Idea Transcript
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Her ideas, movements and world Matt Perry
Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
Copyright © Matt Perry 2014 The right of Matt Perry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 8720 2 hardback First published 2014 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
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Contents
Preface Acknowledgements List of abbreviations
page vi vii viii
Introduction
1
1 Socialist ideas and movements 2 Feminism and the women’s movement 3 The trade union movement 4 Against imperialism and war 5 The Commons and the Parliamentary Labour Party 6 A journey through the crisis years: the slump, travel and anti-fascism 7 ‘The hope of the world’: Spain in revolution and war, 1933–39 8 In government, 1940–47
18 69 115 155 201 251
Select bibliography Index
403 409
299 350
Preface
This book has germinated over many years beginning with my research into the Jarrow Crusade. If that event attained a mythical status, Ellen Wilkinson appeared to be equally elusive and enigmatic. She remains a potent symbol in the local Labour movement and of female achievement. Yet despite her celebrity, the destruction of her personal papers and the need to piece together fragments from a multiplicity of sources has discouraged biographers. The present renewal of scholarly interest in Ellen Wilkinson is both overdue and timely. Her principal concerns – working-class representation, the status of women, capitalist crisis, war, anti-fascism – remain central to contentious politics in this decade and will most likely in the one to come as well. Moreover, a new conceptual repertoire allows biographers to ask questions about her ideas, her relation to social movements and her transnational orientation with a new precision. This book cannot be the last word in the study of Ellen Wilkinson. Her thought and political practice was too wide-ranging, too complex and the evidence too partial to allow that. This project has concentrated on unearthing new evidence in relation to Wilkinson, particularly her political activism beyond Britain in the belief that this would allow greater insights into her political itinerary and motivation. Hopefully, it will help to stimulate more interest and discussion into this fascinating and contradictory character.
vi
Acknowledgements
It is impossible to thank all those who have helped me with this project and I apologise to all those who I fail to mention here. Transnational history requires reliance on the generosity of strangers and I have encountered considerable amounts of this in my travels and enquiries in foreign archives and libraries. I feel a particular privilege working in the intellectually stimulating and friendly atmosphere of the history department at Newcastle University. I could not put a price on the support and encouragement of Joan Allen, Claudia Baldoli, Lara Cook, Martin Farr, Tim Kirk, Alejandro Quiroga, David Saunders, Felix Schulz and Samiksha Sehrawat. Members of the Labour and Society Research Group – Máire Cross, Daniel Laqua and Nicole Robertson – have provided a vibrant and supportive environment for labour history. I must thank also Hester Barron for her kindness. Old friends Steve Cannon and Tony Dabb have also lent a hand with reading and criticism of my manuscript. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank Paul Preston with help in tracking down more elusive Spain-related sources. The editorial board at the International Review of Social History and anonymous readers provided insightful criticism. I owe the greatest debt to two people. David Reid accumulated materials in the expectation of publishing a biography that never materialised. He allowed me access to these materials when he was very ill. They are now deposited in Newcastle University Special Collections. His spade work and generosity was of considerable help. And finally, thanks to Christine.
vii
List of abbreviations
AEC Association of Education Committees AUCE Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain CWS Co-operative Wholesale Society ILP Independent Labour Party IWSA International Woman Suffrage Alliance LRD Labour Research Department LSI Labour and Socialist International NEC National Executive Committee (Labour Party) NJC National Joint Council (of the TUC General Council and the Labour Party NEC) NSDAP National Socialist (Nazi) German Worker’s Party NUDAW National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers NUSEC National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship NUW(C)M National Unemployed Workers’ (Committee) Movement NUWSS National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies PLP Parliamentary Labour Party PPS Parliamentary Private Secretary USDAW Union of Shop, Distribution and Allied Workers WCWF World Committee against War and Fascism WFL Women’s Freedom League WILPF Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom WPSU Women’s Political and Social Union
viii
Introduction
Ellen Wilkinson left a profound impression upon the collective imagination. She has reappeared in all manner of representations: plays, paintings, union banners and various acts of commemoration. Housing estates, blocks of flats, beers, a metro train, miners’ lodge banners, offices in Labour Party Headquarters all bear her name. Subsequent campaigns, protests and movements against the closures of the steelworks, mines and shipyards of the north-east (sometimes carrying the very banner under which she walked) invoke Wilkinson’s memory. Several Labour women or north-east MPs summon her name as inspiration.1 At the same time, pressures have moulded the social memory of Wilkinson into a more conventional simplified shape. Biographer David Reid complained after a BBC documentary in 1983 about the programme’s misrepresentation of her as ‘a Labour Party worthy’, which, he argued, was wide of the mark. The programme omitted her early commitment to the Independent Labour Party’s (ILP) brand of socialism, her work in the suffrage campaign, her Wesleyan Methodism, her revolutionary commitment, her campaigns for India, Spain and anti-fascism and her love affairs.2 Perhaps, the most remarkable effort to appropriate Wilkinson for mainstream Labourism is Graham Dale’s God’s Politicians (2000). Concerned with the influence of religion on her politics, he assimilated her into a teleology of Christian socialist values that has culminated with Tony Blair and his ‘modernising’ New Labour agenda.3 A more plausible recent Labourist assessment identified the specificity of her ‘socialism with a northern accent’ (the ILP, Victor Grayson, the Clarion Clubs and so on), which was marshalled to make the case for regional assemblies and greater devolved powers to the north.4 For a woman born in Victorian Ardwick (Manchester), Wilkinson’s career is remarkable. From a humble background, she became one of the first female MPs. Indeed, of her nineteen years at the House of Commons, four were as Labour’s solitary female MP.5 Kenneth O.
