10 archive photographs recalling Jarrow, South Tyneside, in the 1970s and 1980s

Standing in the sprawling car park which serves Morrison’s supermarket in Jarrow is a striking modern memorial which acts as a permanent reminder of the event the town is best known for.

On Monday, October 5, 1936, 200 men set off from the rain-lashed Tyneside town on a gruelling 291-mile trek to London. The marchers carried with them a petition signed by 12,000 people.

Its demands were simple. They wanted work and the re-establishment of industry in the town which had seen its heart ripped out by the collapse of the giant Palmer's shipyard and steelworks two years earlier. The closure was a disaster. More than 8,000 people instantly found themselves out of work and whole families and streets were plunged into poverty.

The Jarrow Crusade remains one of 20th century Britain's defining chapters. If, in the short term, it did not achieve what it set out to do, in the longer term it helped bring about a new consensus on welfare - with the years after World War II seeing the introduction of the welfare state, the NHS, secondary education until the age of 16, and national insurance.

Our main photograph, taken in October 1986, recalls a later ‘Jarrow Crusade’, commemorating the original march which had taken place 50 years earlier. Organised by the trade union movement, the modern crusade aimed to highlight the renewed problem of mass unemployment, rife in the 1980s Britain of Margaret Thatcher and particularly in the North East.

The image is one of 10 we’ve pulled from the archive showing some of the people and places of Jarrow in the 1970s and ‘80s. Elsewhere we see pupils at the town’s John Street School in 1971 - and, from 1979, well-known football managers Brian Clough and Lawrie McMenemy (who both hailed from the North East) during a talk-in at the Neon Social Club.

From the 1980s, the footbridge that would serve the town’s new Metro station, opening in 1984, was under construction, while not far away we see the former bus station as it was before the whole area was revamped. That image is published courtesy of Paul Perry, the Jarrow-born photographer and author who has produced a series of picture-led books on the history of the town.

One of them, Now That’s What I Call Jarrow, examines its story in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.

Those decades saw the gradual decline of Jarrow as an industrial town, and by the 1980s, the spectre of unemployment which had haunted it in the 1930s, had returned.

In the meantime, the town centre had been substantially rebuilt, with one of Britain's first newfangled shopping precincts taking shape in the 1960s. New housing sprung up as swathes of Victorian-built terraced streets were swept away, and the Tyne Tunnel linking Jarrow with Howdon on the north side of the River Tyne was opened in 1967. Later, in 1984, what had been the town's old railway station was rebuilt and reopened as a stop on the new Tyne and Wear Metro system.

Paul says: “Since commencing my own personal collection of photographs of Jarrow in 1966, I have witnessed many changes on my doorstep – some for the benefit of the town, but others not so.”

Our 10 archive photos recall scenes around Jarrow in the 1970s and ‘80s.

• Share

• Share

• Share