The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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Jarrow Carnival
Thirteen years before the famous Jarrow Crusade, here we see the other side of Tyne siders: their humour, inventiveness and ingenuity.
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Overview
A snapshot of the resourcefulness and imagination of the working class communities of a famous northern town. This Jarrow Carnival of 1923 is an amazingly spectacle, even by the usual entertaining standards of northern carnivals of the time. Both the bewildering variety of fancy dress and themed costumes, and the incredible number of jazz bands, reveal the diverse influences of the British Empire and Afro-American jazz alike.
Jarrow is of course much better known for the Crusade of 1936, when 200 men from the town marched 300 miles to London in protest against unemployment. This march, supported by the borough council, achieved a legendary status that the many hunger marches organised by the more radical National Unemployed Workers' Movement haven’t. This carnival took place just before the sharp decline in orders for the main local employers, Palmers Ship Yard, which eventually went bust in 1933. Charity raising carnivals like this were common in northern towns at the time – and continue to be – and show little to suggest any association with the religious events of Easter or Whitsun, but perhaps a connection with Mayday.
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