Abstract
Long-term unemployment was a persistent feature of inter-war Britain, affecting at least 10 per cent of the insured workforce every year between 1921 and 1938, with the exception of 1927 when the proportion fell to 9.7 per cent. When uninsured workers were included, the total was higher and in 1932 3,400,000 persons, 17 per cent of the total workforce, were out of work. Ken Roberts has noted that the lower economic groups, being the most vulnerable to unemployment, are the most affected by class inequalities in leisure. This was historically the case as the concentration of unemployment in working-class areas intensified its social impacts. While areas of the midlands and south of England developed new industries and enjoyed a degree of prosperity with new opportunities for leisure through the welfare schemes of modernizing factories, regions in which the older staple industries were in economic decline experienced economic and social distress. In the north-east shipbuilding town of Jarrow, for example, over 80 per cent of workers were unemployed in 1932 while in the mining areas of South Wales the average rate was over 70 per cent.