POVERTY, unemployment and abject degradation swept over a North-East town like a biblical plague. A boom town of skilled, proud, determined men was blighted by economic factors way beyond its control; a world slump, the Depression.

When Palmer's Yard in Jarrow closed its doors, that was bad enough. But when the workers were told there would not be another ship built in the town for the next 40 years, it was too much to endure. More than 6,000 men were out of work in a town where shops and services relied on their weekly wages. It was not their fault and they needed help.

But when a delegation approached President of the Board of Trade Walter Runciman, they were rejected with the dismissive: "Jarrow must work out its own salvation", ringing in their ears.

This was a strong, proud, affluent community of skilled workers laid low by circumstance. Savings disappeared, followed closely by possessions, sold off to make the ends meet. But all too soon the town began to sink inexorably down and four men called for a lifeline to be thrown.

Aldermen Paddy Scullion, Jim Hanlon, David Riley and Joseph Symonds organised a march, a crusade which would put Jarrow on the map forever.

From a hard-pressed community, a fighting fund of £800 was raised to transport to London a petition of 11,572 names demanding the right to work.

Volunteers were sought and more than 1,000 came forward. They were screened, not only for fitness but also for temperament - a town's reputation was at stake - and they were inspected by the Mayor of Jarrow, who reminded them they were going on behalf of the town and were being relied upon to maintain its good name.

"They were litmus for an undertow of decay," says historian Professor Bill Williamson, of Durham University. "They were poor, decent, poverty-struck people with a vision for a better life."

On the morning of October 5, 1936, to the sound of the Jarrow brass band, the 200 crusaders set off for Whitehall.

Few could imagine the fame the Jarrow Crusade would achieve as the volunteers assembled. And while in that year the march seemed to achieve little, the impact would be felt much further afield and its spirit would endure far beyond that generation. It would strike a chord with much of the nation and ensure that efforts to tackle unemployment were high on the government's agenda for ever more.

"We were forced on the road by real poverty and massive unemployment," says the last remaining survivor of the march, Cornelius Whalen, who still lives in Jarrow and was 91 yesterday. "We needed to let the Government know how we felt. We had massive public support and people were stopping us along the way, telling us what we were doing was a great thing."

Apart from the money raised to fund the march, there was a support bus packed with provisions. A pound a head was kept aside for the marchers' return journey home by train.

But for the large part, the marchers were relying on the goodwill of the communities they passed through to give them food and a bed for the night.

Thousands lined the route of the first day's march from Jarrow to Chester-le-Street. Women and children were in tears as they waved goodbye to their loved ones.

At the head of the march were two men carrying a heavy oak box containing the petition. The oldest taking part was 61, the youngest 19.

With them on the way to Chester-le-Street marched Jarrow MP Ellen Wilkinson. She promised to re-join at Harrogate and do 200 miles of the planned route and lead them into London.

They marched like soldiers, two by two, for 50 minutes every hour, covering 15 to 20 miles a day.

Support was overwhelming, particularly in South Yorkshire and in Leicester, the home of the shoe industry. Their well-worn boots were taken away overnight and re-soled for free.

For many, the walk was a great adventure and conditions on it were better than at home.

On October 31, the Jarrow marchers arrived in the nation's capital, bringing a region's distress with "courage, honour and dignity", read the inscription on the oak box, to the attention of a largely ignorant public. Their reward was a snub from the Government.

Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to bow to pressure to receive a delegation. "This is the way in which civil strife begins, and civil strife may not end until it is civil war," he warned.

Even the Labour Party leadership was nervous about showing too much support.

A rally for the Jarrow Crusade in Hyde Park was organised by the Communist Party, a hero's welcome for the 200 who had left Jarrow with such high hopes, but were to return with no better prospects of finding a job.

In the end it was a world event, like the one which had blighted their lives in the first place, which was to alter their course once more.

Three years later poverty was relieved when war brought about an industrial upturn; violent strife revived the shipyards and coal mines like no peacetime economics ever could.

But a seed had been sown, the nation's conscience had been pricked. And when the imposing figure of Ernest Bevin, that tough-talking union stalwart and Government minister, went to wave the troops off to war, he was reduced to tears by a simple request: "Be sure there is a job for us when we come back."