, it’s on the bloomin' banner!” One of the marchers, tired, shouted this with evident frustration.
“And now the Member of Parliament for Jarrow, Ms Ellen Wilkinson, will address us. I ask you to hear her words with courtesy.” There was muted applause.
“Friends!” Wilkinson said, throwing her fist into the air. “While our so-called Government is worrying about whether a man can get married, nothing has been done for the people of this country!”
There were cheers, she had wondered about referring to the King’s troubles and had decided that they could not be avoided.
“We have come, over two hundred miles, from a far away community forgotten by this worthless Government. Friends! Jarrow as a town has been murdered. It has been murdered as a result of the arrangement of two great combines, the shipping combine on the one side and the steel combine on the other. And what has the Government done? Either this mockery of a Government or its predecessors?” She paused. “Nothing! I do not wonder that this cabinet does not want to see us."
Reg, out of the corner of his left eye, could see a dark shape approaching silently at the edges of the Park. It was clearly a group of people. More Police, perhaps? He felt his stomach tighten.
Wilkinson hadn’t noticed. “There must be a change for the good of the people of this country…”
“Now, my boys,” an aristocratic voice brayed from somewhere behind Reg. “Go get ‘em, and good huntin’!”
There was cheering, yelling, and the figures in black ran towards the rally. Wilkinson, who was still speaking, was now completely drowned out by the panicked screams of the left and the taunting cheers of the right. Finally one of the CPGB organisers dragged her from the stage. The Communists and Jarrow people split, some going to resist the blackshirts (for Reg realised that was who they were) with many more running each and every way to escape.
Reg was terrified; the only violence that he had ever known were silly schoolboy fights and the occasional clip round the ear from his dad. The blackshirts were good; although hugely outnumbered, their disconcerting noise and their sheer energy gave them a shocking effectiveness. They were close to Reg now, some of them, he could see, were not much older than he was. The police were doing their best, trying to separate the two increasingly intertwined groups.
“Get away with you,” Briggs said, “go on lad, now!” A blackshirt, hearing the exchange, ran up to him and very professionally punched Briggs once to the stomach. Briggs folded, gasping for air, staggering to his knees.
“Go,” Briggs croaked, as the blackshirt delivered another blow.
Reg obeyed. He fled as though the hounds of hell were at his tale. The blackshirts, with thousands of other potential victims, ignored him and fought with those who remained. As the rally members recovered from the shock of the blackshirt descent upon them they fought back. Hyde Park was now a patchwork of dozens of private fights as small groups of communists/marchers and blackshirts scrapped. The air seems to vibrate with the shouts, screams and groans of the incident.
Reg continued to run. He finally escaped the park, ignoring the excitable reporters who waited on the edges of the park to grab interviews with the protagonists. Reg saw policemen, about a hundred he guessed, forming up to methodically advance into the park. He also saw a strange man, like one of the Germans or Italians from the pictures, standing in a car. He looked worried, agitated.
“It wasn’t supposed,” he said in an odd, tight voice, “to be like this. Scare them off,” he said pleadingly, “that’s what I said.”
“They’ll blame you, Tom,” another figure, in a smart civilian suit, said languidly, “silly, isn’t it.”
“You!” Reg felt a hand lightly slap down on his shoulder. “You’re part of this!” It was Uncle Vern, of course it was, looking, with his oily moustache and shiny suit, utterly out of place in this exploding world of communists, marchers, fascists and lots, lots, of violence.
“Uncle Vern…”
“…do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in,” Uncle Vernon said, anxiously rather than angrily. Reg noticed that his North Eastern accent was much more pronounced than usual. “Thank God your dad got word to me.”
“Trouble, Blenkinsop?” That the other well-dressed man.
“Er, no. But my dammed nephew wanted to er, get stuck in,” Uncle Vernon said in a passable imitation of the other man’s languid drawl. “Made an ass of himself. You wounded?” He snapped this question at Reg.
“No, but the march, the rally, Ms Wilk…”
“…not another word,” Uncle Vernon hissed, before turning to the other man. “I’d better get him home for a wash, seems he can’t resist a good scrap!”
====
GAME NOTES
The readAARship will, I hope, forgive the plot contrivance that lanced a couple of boils in one convenient chapter. But I wanted to close off the Jarrow Crusade at the same time as deal with an issue that I have deliberately avoided for the past 60 or so chapters – Mosley and his group.
To Mosley first; for a detailed analysis of the man please consult
@DensleyBlair's masterpiece. Essentially he is, at this stage in UK history, something of a political outsider while socially remaining firmly in the establishment (his first wife was Lady Cynthia Curzon, daughter of the Tory grandee and former Viceroy, his mistress and second wife was Diana Mitford). His journey as a politician beggars belief. Elected as a Conservative MP in 1918 he then 'crossed the floor' and sat as an independent, before joining Labour. Given some responsibility for reducing unemployment, the rejection / ignoring of his ever radical solutions saw him resign and leave Labour (of course) to form the New Party, which started off as a reasonably respectable but interventionist group but then went down the authoritarian route. Visits to the fascists of Europe in the early 30s made those authoritarian undertones an overt culture and by 1932 you have the British Union of Fascists. Quite a political journey, that. The key to this, for me, is the man; I accept that I say this as a man from the 2020s, but he is a bloody idiot. Watch any newsreel of him and you realise that the past is indeed a foreign country. The sad thing is that I see shades of this political opportunism in our current Parliament (particularly the current Cabinet). Like
@El Pip and others on this forum I have been around a while, and am not naïve to the world and its ways. But that this swaggering fool could remain vaguely prominent for so long speaks, to me, of the collapse of British political energy in the 20s and 30s and the moral bankruptcy of many in the Upper and Upper-Middle classes. I'm not advocating a Commonwealth or CPGB led state, but something was definitely rotten in the state of Denmark (or the UK) at this time.
