page_title: Jarrow
section_title: 19th century to present
hierarchical_section_title: Jarrow / Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey / 19th century to present
caption_attribution_description: English: Launch of battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary at Palmer's Shipbuilding, Jarrow-on-Tyne, England
context_page_description: Jarrow is a town in North East England, located on the River Tyne. Historically part of County Durham, in 1974 it became part of the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear.
  In the eighth century, the monastery of Saint Paul in Jarrow was the home of Bede, who is regarded as the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholar and the father of English history. From the middle of the 19th century until 1935, Jarrow was a centre for shipbuilding, and was the starting point of the Jarrow March against unemployment in 1936. Jarrow had a population of 43,431 in 2011.
context_section_description: Jarrow remained a small mid-Tyne town until the introduction of heavy industries such as coal mining and shipbuilding. Charles Mark Palmer established a shipyard – Palmer's Shipbuilding and Iron Company – in 1852 and became the first armour-plate manufacturer in the world. John Bowes, the first iron screw collier, revived the Tyne coal trade, and Palmer's was also responsible for the first modern cargo ship, as well as a number of notable warships. Around 1,000 ships were built at the yard, they also produced small fishing boats to catch eel within the River Tyne, a delicacy at the time.
  Palmer's employed as much as 80% of the town's working population until its closure in 1933 following purchase by National Shipbuilders Securities Ltd. (NSS). This organisation had been set up by Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government in the 1920s, but the first public statement had been made in 1930 whilst the Labour Party was in office. The aim of NSS was to reduce capacity within the British shipyards. In fact Palmer's yard was relatively efficient and modern, but had serious financial problems. As from 1935, Olympic, the sister ship of RMS Titanic, was partially demolished at Jarrow, being towed in 1937 to Inverkeithing, Scotland for final scrapping.
  The Great Depression brought so much hardship to Jarrow that the town was described by Life as "cursed." The closure of the shipyard was responsible for one of the events for which Jarrow is best known. Jarrow is marked in history as the starting point in 1936 of the Jarrow March to London to protest against unemployment in Britain. Jarrow MP Ellen Wilkinson wrote about these events in her book The Town That Was Murdered (1939). Some doubt has been cast by historians as to how effective events such as the Jarrow March actually were but there is some evidence that they stimulated interest in regenerating 'distressed areas'. 1938 saw the establishment of a ship-breaking yard and engineering works in the town, followed by the creation of a steelworks in 1939.
  The Jarrow rail disaster was a train collision that occurred on the 17 December 1915 at the Bede junction on a North Eastern Railway line. The collision was caused by a signalman's error and seventeen people died in the collision.
  The Second World War revived the town's fortunes as the Royal Navy was in need of ships to be built.  After 1945 the shipbuilding industries were nationalised.  The last shipyard in the town closed in 1980.
  Jarrow, in the year 1912, was the setting for the first of Monty Python's 'Spanish Inquisition' sketches, one of the most well known and quoted sketches by the comedy troupe.
  In August 2014 a group of mothers from Darlington organised a march from Jarrow to London to oppose the privatisation of the NHS. The march took place in September 2014 and 3,000–5,000 people participated in the event.
caption: The launch of the battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary from Palmer's shipyard in 1912
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