Unemployment in the 1920s

Most of our local newspapers carry several pages each week of jobs on offer in their employment sections and it is difficult to believe how anyone can be so much in need of work that they will do anything to earn a few pounds. Even if such an extreme situation did present itself, there is always the state to fall back on and so no one would be allowed to starve. 

It is therefore difficult to understand a situation in which a man would take any work to feed his family, yet that was the case in Britain in the years following the Great War of 1914-18 when thousands returned to civilian life to find the country in the throes of a depression and employment at a premium. 

My own father was born in September 1900 and therefore narrowly missed enlistment in the army, but was nevertheless among those who had difficulty in finding work during the early 1920s and he often recalled those times when he had to report daily to receive a few shillings in government handouts but you got nothing for nothing in those days and he was required to dig holes for telegraph poles to earn it.

Many who were not so lucky took to the roads and the number of tramps increased dramatically during these years, as can be seen from the records of the Bourne Union or workhouse which provided a meal and a bed for the night in return for some menial tasks although the men were always turned out on to the street next morning when they simply headed for the next parish where they received similar hospitality. Begging was also much in evidence on street corners and old soldiers, many of them crippled and wearing their campaign medals, could be seen selling matches and bootlaces in an attempt to raise a few pence. 

Many of these old soldiers found themselves before the courts, such as Thomas Hyde, of no fixed abode, who was summoned at Bourne magistrates on Thursday 2nd October 1924 for stealing 4lbs. of cooked meat from his employer, Mr William Stubley, a cottage farmer of North Fen. Police told the bench that the prisoner had fought in the South African and Sudanese campaigns and the late war but had a bad record for theft and he was sent to prison with hard labour for a month.

Local councils were constantly urged to find work for the boys returning from the trenches of France and as a result many local projects were completed by this cheap form of labour, financed in part by central government. During my recent researches in the newspaper archives, I discovered that the road between Corby Glen and Carlby was improved in this way at a cost of £3,000, which is more than £100,000 in today's money, with the Ministry of Transport contributing 50 per cent and a further 25% of the £1,200 needed for tar spraying. Announcing the start of work on this scheme, a spokesman for Bourne Rural District Council, said: "We have received numerous applications from unemployed men in the district and this scheme will help relieve the situation."

Ironically, it took another conflict, the Second World War of 1939-45, to bring about the welfare state and the affluent society which has more or less continued to this day but in these years of full employment and generous state benefits, it is worth reflecting on those times and remembering the way it was.

WRITTEN JUNE 2003

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