A History of England10 Marras 2024

217. An event-packed year (2)

We’re still looking at 1936, a year packed with so many events that it’s taken two episodes to review the main ones. This week, on the domestic, British front:

- The year of three kings, as one died, another abdicated for love, and the third took the throne

- The Battle of Cable Street where 100,000-300,000 or more counter demonstrators turned out to stop the British Union of Fascists marching through Jewish districts of East London

- The Jarrow March and Ellen Wilkinson, the fiery MP for the constituency, and the campaign to tackle the problems of poverty and unemployment in the world’s greatest enpire

And in foreign affairs:

• Hitler makes clear that whatever’s wrong, it’s down to the Jews

• Then silences anti-Semitism and general oppression for a while, to make a success of the Berlin Olympics, spoiled only by an outstanding black athlete from the US

• Despite the attempts of the British government, backed by Churchill, to curry favour with Mussolini, he signs the Axis agreement with Hitler

• Labour’s policy on rearmament and on the Spanish Civil War remains incoherent and badly in need of revision. Plus from the left of Labour comes an extraordinary call for defeatism in front of Nazi Germany

Lots of exciting stuff, then. And it wraps up the year so we can move on next week.

Illustration: Ellen Cicely Wilkinson leading the Jarrow Marchers, Fox Photos Ltd, 31 October 1936. National Portrait Gallery x88278

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

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