[MUSIC PLAYING]
REPORTER: The
combined contingents
from all over England marched to
London's field of free speech--
Hyde Park.
REPORTER: Everyone
must sympathize
with this orderly
demonstration which
has such a deserving object.
WOMAN: So the Roaring '20s
came crashing to a halt in 1929
with the Wall Street crash.
It triggered a global
crisis and immense hardship.
DR. PIERS BRENDON: The
Hungry '30s were not a myth.
Some 150 people died every
day from the consequences
of malnutrition in Britain.
We're all very, very badly
hit by a global depression.
And so what you got
was a real catastrophe.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Feelings were running
high in deprived areas.
Special areas, they were called,
in the euphemism of the time.
And when Bertie and his
wife visited the East End,
there were actually--
remarkably-- shouts of, we
don't want no real parasites.
Give us food.
We don't want no
royal parasites.
Which was an extraordinary
thing, because generally
speaking, the populace was--
as they put it in
a famous slogan--
lousy but loyal.
Here, they were
thoroughly disloyal.
And that, I think,
reflects the seriousness of
the social crisis of the time.
NARRATOR: In the decade that
had followed World War I,
the royal family had managed
to ride a wave of Bolshevism
and discontent among
the working class
masses using the younger
generation to help
maintain public support.
FRANK MORT: George
V is media-savvy.
He has produced an
idea of the king
as a constitutional monarch
above and outside politics.
But also, the king and
queen as being a family unit
at the center of domestic
life and family life.
These are relatively new
ideas in a mass democracy.
NARRATOR: Now in
the 1930s, Britain
faced economic
depression, increasing
the stark disparity between
the upper and lower classes.
With criticism of
the royal family
now being publicly voiced,
the family image would
become ever more important.
The king and queen
would need to project
their family as the most
solid and stable in the land.
Princess Mary had
done her domestic duty
and cheered the country
up after the war,
marrying Viscount Lascelles
in front of millions.
FRANK MORT: This is
claimed as the people's
wedding, not Mary's wedding.
NARRATOR: Mary was now the
mother of two young sons,
and would soon move to her
husband's estate in Yorkshire.
