Love on the Dole under Thatcher

Love on the Dole was a 1933 novel that seemed very relevant in 1981. The author was Walter Greenwood and he aimed to show how working class people were trying to retain their humanity in the Great Depression while suffering immensely. Even the act of falling in love was fraught when you were living on the dole.

Fifty years later and the dole queues had swollen again. Hundreds of young people had boarded the Jobs Express, a train bound for London to petition Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to change course and boost employment.

Aboard the train, love certainly seemed to be blossoming for some on the dole!

Paul Mooney popped the question to his girlfriend Terese Shortt when both of them – members of the Unemployed Workers Association – were aboard the Jobs Express. They were a couple from Cambridge and Paul picked a quiet moment to ask Therese to marry him.

The pair got a card from Tony Benn MP and Terese was selected with five others, out of the 400 protestors, to go and meet Thatcher and plead their case. Later on, Tony Benn signed the wedding card. A socialist endorsement of love on the dole.

Given the current rise in unemployment in 2020 after the Covid-19 lockdown, I wonder whether a re-versioning of Greenwood’s Love on the Dole would be very timely. After the novel came out in 1933, it was rapidly turned into a play and by the end of 1935 had been seen by over a million people.