National Hunger March 1932

The National Hunger March of September–October 1932 was the largest of a series of hunger marches in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s.

Hunger marches to London had previously taken place in 1922–23, 1929 and 1930, and 1927 had seen a South Wales miners' march. Due to the Great Depression and mass unemployment, throughout 1932 there was a profound atmosphere of unrest across Britain with "high tension across the country", "running battles between police and demonstrators" and "violent clashes ... between the police and unemployed protestors in Merseyside, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Coventry, Nottingham, Oldham, Porthcawl, Stoke, Wigan, Preston, Bolton and Belfast", many of which followed protests organised by the communist-ledNational Unemployed Workers' Movement (NUWM).

With unemployment at 2,750,000, the 1932 National Unemployed Workers' Movement organised "Great National Hunger March against the Means Test" included about 3,000 people in eighteen contingents of marchers, mainly from economically depressed areas such as the South Wales Valleys, Scotland and the North of England designed to meet up in Hyde Park in London. A petition containing a million signatures demanding the abolition of the means test and the 1931 Anomalies Act was intended to be presented to Parliament after a rally in the park.

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