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Work camps on TV show
A WHITBY historian is to appear on a popular television show to talk about forgotten work camps for unemployed men in operation in the area more than 70 years ago.
He is Professor John Field, who was interviewed by well-known BBC presenter Dan Snow for the One Show – they are pictured at one of the former camps at Langdale End near Scarborough.
The Langdale End camp, now used by the Scouts, was opened in 1935 and was one of four similar camps operating from 1934 to 1938 in the Whitby and Scarborough area. In 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War, the camps were taken over by the military.
Professor Field explained: “The young men who went to the work camps in the 1930s were all long-term unemployed from the industrial areas of Teesside and North Yorkshire, some of them former ironstone miners.
“They were single men aged upwards from 18 and they spent three months at the camps.
“Most of them were malnourished after long periods on the dole and were not fit for heavy labour.
“But they were given a diet based on plenty of meat and carbohydrates – thought at that time to be good for men doing manual work.
“It was a boring diet but no doubt a good deal better than the food they would get at home where they probably handed over their dole to their mothers.
“They were put onto heavy pick and shovel manual work, preparing the ground for the Forestry Commission to move in and plant trees.
“They also built the roads into the area that was to become the forest – one of the camps was at Lower Dalby and is now the forestry village in Dalby Forest.
“There would be 200 men at a time in each camp and more than 4,000 went through them during the three years from 1935 to 1938. But only one in 10 found jobs when they left.”
Twenty five years ago, Professor Field started interviewing some of the men who had worked at the camps when he was teaching a course on Britain between the First and Second World Wars.
He is presently writing a book about the work camps.
He said: “Some of the men said the time they spent at the camps had been the making of them but others thought it was hell.
“I don’t think any of them will still be alive now.”
Dan Snow spent some time at the site of the camp in Langdale End and is pictured near one of the original huts with Professor Field and Scout leader Neil Thompson. The hut, now used by the Scouts, is practically the same as it was when it housed the young men at the work camp in the 1930s.
Other camps in the area as well as those at Langdale End and Dalby Forest were at Harwood Dale near Scarborough and Gilling near Ampleforth.
The One Show programme featuring his work is due to be shown in September or early October, although a firm date has not yet been announced.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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