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Morgan claimed that she was ‘arguably Britain’s most important woman politician’ who ‘made the role of women in high politics credible and effective as no other had done before, with powerful consequences for her sex and her class’.6 Ellen Cicely Wilkinson was born on 8 October 1891 at 41 Coral Street, Ardwick. With its textile revolution and global connections of trade, investment and migration, the city stood at the epicentre of industrial modernity offering a pioneering experience in many aspects of the modern life. Two months into her time as Minister of Education, Wilkinson reflected for the BBC upon what it meant to be Lancashire ‘born and bred’.7 She imagined a Manchester Monday morning of steamy rain, evoking the smell of wet mackintoshes and shawls inside a tram. Soot mixed with rain, producing a ‘soul-destroying ugliness’. Nineteenth-century Lancashire had developed to the rhythms of capitalist prosperity and penury; the hungry 1840s and the cotton famine during the American Civil War left their toll of hardship in folk memories. Like many others, her diminutive stature resulted from ‘generations of Lancashire mothers who have worked in the mills till a few days before their babies were born, and went back the moment they could get about again’. In her dialect, to ‘clem’ meant to starve and was enunciated with a special bitterness nourished by generations of impoverishment. Her BBC talk also revealed her abiding talent of offering to her audience intimate glimpses of herself, or at least the illusion thereof. If this evocation of her background helps to explain her character, such appearances also deceive. Wilkinson was playing the ‘Lancashire lass’. However, this ‘homesick northern daughter’ would retreat at weekends to a home she and her sister had set up in the sleepy Buckinghamshire village of Penn; and indeed, this was her last resting place. ‘Our Ellen’ – as she was known – represented a familiar identity that disarmed critics and reassured those who felt threatened by a woman in high office with a radical reputation.8 Wilkinson possessed a long curriculum vitae as a political activist. She joined the ILP at the age of 16. After university, she became in 1913 Manchester organiser of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and then in 1915 was appointed a national organiser of the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees (AUCE, which became the National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers in 1921, NUDAW, and then Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, USDAW, in 1947). Sympathetic to the Russian Revolution, she visited the Soviet Union in 1921 and a portrait of Lenin looked down over her bed.9 When she was first elected to the Commons in October 1924, Wilkinson was one of only four women MPs. With an expanded female franchise at the coming election of 1929, she started a two-year stint 2
Introduction (1927–29) on the Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC). Losing her Middlesbrough East seat in 1931, Wilkinson then worked for NUDAW until her electoral victory in Jarrow in 1935. Her career blossomed after the Jarrow Crusade of 1936, returning to the Labour Party NEC in 1937. In 1940, as the Labour Party entered Churchill’s coalition government, she became Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Pensions and then Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Home Security from 1940 to 1945. Her parliamentary career’s high point was becoming Minister of Education during the Labour government of 1945, being responsible for the implementation of the 1944 Education Act and introducing secondary education for all. When examining Wilkinson’s life, the paucity of materials imposes uncertainties and constraints. Wilkinson’s brother burned her personal papers shortly after her death in 1947. He did the same with the personal notes of their sister Annie.10 Furthermore, her MI5 file PF42136 was destroyed in 1946 (apparently Wilkinson was told on requesting to see her file, that it had been burned that morning).11 For years, the Wilkinson family opposed the idea of a biography.12 This makes determining personality and deeper motivation difficult. One apparent solution – reconstructing Wilkinson’s personality from her autobiographical accounts in Myself When Young or on the BBC – is problematic because she developed a narrative of her formative moments in a selective and present-minded manner.13 By all accounts, Wilkinson had a remarkable character. As one commentator put it, ‘in her short life, she has carried through a hundred battles her dashing courage, her quick temper, and her glowing idealism. It is not inappropriate that the heroine of her recently published first novel should be a versatile and ardent young woman, an able organiser, a passionate and impulsive speaker, and – a minx.’14 Yet, there are dangers when confronted with such tributes. Anthony Masters casually observed that Wilkinson suffered from manic depression based on his reading of the Astor–Wilkinson correspondence.15 Wishing to dispel the myth of her universal popularity, Lady Juliette Huxley recalled a malicious nickname used behind her back of ‘virago intacta’.16 Wilkinson’s secretary Diana Hubback observed that her employer was rumoured to be a ‘philanderer and had broken many hearts’.17 A gap exists between the public persona that ‘Red Ellen’ cultivated and performed and a private Wilkinson revealed only in glimpses to friends. Her love life is another aspect of her personal domain discretely kept from public view. She was briefly engaged to Walton Newbold. Wright Robinson alluded to the ‘strange undefined relation’ of Wilkinson and John Jagger (NUDAW President) which neither ‘find it expedient to proclaim or defend it’.18 Stella Davies hinted that Frank Horrabin was the love of her life, with 3
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson whom she had an affair during the later 1920s.19 A similar uncertainty surrounded her intimate relationship with Herbert Morrison: his biographers denied that it had a sexual dimension.20 The possibility that she may have taken her own life has also animated a related controversy among historians.21 Historiographical interest has waxed and waned. Betty Vernon’s biography of Wilkinson published in 1982 prompted considerable debate. While this book was generally welcomed, Andy Croft deemed it to be insufficiently analytical, particularly in relation to Wilkinson’s evolving political philosophy.22 Barbara Blaszak wanted Wilkinson’s ‘feminist consciousness’ to be more fully explored.23 Moreover, David Reid – who was undertaking a doctoral study of Wilkinson – sharply disagreed with Vernon’s assessment. In particular, Vernon downplayed Wilkinson’s time in the Communist Party which was for Reid ‘in the most profound sense, the making of Wilkinson.’ He rejected the interpretation of Wilkinson as a Labourist or feminist, charting an evolution from Blatchford’s ethical socialism, via guild socialism to Communism, with a break in 1926, after which she adopted ‘an amalgam of parliamentary socialism and electoral activity.’24 Wilkinson’s time in the 1945 Labour government as the Minister of Education has drawn keen scrutiny. 25 A conference at Ruskin College in 1978 initiated a debate about her time at the Ministry of Education. David Rubinstein highlighted Wilkinson’s failure to embrace comprehensive education as symptomatic of the 1945 government’s record and the limited mark made by the Labour left on that government. This perhaps posed the question of Wilkinson’s ministerial achievements rather too narrowly. This first historical judgement drew rejoinders that broadened the debate and were more or less appreciative of her record from Billy Hughes, David Reid, Caroline Benn and D.W. Dean. Those more sympathetic to Wilkinson, such as Henry Pelling, have focused on her brave decision to push for the increase to school leaving age.26 Brian Harrison believed that the criticism of Wilkinson for her failure to promote comprehensives as ‘doubly anachronistic’, misunderstanding Labour’s attachment to equality of opportunity under the existing arrangements and the battle for resources within Cabinet.27 Ellen Wilkinson’s novel The Clash (1929) has prompted more scholarly interest than any other aspect of her career. To appreciate its deeper meaning, Maroula Joannou locates the novel as part of a socialist-feminist cultural tradition.28 Sharing this concern, Ian Haywood focuses upon Wilkinson’s gendered re-interpretation of 1926.29 Shifting to the personal realm of emotion, Pamela Fox’s study of the British working-class novel, including The Clash, attempts to reconceptualise working-class resistance as a form of refusal of d ominant 4
