Ellen Wilkinson - 1891 – 1947
November 2020
Ellen Cicely Wilkinson (8 October 1891 – 6 February 1947) was a Labour MP who served as Minister of Education from July 1945 until her death. Earlier in her career, as the MP for Jarrow, she became a national figure when she played a prominent role in the 1936 Jarrow March of the town's unemployed to London to petition for the right to work. Although unsuccessful at that time, the March provided an iconic image for the 1930s and helped to form post-Second World War attitudes towards unemployment and social justice. Ellen was also one of the founders of UNESCO.
“I hold pretty strongly the view that the most useless type of MP is the one that takes no interest at all in what is going on outside his own country. We are too closely knit these days for that kind of parochial outlook.” (New Dawn, June 27, 1936.)
Wilkinson was born into a poor though ambitious Manchester family. She embraced socialism at an early age. At 16 she joined the Longsight branch of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). At one of her first branch meetings she encountered Katherine Bruce Glasier, whose crusading brand of socialism made a deep impact. Thirty years later Wilkinson told her fellow Labour MP George Middleton that Glasier had "brought me into the Socialist movement ... It always makes me humble to think of her indomitable courage".
After graduating from the University of Manchester in June 1913, Wilkinson became a paid worker for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She helped to organise the Suffrage Pilgrimage of July 1913, when more than 50,000 women marched from all over the country to a mass rally in Hyde Park, London.
Inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917, Wilkinson joined the British Communist Party. She preached revolutionary socialism while seeking constitutional routes to political power through the Labour Party - which at the time accepted dual CPGB/Labour memberships. In November 1922, Wilkinson attended a meeting celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. She said that the Russian people could look forward with hope and asked whether the same could be said of the people condemned to live their lives in the slums of Manchester.
Wilkinson became the only woman elected as MP in the Labour ranks in 1924 by winning Middlesbrough East with a majority of 927 over her Conservative opponent. Wilkinson's arrival in the House of Commons attracted considerable press comment. Much of this attention was related to her bright red hair and the vivid colours of her clothing. She informed MPs:
"I happen to represent in this House one of the heaviest iron and steel producing areas in the world—I know I do not look like it, but I do".
A policeman once attempted to prevent Wilkinson from entering the House of Commons' smoking room based on her sex; Wilkinson responded, "I am not a lady - I am a Member of Parliament."
Wilkinson encouraged open debate on birth control. She reprimanded the Catholic trades unionist Bertha Quinn for calling it a 'crime' at a Labour Women's convention in 1925.
In March 1926, she combined with Lady Astor from the Conservative benches to attack the government's proposed decrease in expenditure on women's training centres.
During the nine days' duration of the May 1926 General Strike, Wilkinson toured the country to press the strikers' case at meetings and rallies. She was devastated when the TUC called off the strike.
In 1927 she was elected to the Labour Party's National Executive, which gave her a voice in the formulation of party policy. Her advance was noted with approval by Beatrice Webb, who saw in her a future candidate for high office—ahead of more senior Labour women such as Margaret Bondfield and Susan Lawrence. (See https://www.madsmeds.org/womans-place-1 for mini-biogs of Webb and Bondfield).
At 4ft 10in with flame-red hair, Wilkinson’s nicknames included The Fiery Particle and The Mighty Atom.
On 29 March 1928, Wilkinson voted in the House of Commons for the bill that became the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928. This granted the vote to all women aged 21 or over. During the debate she said:
"We are doing at last a great act of justice to the women of the country ... just as we have previously opened the door to the older women, tonight we are opening it to those who are just entering on the threshold of life and in whose hands is the new life of the future country that we are going to build".
In the 1929–31 Labour government, she served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the junior Health Minister, Susan Lawrence.
Wilkinson attacked the House of Lords, in a magazine article of August 1930.
"In a country that calls itself a democracy it really is a scandal that an unelected revising chamber should be tolerated, in which the Conservative Party has a permanent and overwhelming majority"
Following her defeat at Middlesbrough in the 1931 general election, Wilkinson became a prolific journalist and writer, before returning to parliament as Jarrow's MP in 1935.
Poverty in the town of Jarrow was acute and there were hopes that its chronic unemployment would be alleviated by the erection of a large steelworks. However, these hopes were dashed. The town council then made preparations for a demonstration in the form of a march to London to present a petition to the government. On 5 October 1936, a selected group of 200 set out from Jarrow Town Hall on the 282-mile march to London. They aimed to reach London by 30 October for the start of the new session of parliament.
