In 1886 a mob of unemployed people flooded into London's fashionable clubland breaking windows and chanting 'Jobs not Charity'. They stoned the Carlton and looted shops in Picadilly until confronted by a strong body of police. To be jobless in Victorian times meant misery, hunger and the workhouse. Luckily it wasn't long before the Boer War broke out and provided a great deal of work for these ruffians. When the Boer War was over the number of people out of work increased and in 1909 the first 'Labour Exchanges' were introduced : unemployment was gradually becoming institutionalized. In 1914 the sure-fire, guaranteed remedy for unemployment came again with World War One. The millions of men who would otherwise be littering the streets or rioting were allowed to go to war and die with a degree of nobility for King and Country. But when peace broke out in 1918 the angry unemployed veterans were soon battling with the police and asking what had happened to the heroic future they had been promised.