Introduction culture with class shame as the principal contested terrain.30 For Fox, The Clash concerns the autobiographical heroine Joan’s anguished choice between individual romantic fulfilment and collective class obligations; she opts for the latter. Alternately, for Laura Beers (who also considers Wilkinson’s second novel Division Bell Mystery), Joan epitomises a modern (rather than a working-class) woman choosing career over romance.31 Considering the relationship between public and private realms, Nicola Wilson viewed the home as the ‘primary site’ where a gendered class consciousness formed, focusing on passages set in the homes of Maud Meddowes and miners’ wives.32 Yet, it is the mobility of urban modernity’s public spaces that informs Wendy Parkin’s view of The Clash, in which Joan renounces romance for the exciting new civil arena of politics.33 Thus, from different starting points, both Beers and Parkin stress the ‘modern woman’ and this was certainly a conceptual motif of Wilkinson’s thinking on gender. Shifting the debate onto the novel’s intellectual and political underpinnings, Roberto del Valle Alcalá read The Clash as Wilkinson’s effort to reconcile socialism and feminism in a revolutionary synthesis, when others stressed her reformist socialism.34 Despite these rich insights, the literary approach can refract understandings of Wilkinson’s gender politics. There is a failure in some of this literature to historicise these texts sufficiently. Ian Haywood finds a feminist Wilkinson opening up the ‘conspicuous faultlines in the “workerist” mythology of the General Strike’. This is problematic as it neglects her contribution to A Worker’s History of the General Strike, which is plainly written in a workerist idiom. Moreover, its authors – not least Wilkinson – believed that, rather than being a romantic myth, the strike determined the political atmosphere in the Labour movement and hence its analysis was crucial. More than anything, in debunking mode, she was contesting MacDonald and Thomas’s hegemonic ‘never again’ interpretation of the strike. The culturalist gaze also presents other problems. Overly concerned with a neat socialist-feminist genealogy, Wilkinson has been misleadingly presented as a suffragette and supporter of Sylvia Pankhurst, though their paths barely crossed.35 Her death has been romanticised (stressing overwork, illness and relative youth, thereby obscuring the possibility of suicide).36 Key elements of the historical context of her novel have been overlooked. Thus, Wilkinson chose not to include the campaign for equalisation of the franchise which coincided exactly with the timeframe of The Clash and in which Wilkinson and Rhondda (on whom Meddowes was based) were heavily involved. Moreover, while Joannou discusses birth control in The Clash, she presented Wilkinson as a supporter of the Workers’ Birth Control Group, though Wilkinson opposed their campaign when she 5
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson was on the Labour Party NEC. The overall effect of this literary route to understanding Wilkinson’s gender politics is to simplify Wilkinson’s complex fluid ideas that were drawn into the field of force of a dynamic social movement. While Wilkinson described herself as a socialist and a feminist, the socialist-feminist label, though true in a sense, may be misleadingly static. This is not to suggest, as Reid did (drawing on Wilkinson’s description of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst as ‘feminine fascists’), that Wilkinson was not a feminist. Rather, her visions of socialism and feminism changed over time, diverged and intersected in different ways. Her ideas and practice were a dialogue between movements in changing institutional settings. Her novels have not been the only route into an examination of Wilkinson’s gender politics and her relation with feminism. Brian Harrison considered Wilkinson in relation to inter-war feminists or those he called the ‘prudent revolutionaries’. He adopted a more conventionally historical (and less theorised) approach to Wilkinson. While her socialism was stronger than her feminism, she was willing to collaborate with middle-class feminists to a greater extent than any other woman Labour MP.37 Pam Graves’s study of inter-war Labour women highlighted the contradictions of women’s status within the party. Their invisibility belied the party’s reliance upon their activism and their disproportionate contribution to the welfarist agenda that triumphed in 1945. Wilkinson was one of the exceptions to the pattern because of her visibility, her continued relationship with ‘middle-class feminists’ and her equivocation over family allowances and birth control.38 David Howell’s MacDonald’s Party (2002) scrutinised the party’s ideal of womanhood, the ‘Labour woman’. Wilkinson certainly did not eschew this ideal but she also transcended it. While rejecting certain contemporary ideals of womanhood, she saw herself as a ‘new’, ‘modern’, ‘intelligent’ as well as a working-class woman who had been offered emancipatory opportunities through political action. Laura Beers has contextualised Wilkinson in terms of gender representations in the inter-war British press in which women MPs were treated as stars and their politics trivialised.39
New evidence, new approaches Deeper evidentiary foundations can be excavated to reconstruct Wilkinson’s life.40 Wilkinson was a prolific journalist and material from Labour Leader, New Leader, All Power, The Nation, Lilliput, The Strand and Student Outlook adds to our understanding. Her journalism needs to be handled with care: editors and formats afforded different degrees of political latitude. Thus, Wilkinson observed that while she 6
Introduction usually exercised self-restraint, Time and Tide allowed her to ‘luxuriate in saying what I want even if it means inflicting on the readers … what no other editor in London would dream of allowing me to write’.41 Wilkinson understood how to write for particular audiences, shifting between formal and vernacular registers, adopting various modes of address: as a political commentator, parliamentary savant, industrial relations expert, woman’s advocate and foreign correspondent. Vestiges also appear in the personal papers of her acquaintances (such as J.F. Horrabin, Jawaharlal Nehru, Ove Arup, Nancy Astor, Leon Trotsky, Louis Fischer, Dick Sheppard, George Catlin, Winifred Holtby, Adam von Trott). Institutional collections furnish additional material: USDAW’s Manchester headquarters, the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF) at the LSE, the International Peace Council (IPC) and the League against Imperialism (LAI) at the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the Labour Party (People’s History Museum and the Working Class Movement Library, Manchester), Electrical Association of Women (EAW) at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, London, the TUC Library and the Women’s Library. The National Archives hold key collections such as the reports on revolutionary organisations, the MI5 files about her Communist associates as well as Cabinet, Home Office and Education records. Moreover, I have accessed a collection of fifty interviews conducted in the 1970s with Wilkinson’s acquaintances, the product of David Reid’s abandoned biography. It includes those with Jennie Lee, Joe Symonds, Margaret Cole, Fenner Brockway, Ivor Montagu, Earl Listowel, J.P.M. Millar, G.R. Strauss and Isabel Brown. The nature of the samples of oral history may reinforce particular narratives of Wilkinson’s life be they Labourist, British, high political, trade union or feminist ones. For instance, those who were involved in her transnational campaigning are significantly absent. Methodological care is needed with these interviews, being shaped as they were not only by the filters and illusions of memory but also by the transaction between Reid’s and the interviewees’ agendas. From a methodological viewpoint, this biography aims to survey the triad of Wilkinson’s ideas, movements and world. The conceptual toolbox needed for this is drawn from intellectual history, the study of social movements and transnational history. This approach will subject these aspects of Wilkinson’s life to greater scrutiny than has hitherto been the case and will allow a distinctive understanding of her intellectual trajectory. This book challenges the two-dimensional heroic ‘Red Ellen’ apparent in British political culture whose ideas and personality remained essentially constant over time. Equally, other facets of her life will consequently receive less emphasis: her youth, her work in 7