On 31 October, the marchers reached London, but the prime minister, Baldwin refused to see them. On 4 November, Wilkinson presented the town's petition to the House of Commons. It had been signed by 11,000 citizens of Jarrow and concluded: "The town cannot be left derelict, and therefore your Petitioners humbly pray that His Majesty's Government and this honourable House should realise the urgent need that work should be provided for the town without further delay.”
In the brief discussion that followed, the Minister, Walter Runciman opined that "the unemployment position at Jarrow, while still far from satisfactory, has improved during recent months".
In reply, a Labour backbencher commented that "the Government's complacency is regarded throughout the country as an affront to the national conscience".
The march itself was a failure in its own day. But it helped to shape the post-Second World War perceptions of the 1930s and paved the way for the social reform brought in by the Attlee government.
In 1937, Wilkinson was one of a group of Labour figures— Nye Bevan, Harold Laski and Stafford Cripps were others—who founded the left-wing magazine Tribune. In the first issue she wrote of the need to fight unemployment, poverty, malnutrition and inadequate housing.
Wilkinson was a strong advocate for the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War and made several visits to the battle zones.
After visiting Spanish republicans during the civil war her plane was struck by lightning, but she still managed to make it to the House of Commons in time to move her bill on hire purchase. At the time hire purchase was a subject of frequent abuse for many low-income families on credit. With all-party support she secured the passage of the Hire Purchase Act 1938 to better the regulation of hire purchase agreements.
During the Second World War, Wilkinson served in Churchill’s wartime coalition as a junior minister. She worked mainly at the Ministry of Home Security under Herbert Morrison. Wilkinson held responsibilities for air raid shelters and civil defence.
In June 1943 Wilkinson became vice-chairman of the Labour Party's National Executive.
In April 1945, she was part of a parliamentary delegation that travelled to San Francisco to begin work on the establishment of the United Nations.
She supported Morrison's attempts to replace Clement Attlee as the Labour Party's leader. Attlee held no grudges and in the post-war government, he appointed Wilkinson as Minister of Education. Ellen therefore became the only female minister in Clement Attlee’s government in 1945. Wilkinson was therefore the second woman, after Margaret Bondfield, to achieve a place in the British cabinet.
As Minister of Education she saw her main task as the implementation of the 1944 Education Act which had been passed by the wartime coalition. This Act provided universal free secondary education, and raised the minimum school leaving age from 14 to 15 with effect from 1947. Wilkinson made her first priority the raising of the school leaving age. This required the recruitment and training of thousands of extra teachers and creating classroom space for almost 400,000 extra children.
The rapid expansion of school premises was achieved by the erection of temporary huts—some of which became long-term features of schools.
(A personal note - I did not know about these "temporary huts" until I researched this article. However, I recognise them because one was still in use in my primary school in Liverpool in the 1960s. It was used as the canteen then and was where the delights of rice pudding with a splodge of jam in it were introduced to me. As kids we would stir the jam into the pudding to make a faintly disgusting pink mixture which would then be eaten with relish. BM)
Other reforms during Wilkinson's tenure as minister included free school milk, improvements in the school meals service and an increase in university scholarships.
In November 1945 she chaired an international conference in London that led to the establishment, a year later, of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and cultural Organisation (UNESCO). In one of her final speeches in parliament, on 22 November 1946, she emphasised that UNESCO stood for "standards of value ... putting aside the idea that only practical things matter".
PHOTO OF UNESCO LOGO
“International fellowship and national personality are not incompatible.” (Conference for the Establishment of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, London, 1-16 November 1945)
By this time, her health was poor. She suffered for most of her life from bronchial asthma, which she aggravated over the years by heavy smoking and overwork. During the exceptionally cold weather of early 1947, she succumbed to a bronchial disease and died.
In a tribute published when Wilkinson's death was announced, the former Conservative MP Thelma Cazalet-Keir summed up her personality: "Ellen Wilkinson was as far removed from being a bore as it is possible for any human being to be. Whatever she did, wherever she went, she created an atmosphere of excitement and interest ... and not just because of her red hair and green dress".
Solidarity
Brian Madican
November 2020
