Life during the Depression

• Areas that suffered worst during the Depression

  • South Wales
  • North-East England
• Areas that didn't get hit by the Depression

  • South-East England
  • The Midlands
• Dole


  Unemployment benefit
• Means Test


  Officials visited families to assess whether they were entitled to help, involving finding out how much the families earned or possessed
• Qualifying for dole

  1. Pass the Means Test

  2. Sum paid based on Means Test
• The Means Test created many problems for families and was extremely unpopular
• The dole was cut by 10 per cent in 1931
• Hunger Marches


  • Organised by people in areas of great depression to highlight issues such as unemployment, poverty and hunger to the government
• Jarrow March of 1936


  200 men alongside their MP Ellen Wilkinson, walked 300 miles from Jarrow to London over 8 months to protest high unemployment and the means test
• The Prime minister and the government ignored the petition from the Jarrow March
• Rhondda March, 1932


  375 marchers set off from the Rhondda, heading for London to present the government with a petition to abolish the Means Test, end cuts to social services and end the 10% reduction in dole payments
• The Metropolitan Police confiscated the Rhondda petition and it was not delivered to Parliament
• Making ends meet


  Families of the unemployed had less to spend and had to make whatever savings they could
• One-tenth of the population was seriously undernourished, including one-fifth of all children
• Families of the unemployed ate a lot of bread, margarine, potato, sugar but little meat, fruit, vegetables and milk
• Women were generally the first to be laid off from their jobs and many sacrificed themselves to feed their children or pay for their medical treatment rather than their own
• Poor diet led to higher infant mortality rate and poor health of children in depressed areas
• Self-help


  • Women operated credit mechanisms
  • Neighbours rallied around during times of crisis
  • Communities would come down harshly on those who broke its unwritten conventions
  • Clubs for the unemployed were set up by the Church and Mayors' funds
• Emigration from Wales


  Thousands of unemployed workers and their families moved from Wales to the more prosperous of less affected areas, such as the Midlands and south-east England
• Government scheme


  • Arranged to find work and accommodation in England for unemployed Welsh workers
• Around 430,000 left Wales during the 1920s and 1930s and Merthyr Tydfil lost 10,000 people during the 1930s
• Importance of radio and cinema

  People needed a distraction to help them cope with the effects of the Depression so they turned to accessible forms of entertainment
• By 1937, half the households in Britain, even in the poorer areas of Wales, had a radio
• The BBC was able to offer a great variety, including live theatre, news and music
• By 1934, Cardiff had over 20 cinemas and there were over 320 in the whole of Wales
• Growth of light industries in parts of Britain


  Many of these new industries were powered by electricity instead of coal, built nearer areas of high population such as the Midlands and south-east England, providing jobs and new goods like cars, radios, cookers and fridges
• Special Areas Acts


  Offered grants and cuts in rent and taxes to companies that would move to the special areas in worst hit areas of unemployment in north-east and north-west England and South Wales
• By 1938, about £8,400,000 had been spent but only 121 new firms had been set up, creating 14,900 jobs
• Although by 1938 unemployment in these special areas had decreased, some have suggested that it was not the Acts that achieved this, but the migration of workers from these areas to more prosperous areas such as the Midlands and the south-east of England
• Treforest Industrial Estate

  Established in June 1936 to provide alternative forms of employment to the coal and steel industries, by 1939 only 2,500 workers were employed there, but by 1945 there were 16,000 people employed
• There was a great variation in terms of the quality of life in 1930s Britain, with historian Bryn O'Callaghan stating, there were really two Britains in the 1930s