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson the Commons, and in government. My underlying assumption is that Wilkinson’s ideas evolved in dialogue with transnational movements subject to cycles of contention and that she was constrained within a changing institutional conjuncture. This starting point has shaped the structure of the biography which is not a single chronological sweep but is instead divided into movements (socialism/Communism, women, anti-imperialism, anti-fascism, Spain), Labour institutions (union and Parliamentary Labour Party) and finally government. These are taken in the chronological order of her first encounter with these subjects. Each of these constitutes a specific strand of her entangled thought requiring consideration in its own right. There are particular reasons why Wilkinson, more than other politicians, should be viewed from a transnational standpoint. Being an avowed internationalist, she travelled widely and developed strong transnational affinities through her political engagements with Germany, Spain, France, India, Ireland, Bulgaria, the USA and the USSR.42 This transnational perspective is not simply a matter of revealing a fuller account of Wilkinson’s life: these practices helped to shape and define her ideas. Social movement theory provides important insights. Charles Tilly reminds us that modernity has spelt ‘five centuries of revolution’, a particularly significant observation given Wilkinson’s own attachment to revolution and her political reorientations consequent upon revolutions and counter-revolutions in Russia, Germany and Spain.43 Tilly’s work opens the field to the structural characteristics of social movements more generally, and their interactions with regimes, which has particular significance for Wilkinson. Though on first sight unconducive to biographical inquiry, such an approach can valorise her agency and popular action more generally. The memory of Red Ellen on the public platform of the movements – her vivid red hair, her tiny frame, her powerful northern accent, her distinctive toss of the head to emphasise a point – remained with many who witnessed this.44 Understanding Wilkinson’s transnationalism also requires an engagement with social movement perspectives. Scholars have grappled with the transnational diffusion of protest: its activist networks, its collective action frames, its repertoires and its cycles of protest.45 She acted as a transnational ‘broker’ connecting different sites of contention between the British left, via the League against Imperialism, and the Indian nationalist movement. Wilkinson took advantage of train, passenger liner and air to travel with the money scraped together from her job, her friends and her journalism, all of which meant that she was in a rare position to gain wide-ranging insights into her world. New technologies were revolutionising the possibilities for travel and communication, opening new avenues to spread protest and build movements. She 8
Introduction was also involved in ‘domestication’ when conflicts external to the domestic political agenda are introduced and become the object of collective action, such as her work over the Reichstag Fire Trial Campaign or over the government’s attitude to the Spanish Republic. Furthermore, Wilkinson performed a prominent role in the process of ‘externalisation’ wherein movements become active supranationally participating in conferences to establish organisations concerning imperialism (the League against Imperialism), peace (International Peace Congress), fascism and war (the Amsterdam–Pleyel movement, Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism and the Women’s Committee against Fascism and War). Wilkinson devoted a considerable part of her energies to ‘transnational collective action’ and its conjunctural attributes (environmental change, cognitive change and relational change) offer insights into her political practice. Her contacts, acquaintances and friends who would provide insider knowledge or assistance or introduction to third parties, developed into what social movement theorists Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink have called the ‘transnational advocacy networks’. According to their definition, actors working on a particular issue are bound together by shared values and discourses resulting in dense exchanges of information and services.46 Thus, these networks are partly constitutive of the political journeys of their participants like Wilkinson. Social movement scholars have also probed the vicissitudes of participation in collective action and protest. These are conceived of as cyclical in nature and this cyclicality affords insight into Wilkinson’s shifting perceptions, outlook and general state of mind. Particularly valuable in this literature are the recent efforts to understand participation in social movements as a fluid amalgam of reason and emotion.47 The reader glimpses beyond ostensibly indefatigable Wilkinson in the opening of her first novel The Clash. The autobiographical character Joan Craig was having one of her ‘crises’ of exhaustion and despair. Private correspondence with Astor and Dalton also reveals this inversion of Wilkinson’s public persona. Her shifts of mood highlight the emotional cycle of participation in movements that can enthuse with the exhilarating optimism associated with the opening horizons of possibility or depress with emotional exhaustion of narrowing prospects. Social movement theory casts another long-standing historiographical question in new light through the notion of the ‘political opportunity structure’.48 This opens the troublesome matter of causal relation between the goals of social movements and political change. Political opportunity for participation in social protest depended for Wilkinson crucially on institutional constraints and disciplinary boundaries.
9
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Wilkinson’s intellectual itinerary was not ‘uniform in political colour’.49 Her ideas and political activity were entangled in complex ways, making it necessary to uncover her participation in and experience of waves of industrial unrest (1915–20, 1926, 1936–37) and cycles of social protest (suffrage movement, unemployed protest, anti-fascism, solidarity with the Spanish republic). As Wilkinson’s contemporary Victor Serge put it, mass movements ‘transform individuals, impel them into unpredictable courses of development, and mould their convictions. … [T]he ebb-tide of events carries men [sic] away just as surely as the flood-tide brings them in.’50 Wilkinson’s political outlook took as a persistent point of reference past participation in the great movements for women’s suffrage and the strike waves of the war. Time and again, she articulated the significance of the emotional dimension – ‘old spirit’ – of these movements in order to re-energise her renowned optimism. Her rhetoric and symbolism was drawn from and directed towards the emotional level. Where labour history restored the rationality to worker protest, previously dismissed as resistant to progress, or a vehicle to animalistic mob psychology, certain social movement theorists have re-emphasised the centrality of the emotional process to cycles of mobilisation.51 Thus, both labour history and social movement theory can reconceptualise human agency in terms of a dialectic of reason and emotion. As such, Wilkinson’s public political persona – ‘fiery’, ‘passionate’ – symbiotically emerged in relation to these moments of great struggle and made her an ideal voice for protest. Red Ellen’s indefatigable hope and passion were symptomatic of the opening up of social movements sustained through personal willpower and self-denial at times when they were not shared by others. Wilkinson conjured into the imagination moral shocks (or what social movement theorists call ‘injustice frames’) transgressing deeply held rules and norms that she shared with her audiences: a town ‘murdered’ by the steel industry and the banks, Madrid’s children bombed in their sleep, co-operative society committee members acting like capitalists, brownshirt thugs whipping socialist women with steel rods. Her use of metaphor reveals a compulsion that drew her to some of the most intense moments of inter-war contention: the ‘storm centre’ of Oviedo at the time of the Asturian miners’ insurrection, ‘dashing off into the vortex of’ the Flint Fischer body plant during the epic battle with General Motors.52 A bitter opponent observed that she would suddenly arrive in ‘whichever country happens to be having a revolution’.53 It is a fallacy to assume that historical actors necessary have stable or consistent political views. Methodological individualism, common-sense idealism and the transgenerational reproduction of political traditions reinforces this illusion. Critical events precipitated 10
