the devils decade (1930's)

Devilish is an apt description for a decade full of many dark and diabolical events. These were plentiful. Although that was not the complete picture. There were positive aspects of the 1930’s that are important to this essay. They mirror everything about the thirties that made it a ‘devils decade’. First, it is important to understand why 1930’s Britain has such a bad name in peoples memories.

This was undoubtedly another experience of the 1930’s that can be captured with the ‘devils decade’ phrase. So along with unemployment, poverty, hunger, depression and bad health there were also political reasons to remember the 1930’s as a ‘devils decade’. So what about the other side to the story? Are people of today expected to remember the thirties as a bleak time? With the ‘devils decade’ phrase being thrown about everywhere it isn’t suprising. But this is not the true picture. All of the problems previously mentioned were only suffered regionally. If you lived in the more prosperous south you would have been blind or ignorant of the situation elsewhere. This was the class divide that was mentioned earlier. To an outside observer there would have been two contrasting sides to Britain. One prosperous and developing, the other depressed and deprived.

The foreign demand for goods fell drastically. Other countries became capable of producing their own food, cotton, and now coal. "These were the very things that other people could produce more cheaply"(Taylor, 1965, 182). The demand for ship building was cut as other countries built their own. Therefore the Jarrow shipyard closed down causing the unemployment of thousands. As a result, these newly unemployed Jarrow workers decided to protest by organising a march to London. This was one of many ‘hunger marches’, and probably the most memorable. So far the phrase ‘devils decade’ is one that people of the era wouldn’t question as a description of the 1930’s.

With the depression came unemployment benefit. But as the unemployment figures were so high, a new test had to be introduced to evaluate how much money could be allocated to you. This was called the Means test. And mean it was. The Means test was set up to basically save the government some money. The subsidy the family would get, depended on the income of all members of the family. Many men felt that this was an unfair system. In fact Mowat writes, "the means test…was bitterly resented by working people." And it caused a lot of unrest at the benefit offices. The government and it’s ‘laissez faire’ attitude was not interested in the unemployment problem, they were only concerned with paying back the British deficit. Also the government, as with the workers in the south, did not see the depression, unemployment and misery in the deprived areas, as it was considered too far away. As Mowat points ou

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