But what would he do here? I’m positing that he reins in his blackshirts until the Parliamentary crisis had fully developed; you’ll note that in this TL we avoided the ‘Battle of Cable Street’ as Mosley would want, I believe, to see how the Parliamentary impasse develops. I also think that his marriage to Diana Mitford would be delayed (remember, Hitler was a guest at their wedding - now that's a party) as 'Tom' (to his friends and intimates) would want to stay close to events. Now, with Parliament shut and the resistance to Lloyd George organising, Mosley has unleashed his members to make an impact. Despite their militaristic uniforms and titles they are not particularly disciplined; I can easily see a strategy of disruption and undermining going out of control and resulting in a mass brawl in Hyde Park.
It's a shame that the Crusade ended this way, it will now, in this TL, probably be remembered either as a tragic failure, demonstrating the recklessness of public protest, or at worst a provocation that the BUF answered. Wilkinson was as shrill and animated as portrayed, and while Briggs is entirely fictional (I have agonised over this - but I didn't want to offend anyone by portraying a well-known name being beaten up) he is based on the grimly stoic types who were the backbone of the march. The Ripon Cathedral episode is also true, it stands out among many of the recollections as one of the more spontaneous and human experiences and it struck me as something that our fictional Reg would enjoy. The idea of both an Uncle Vern(on) and a young marcher wanting to remain in London may seem far-fetched but they have their roots in history. One (unnamed) marcher was retrieved by a relative at an early stage of the march, and one John Farndale, one of the younger marchers, did indeed stay in London where he became a baker's assistant. The tragedy of this TL is that there will be a lot, I suspect, of accusations that 'but for the BUF...' the march would have achieved something. Of course in OTL it didn't, the petition of 10000 signatures was lost, there was no steel works or industrial relief, and the whole thing ended in embarrassing, slightly anti-climatic failure. But that is paradise compared to this TL...
Apologies for the delay, BTW - Afghanistan has been demanding all of my spare time as I sit, rapt, while hell unfolds. I'm not making a political point, but there is a human tragedy unfolding. If anyone has contacts either in the country or in the US / UK / allied militaries, you have my best wishes. It's just awful - FWIW I have visited the country as a legal advisor for hire and find the whole thing deeply troubling.
Reaproachment is going to be critical for the monarchy and church after this...but I think it unlikely to happen compeltly due to everyone in the new royal family going forward is Scots presbitarian...this may drive a wedge betweenness the crown and church, and the church and state, depending on how this plays out after the abdication.
A very good point, the rebuilding of strained / destroyed relationships is going to be awful.
Given that in TTL it will take a truckload of dynamite to blast him out, it may take something like Stalin’s ten blows of 1944 to get rid of him!
The edifice does fall quickly, actually. While I have delayed the response of the opposition, now that they are mobilised it will be quick.
Um. I rather expected the revelation of Chamberlain's crew spying on the royal family to have a lot more weight - any weight, actually, since it seems to have passed without remark. If there was anything that could splinter Chamberlain's block, or prevent the spied-upon future George Sixtus from doing everything in his power to wreck Chamberlain's hopes, that would have been it. And yet - not a ripple?
I'm also unsurprised that the tapping revelations have had little public impact, they don't really affect the constitutional situation and are not going to change anyone's mind on the big issue. However once that issue is settled then I think they will be a major factor in the dynamics of the government and Neville's interactions with others, it's just everyone has agreed to park them for now while they fight the common enemy.
Indeed, the Church has handled this with...Grace. As for Chamberlain, he's going to have all sorts of problems after the election and booting out the monarch, not least of which rebuilding the Conservative party and fighting the espionage shit.
So these comments, I think, get to the heart of it - most of the skullduggery can be happily thrown at Baldwin's door and the true naughtiness of Chamberlain via his personal spy system are probably still being worked out. He has questions to answer, but as everyone says, that can be done nicely and safely after the King is moved along.
Lang's pontification here reminds me a little of old mediaeval addresses to monarchs who have done poorly - it was always the advisors such as Despenser that were criticised, not directly the monarch. And so it seems here, the monarch almost portrayed as a victim (if a willing one) of another. In this respect seems very very plausibly traditional.
That's exactly the point - in his own way Lang is admonishing the Crown, but doing so in a way that allows the King (just) some wriggle room. But this is an important speech - a call to arms for the Anglican Communion.
I've just come back to this. This is like watching a car crash frame by frame. Each update, some more damage is done, but the result remains uncertain and quite far into the future. It is a fascinating look into the political machinations of Britain during those crucial pre-war years. Even if the history is alternative, the characters and modus operandi feel quite real.
Thanks! I'm doing my best to get on with it, but keep stopping off at interesting points!
In universe, people are going to stress that this period of nothing much happening was the turning point and perhaps where the fortunes of war for the UK was decided.
Undoubtedly.
A sentence long, qualified and obscure - er, nuanced - enough to choke anyone. 