Introduction and shaped Wilkinson’s political engagement. She mapped her intellectual bearings from the suffrage movement, the Great War, the Russian Revolution, Hitler’s accession to power and the Spanish Civil War. Such events did not make people react in predictable ways. Responses might be immediate, delayed or anticipate events. Some might reject their old assumptions, others deny the need to change. Events might precipitate political engagement or disengaged withdrawal. In such circumstances, a coherent, unfaltering political outlook was not the norm. As she reflected in a letter written in early 1941: ‘To finish up one of the supporters of Mr Wilkie [pro-war US Republican leader] seems to me quite extraordinary as the rest of things in this extraordinary time.’54 She had previously observed the process in others, disapproving of politicians who ‘were the reddest revolutionaries in their youth’ but repressed social discontent in older age.55 French historians have developed persuasive explanations of such biographical or cohort ‘itineraries’. With this approach, historians have tried to go beyond the demarcations of political philosophy to explain the real intellectual journeys at the micro-level.56 To conceptualise Wilkinson’s intellectual odyssey, some first principles ought to be outlined. Temporal considerations highlight both dynamism and persistence in her thought. Two rapid and pivotal transitions took place: her conversion to socialism in 1907 and her turn to the right in 1939–40. Beyond the threshold of 1940, she assimilated into mainstream Labourism and became an establishment politician of Cabinet and Privy Council. Ideologically, in a radical departure, she accepted Fabianism, the public corporation model of nationalisation, Keynesianism, liberal internationalism, the monarchy and the Empire, all of which she had sharply criticised for twenty years. From the viewpoints of the movements, she retained aspects of movement-building rhetoric, sought where she perceived the opportunity to effect reforms from above, but often found herself in conflict with grassroots activists. The Churchill and Attlee governments used, and she traded on, the radical image of Red Ellen in the face of popular discontent. This explains not only her stance on shelter policy, shop stewards, Mosley’s release and comprehensive schools but also her apparent press gaffes over bread rationing or clothing vouchers. A rough chronology of her political ideas can be established. Between 1907 and 1940, her patterns of thought changed at an uneven pace with two radicalisations when she explicitly embraced revolution (the phase of war and Russian Revolution and the phase of militant anti-fascism). There were subsequent reversals or drifts into a reformist socialism (the late 1920s and the late 1930s). Verbal markers of her radicalisation such as class struggle and revolution appear during these specific militant 11
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson periods in response to conjunctures of events, protest cycles and her institutional positions. Other signifiers such as the ‘practical politician’ (associated with a pragmatic turn) signaled her deradicalisation. Crucial to her phases of deradicalisation were institutions – parliament, the CPGB, the Labour Party, NUDAW and Cabinet – that constrained her political practice and public expression of ideas. This constraint at times assumed a coercive character with dismissal (from NUDAW), public apologies (in the Commons and in The Communist), and the treat of expulsion (from the Labour Party). This disciplinary process cut her off from the movements. As she complained in the Clarion, ‘if one links up with anything that seems to be getting a move on, like a Hunger March, or the Anti-War crowd, or the German Relief Committee, one is told that this is a banned activity’.57 Constraint also operated more subtly through accommodation to these institutions, adapting her behaviours, practices and languages to suit. Hence her undisclosed frustration during her first spell on the NEC can be detected in her novel The Clash. One passage both tentatively justifies the NEC’s (and therefore her public) opposition to the dissemination of information about birth control, as well as powerfully putting the case of working women who sought the right to determine their own future.58 Familiarity and insider knowledge socialised her in unacknowledged ways as a pragmatic Wilkinson learned how to get things done in the Commons or on the NEC. Her unconventional, but successful, career path can only be understood as a precarious balancing act of commitments to parliamentarianism and to extra-parliamentary causes, the latter being the source of her charismatic affinity with Labour’s grassroots and her greatest political asset. Wilkinson’s social movement activism and ascent within political institutions of party, government and ultimately global governance pose an interesting analytical opportunity. It is perhaps redolent of Rudi Dutschke’s injunction to 1960s activists to set off on the ‘long march through the institutions’.59 Yet a simple chronology of her ideas is inadequate. The boundaries between these periods are not always neat because Wilkinson’s thought defies reduction to a singular linear course. Despite its evident utility, the itinerary metaphor breaks down after a certain point. One cannot board two trains at the same time but ideas and travellers have different properties. Comparison of Wilkinson’s two most radical phases exposes the multiple strands of her consciousness. During her time in the CPGB, her gender and socialist politics fused in the summer of 1921 around admiration for Kollontai and the gender policy of the Soviet Union. Unlike the confluence of her first radicalisation, her ideas of the early 1930s had different sources and addressed separate audiences. For a time, her gender politics stressed male conspiracy and sex struggle in response to 12
Introduction the contemporary backlash against women and thus diverged from her anti-imperialism and socialism. She dealt with this by separating off these two aspects of her political life. Ultimately, however, these divergent radicalisations of socialism and feminism intersected and partially synthesised in a revolutionary anti-fascism and the rhetoric of male conspiracy fell from her vocabulary. It would be wrong to assume a consistency and homogeneity to her thought. Partly this was due to the compartmentalised character of her life, somewhat akin to Antonio Gramsci’s concept of split or contradictory consciousness. She adapted to very different arenas: separate movements (feminism, the Labour movement, anti-imperialism, pacifism) as well as diverse social milieux (working-class Middlesbrough, Manchester or Jarrow; bohemian-feminist-literary Bloomsbury, the high political realm of Westminster, ministry or Cabinet).60 Some of her situations appear to be mutually exclusive. How can one simultaneously be a student activist and a trade union official, or a guild socialist and an industrial unionist, or a feminist and a Labour politician? The Clash articulated the frustrations, dilemmas, transgressions and intersections of these political compartments. Thus, for instance, intellectually she largely maintained a separation between her politics and her religion (and hence the description of her as a Christian socialist is misplaced). This distinction broke down on specific occasions, with her atheistic Bolshevik turn or socialist sermons consequent upon her frustrations with the second Labour government. This compartmentalisation has an intellectual–practical fault line as well. Over time, elements of her thought and practice diverged and converged. With the question of war and imperialism during the 1930s, she recognised the gap between her political analysis and the outlook of movements (such as the Peace Pledge Union) with which she collaborated. Her commitment to anti-war movements outweighed her objections to absolutist pacifism and she wanted to argue her case within the mass movement. In this instance, she externalised the contradiction: ‘muddled’ thinking belonged to pacifists. With the relationship between anti-fascism and war, she took time to recognise her own inconsistency, eventually her internal ‘muddle’ was a sign of ‘grim’ objective times. She drifted during the later 1930s, trying to answer this conundrum. The Spanish Civil War provided the crucible for its resolution. Moreover, her personal and political judgements often did not match. She befriended Sir John Anderson, the Governor of Bengal, despite her militant commitment to anti-imperialism; Lord Halifax, despite her hostility to appeasement; and Morrison, despite his crusade against her fellow- travelling allies. Personal loyalties complicated her response to events.
13
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Such a disaggregated understanding of her ideas affords the possibility of exploring her relationships to different networks and movements that possessed unsynchronised cycles of protest and structures of political opportunity. This is not to abandon efforts to understand Wilkinson’s ideas as a whole but, rather, to confront the complexity of her thought, activism and world. The aim is not to present a fragmentary account of Wilkinson revealing ill-fitting inconsistencies and distortions but rather to demonstrate the unity of these disparate components via a picture in motion. By way of analogy, the artist Marcel Duchamp achieved this in Nude Descending a Staircase, no. 2 (1912) with its sense of elements moving in different directions but forming parts of a fluid whole.
Notes 1
2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Early Day Motion, 1237, 1990–91, proposed by Marjorie Mowlam on 14 October 1991 commemorating Ellen Wilkinson. www.edms.org.uk/199091/1237.htm#sthash.nbZLtsxW.dpuf, accessed 20 June 2013. Mowlam’s maiden speech, House of Commons Debates (hereafter HC Deb), 9 July 1987, col. 560. Pat Glass MP in Morning Star, 30 May 2012. Emma LewellBuck MP for South Shields, Shields Gazette, 11 April 2013. Newcastle University Special Collections (NUSC), T.D.W. Reid Collection (hereafter TDWR), Reid to Editor of The Listener, 20 March 1983. Symptomatic of the distorted image of Wilkinson is the error that she left the Communist Party within a year of joining it. Graham Dale, God’s Politicians: the Christian Contribution to 100 Years of Labour, London, 2000, pp. 120–121. Being cited in ‘where we stand’ for the Christian Socialist Movement, www.thecsm.org.uk/Groups/87274/Christian_ Socialist_Movement/About_CSM/What_we_stand/What_we_stand.aspx, accessed 18 June 2013. Paul Salveson, Socialism with a Northern Accent: Radical Traditions for Modern Times, London, 2012. For a civic appropriation, T.A. Lockett, Three Lives: It Happened Round Manchester, London, 1968, pp. 46–61. For the years 1924–26 and 1935–37, being an MP 1924–31 and 1935–45. Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour People: Leaders and Lieutenants, Hardie to Kinnock, Oxford, 1987, p. 101. The Listener, 29 November 1945. Ibid. Countess of Oxford and Asquith (ed.), Myself When Young: by Famous Women of To-day, London, 1938, p. 399. John Sleight, Women on the March: the Story of the Struggle for Political Power and Equality for Women in the North-East from 1920 to 1970, Newcastle, 1986, p. 29; Communist Review, November 1921. Newcastle University Special Collections T.D.W. Reid Collection (hereafter NUSC TDWR) G.C.L. Hazelhurst to Reid, 21 June 1971.
14
Introduction 11 The National Archives (hereafter TNA) KV 2 598 35B Superintendant Canning, Special Branch note, 30 June 1933. This document like many others indicated that Wilkinson’s file was PF42136 and a handwritten note stated ‘destroyed 1946.’ 12 NUSC TDWR Jo Camp to Reid, 29 June 1974. 13 BBC Written Archive (hereafter BBCWA) NO T650 script for Wilkinson, Born and Bred, 27 October 1945. 14 Sunday Times, 9 June 1929. 15 Anthony Masters, Nancy Astor, London, 1981, p. 136. 16 NUSC TDWR Lady Huxley to Reid, 13 August 1975. 17 Balliol College Special Collections Adam von Trott papers (BCSC AvT) III V H313 Hubback to von Trott, 20 January 1936. 18 Manchester Central Library M284 Wright Robinson, Diary 1921–26, p. 108. She also had a relationship with Frank Horrabin. 19 Reid interviews: Stella Davies. 20 And arguing that she committed suicide, Bernard Donoughue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician, London, 1973, p. 392. 21 Against suicide, Betty D. Vernon, Ellen Wilkinson, 1891–1947, London, 1982, pp. 234–235. Vernon, as well as Donoghue and G.W. Jones use evidence from interviews to justify their conclusions. Maeve Denby, ‘Women in Parliament and Government’, in Lucy Middleton (ed.), Women in the Labour Movement: The British Experience, London, 1977, pp. 175–190. Committing suicide because of a sense of failure, Daily Telegraph, 5 January 2006. 22 Andy Croft, ‘Reviews: “Clash”, by Wilkinson’, Labour History Review, 56, 1 (1991), pp. 76–77. 23 Barbara J. Blaszak, ‘Review: Betty D. Vernon. Wilkinson, 1891–1947’, American Historical Review, 88, 1 (1983), p. 120. 24 T.D.W. Reid, ‘Wilkinson: Revolutionary Politics and Ideology, 1917–1926’, unpublished thesis without award, Hull University, October 1984, p. 20. 25 Billy Hughes, ‘In Defence of Wilkinson’, History Workshop Journal, 7 (1979), pp. 157–160 and David Rubinstein, ‘Wilkinson Re-considered’, History Workshop Journal, 7 (1979), pp. 161–169. R. Fieldhouse, ‘The Labour Government’s Further Education Policy 1945–51’, History of Education, 23, 1 (1994), pp. 287–299. D.W. Dean, ‘Planning for a Postwar Generation: Wilkinson and George Tomlinson at the Ministry of Education’, History of Education, 15, 2 (1986), pp. 95–117. David Reid letter, History Workshop Journal, 8 (1979), p. 194; Caroline Benn, ‘Comprehensive School Reform and the 1945 Labour Government’, History Workshop Journal, 10 (1980), pp. 197–204. Douglas Bourn, ‘Equality of Opportunity? The Labour Government and Schools’, in Jim Fyrth (ed.), Labour’s Promised Land?: Culture and Society in Labour Britain, London, 1995, pp. 163–180. Mystified that the 1944 act be seen as bold and egalitarian, Kenneth O. Morgan, The People’s Peace: British History Since 1945, Oxford, 1999, p. 19. 26 Henry Pelling, The Labour Governments: 1945–51, Basingstoke, 1985. 27 Brian Harrison, ‘Wilkinson, Ellen Cicely (1891–1947)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/36902. 15
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 28 Maroula Joannou, ‘Reclaiming the Romance: Ellen Wilkinson’s Clash and the Cultural Legacy of Socialist Feminism’, in David Margolies and Maroula Joannou (eds), Heart of the Heartless World: Essays in Cultural Resistance in Memory of Margot Heinemann, London, 1995, pp. 148–160. 29 Ian Haywood, ‘Never Again?’: Ellen Wilkinson’s Clash and the Feminization of the General Strike’, Literature & History, 8 (1999), p. 34 30 Pamela Fox, Class Fictions: Shame and Resistance in the British WorkingClass Novel, 1890–1945, Durham, 1994. 31 Laura Beers, ‘Feminism and Sexuality in Ellen Wilkinson’s Fiction’, Parliamentary Affairs, 64, 2 (2011), pp. 248–262. 32 Nicola Wilson, ‘Politicising the Home in Ethel Carnie Holdsworth’s This Slavery (1925) and Ellen Wilkinson’s Clash (1929)’, Key Words, 5 (2007–08), pp. 26–42. 33 Wendy Parkin, ‘Women on the Streets: Gender and Mobility in The Convert and Clash’, AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Modern Language Association, 108 (2007), pp. 65–93. 34 Roberto Del Valle Alcalá, ‘En-gendering The Clash: Ellen Wilkinson and Interwar Socialist Feminism’, Philologia, 7 (2009), pp. 127–134 35 Mary Joannou and Ian Haywood, ‘Introduction’ in Ellen Wilkinson, The Clash, Nottingham, 2004, pp. vii–xxv. 36 Wilson, ‘Politicising’, p. 35. 37 Brian Harrison, Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits of British Feminists between the Wars, Oxford, 1987. 38 Pamela M. Graves, Labour Women: Women in British Working-class Politics 1918–1939, Cambridge, 1994. 39 Laura Beers, ‘“A Timid Disbelief in the Equality to Which Lip-Serivce is Constantly Paid”: Gender, Politics and the Press Between the Wars’, in Laura Beers and Geraint Thomas, Brave New World: Imperial and Democratic Nation Building in Britain between the Wars, London, 2011, pp. 129–148. 40 On the paucity of materials, Cameron Hazlehurst, Sally Whitehead, A Guide to the Papers of British Cabinet Ministers, 1900–1964, Cambridge, 1997, p. 377. 41 Time and Tide, 14 July 1934. 42 Matt Perry, ‘In Search of ‘‘Red Ellen’’ Wilkinson Beyond Frontiers and Beyond the Nation State’, International Review of Social History, 58, 2 (2013), pp. 219–246. 43 Charles Tilly, European Revolutions, 1492–1992, Oxford, 1993, p. 242. On counter-revolution, Arno J. Mayer, Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe, 1870–1956: an Analytic Framework, New York, 1971. 44 NUSC TDWR Graham Hutton to Reid, 14 July 1975. 45 Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow, ‘Introduction: Transnational Processes and Social Activism’, in Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow (eds), Transnational Protest and Global Activism: People, Passion and Power, Lanham, MD, 2005, pp. 1–17. 46 Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY, 1998), pp. 8–10, 14. 16
Introduction 47
Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta, ‘The Return of the Repressed: the Fall and Rise of Emotions in Social Movement Theory’, Mobilization: An International Journal, 5, 1 (2000), pp. 65–83. 48 Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics, Cambridge, 1994. Doug McAdam, ‘Conceptual Origins, Current Problems, Future Directions’, in Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald (eds), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 23–40. 49 As her honorary degree citation from Manchester University suggested. Appending the citation (15 May 1946), NUSC TDWR Georgina Miller to Reid, 3 September 1974. 50 Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, London, 1984, p. 144. 51 Gustav Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism, New Brunswick, 1982. George Rudé, The Crowd in History: a Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730–1848, London, 1981. 52 Student Outlook, February 1935. Time and Tide, 13 February 1937. William A. Gamson, Bruce Fireman, and Steven Rytina, Encounters with Unjust Authority, Belmont, CA, 1982. 53 Action, 20 February 1937. Similarly, Action, 17 September 1934. 54 McMaster University George Catlin Papers 205 Wilkinson to Catlin, 7 January 1941. 55 When discussing Reynaud’s trajectory from right to left of French politics in comparison to Briand, Clemenceau and Millerand, Time and Tide, 20 March 1940. 56 Christophe Charle, La Naissance des ‘Intellectuels’ 1880–1900, Paris, 1990. Gisèle Sapiro, La Guerre des Écrivains 1940–53, Paris, 1999. Gilles Heuré, Gustave Hervé: Itinéraire d’un Provocateur, Paris, 1997. Gilbert G. Allardyce, ‘The Political Transition of Jacques Doriot’, Journal of Contemporary History, 1, 1 (1966), pp. 56–74. Frédéric Monier, ‘Les obsessions d’Henri Béraud’, Vingtième Siècle, 40 (1993), pp. 62–74. 57 Clarion, 2 June 1934. 58 Wilkinson, Clash, pp. 245–250. 59 Rudi Dutschke, ‘On Anti-Authoritarianism’, The New Left Reader, New York, 1969, p. 249. 60 Highlighting this problem of categorising Wilkinson, a letter from Walton Newbold condemning a nest of ‘intellectuals’ including Wilkinson tricking trade union officials in the allocation of parliamentary seats, Catholic Herald, 28 June 1940. She was both an intellectual and trade union official.
17
1 Socialist ideas and movements
Wilkinson’s relationship with socialism and Communism has divided contemporary and historical opinion. For Betty Vernon, while not denying her ideas, Wilkinson was largely a pragmatist who passed through apprenticeships in the suffrage movement, in the CPGB (briefly) and in her trade union before maturing as a campaigning, but reformist, socialist. Stressing continuities and gradualism, Vernon’s account fits with Labourist narratives of Wilkinson.1 Accordingly, Wilkinson quit the CPGB alongside intellectuals such as Frank Horrabin, Jagger, William Mellor and Raymond Postgate as a consequence of the ‘Bolshevisation’ of the party.2 Vernon also implies that she followed her one-time fiancé Walton Newbold into the party and both associations were equally superficial, impetuous and ill-considered.3 Influenced by Vernon’s interpretation, attempting to reconstruct Wilkinson as an iconic Christian socialist, Graham Dale stated erroneously that she left within a year.4 Conversely, David Reid emphasised Wilkinson’s ideological evolutions from ethical socialism, to guild socialism, to Communism. For him, Wilkinson’s CPGB membership was a formative experience. However, after 1926, she adopted ‘an amalgam of parliamentary socialism and electoral activity’.5 While veteran Communists pointed to her lack of principles, Isabel Brown believed that in spirit Wilkinson never really left.6 Neither Bolshevisation nor careerism adequately capture her reasons for leaving or her relationship with the CPGB. Consideration of Wilkinson’s membership of the CPGB also intersects with the historiographical efforts of historians like Karen Hunt and Matthew Worley to engender the CPGB’s early history. As with the Social Democratic Federation and the ILP beforehand, women had a distinctly minority status within the CPGB. This research has stressed the ‘reluctance to give significant amounts of energy either to the woman question or to the development of an effective strategy to recruit and retain women as Communists.’7
Socialist ideas and movements Becoming a socialist The 1901 census enumerated the occupants of 17 Everton Road in St Stephen’s parish of South Manchester: Richard Wilkinson aged 44 years, an insurance agent for a burial society; Ellen Wilkinson, his wife, three years his senior; Annie E. Wilkinson, aged 20 years; Richard A. Wilkinson, 17 years, an apprentice Cabinet maker; Ellen C. Wilkinson, 9 years; and, finally, the one-year-old infant, Harold Wilkinson. In 1938, Ellen Wilkinson sketched her family background. Her mother struggled with ill health and family hardship when her husband was out of work. The daughter described her mother as ‘advanced’, flouting the codes of domestic feminine convention. Ellen Wilkinson’s paternal grandfather was a hard-drinking Irish Catholic immigrant and her father started his working life in the cotton mills. After intermittent unemployment, he became an insurance agent. She remembered him talking bitterly about tramping from one mill to another to try to find work during his wife’s pregnancy. Religion was central to the household. Church attendance was regular and her father was a non-conformist lay preacher at the Wesleyan chapel in Grosvenor Street. He had begun preaching at the age of 15.8 The chapel was his means of education, of self-expression and nurtured his sense of morality. Ellen Wilkinson rationalised a connection between her father’s religious sense of the human brotherhood and her generation’s belief in socialism. Politically, despite being blacklisted for his trade unionism in the mills, her father was a Tory, believing firmly in the Smilesian philosophy of self-improvement. He even campaigned for Conservative Arthur James Balfour in his Manchester East constituency (where Balfour sat as MP between 1885 and 1906; he was also Prime Minister 1902–1905). She described her first school – Ardwick Elementary School – as a ‘filthy elementary school … with five classes in one room’.9 She contracted a serious illness during an epidemic that hit such ‘crowded and insanitary’ schools and had to remain at home between the age of six and eight. Thus, it was her ‘devoted and intelligent’ mother who taught Wilkinson to read. Yet she was a very bright pupil, who enjoyed reading and received excellent grades. She was far from a model student, being bored and ill-behaved in class. In the large classes of those days, she completed tasks well before others, and as she later observed herself: ‘What else was there to do but organise mischief, and take the consequences?’ Her experience was of being a ‘little sausage in the vast educational sausage machine’. Receiving little encouragement, she hated and defied school discipline. In later life, she would recall instances of unjust punishment of her peers to confirm the persistence of the odium for the ‘loathed school atmosphere’. This extended to her 19
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson experience as a pupil teacher where the ‘grey-haired and spinsterish’ assistant head – ‘a vindictive old cat’ – slapped a frightened youngster so hard that Wilkinson wanted to retaliate on his behalf. Indeed, she commented how, as a Manchester councillor and an MP with official duties that might include a school visit, she had to tackle her phobia of returning to an elementary school.10 At the age of eleven, she won her first scholarship and secured the rest of her education right through to the completion of her university degree on the same basis. Wilkinson endured ‘two horrid unmanageable years’ at Stretford Road Secondary School for Girls. She described its headmistress as a prim Victorian lady. The only point in its favour was the sympathetic glint in the eye of her French teacher ‘Dear Miss Allen.’11 At the age of 16, Wilkinson attended Princess Street Pupil Teacher Centre (PTC), spending half of her week there and half at Mansfield Street School as a pupil teacher. At the school, she despised the headmaster who had a condescending aversion to younger teachers. After they had clashed over her teaching style, she received a visit and reprimand from a school inspector. Wilkinson recalled venting all her ‘surging hate of all the silly punishment I had endured in my own schooldays’. In contrast, the PTC was ‘pure joy’ mainly due to her French teacher, who encouraged reading rather than grammar drills and W.E. Elliot, who prompted her to stand in the school election. Wilkinson narrated her conversion to socialism using this incident.12 Wilkinson stood as a socialist, though ‘socialism was a word I had barely heard’. Borrowing Robert Blatchford’s books, she learnt the basics, discovering ‘the answer to the chaotic rebellion of my school years’.13 Socialism explained her mother’s ill health, the market’s inefficiency and its juxtaposition of waste, wealth and poverty. Blatchford’s ‘sheer simplicity’ convinced her. As her adage ‘what is morally wrong, cannot be politically right’ illustrates, the residue of Blatchford’s ethical socialism lingered in her thought.14 Desiring to enter ‘the magic sphere of politics’, Wilkinson attended an acronym-ridden Longsight ILP branch meeting. Rescuing her from this uninspiring initiation, a Jewish socialist colleague took Wilkinson to see Katharine Bruce Glasier at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall. Wilkinson pointed to this event as her epiphany and her admiration for ‘this dear saint of the women’s movement’ persisted.15 Glasier was able to conjure away social injustice and embody Wilkinson’s secret dreams and hopes. She resolved to abandon teaching for politics. For this reason, Wilkinson applied to the nationwide Jones Open History Scholarship, which she won in late May 1910, allowing her to read History at Manchester University.16 This opened up a new world that Wilkinson had dreamed of: ‘books unlimited, lots of friends, interesting lectures, stimulus of team work’. 20
Socialist ideas and movements The University Socialist Federation (USF) and guild socialism At university, Wilkinson was active in student politics via the Fabian Society, acquainting her with notable British socialists including the Webbs, the Coles, Mary MacArthur and the Glasiers. The Fabian Society held regular lectures and summer schools, providing a forum for new ideas. Although the Fabian mainstream espoused a gradualist state socialism, there were Fabian lectures, reviews and pamphlets on syndicalism and the industrial unrest.17 At the 1912 Fabian summer school, Beatrice Webb lectured on syndicalism and trade union leader Mary MacArthur spoke on women’s trade unions.18 A space also existed within the Fabian Society for women’s groups and activity in favour of the franchise. Manchester University was a notable centre of Fabian activity. For instance, on 6 May 1911, Manchester hosted the Northern Fabian Conference.19 In August 1912, Fabian News noted the rapid growth of the Manchester University Fabian Society (MUFS) and its busy programme. It and the Cambridge University Fabian Society were the prime movers in the USF’s formation.20 By December 1912, Wilkinson was the joint MUFS secretary.21 She participated in the preliminary USF conference in 1912 as well as the following one in Barrow House, Derwentwater. Through the USF, Wilkinson met Page, J. Walton Newbold (to whom she was briefly engaged), Rajani Palme Dutt, William Mellor and Clifford Allen. She remained involved in the USF until its last important conference in Oxford, in 1921.22 In the left’s debates between collectivists, syndicalists and guild socialists, Wilkinson advocated the last.23 Guild socialism mixed William Morris’s ideas, syndicalism and Fabianism. The principal guild socialist thinkers were S.G. Hobson, A.J. Penty, A.R. Orage (editor of the influential New Age) and G.D.H. Cole, who founded the National Guilds League (NGL) in 1915.24 Wilkinson became the Manchester group secretary in 1917 or 1918 until early 1919.25 Wilkinson probably met Cole in 1914, later sitting with him on the Labour Research Department (LRD) and supported his Right Moment Campaign to revise the Fabian Society constitution in 1915.26 Guild socialism proposed industrial democracy through abolition of the wages system, workers’ control and producer associations in a system of national guilds. It thereby challenged the modern worker’s alienating loss of control over production under capitalism and provided an anti-statist model of socialism, with pluralism and democracy at its heart. On 5 December 1915, Wilkinson addressed the Manchester ILP branch on guild socialism, arguing for workers’ control of production through national guilds, eviction of the employers and an end to the profit system.27 Within the socialist student movement under 21
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson the pull of international revolution and war, Kingsley Martin reflected ‘most … socialist undergraduates’ adopted these ideas. Wilkinson led the left of the Guild movement. By 1919, she strongly criticised Cole for accepting secretaryship of the Industrial Commission.28 She spoke with such ‘revolutionary eloquence’ at the 1921 Fabian Summer School that an elderly Fabian stated that he ‘would draw his sword and join her on the barricades’.29 Wilkinson opposed the First World War, taking the line that the ILP and most USF contemporaries adopted.30 She was amongst those who had invited Fenner Brockway to debate the matter with a pro-war professor at Manchester University.31 She renewed her socialist activity, becoming in April 1915 Manchester and Salford ILP Federation secretary and was delegated to the Manchester and Salford Labour Representation Committee. She became an enthusiast for the Russian Revolution and attended the Labour and Socialist Convention of 3 June 1917 in Leeds. Amongst the 1,150 delegates, Labour, syndicalist and suffrage notables enthusiastically praised the Russian Revolution as a blow against Tsarist tyranny.32 Her attendance intimated her early intellectual and emotional connection with the Russian Revolution.33 That identification with the revolution and interest in its ideas thus considerably predated her CPGB membership. Alongside fellow anti-war Labour lefts, she became a member of the 1917 Club set up after the February Revolution in London’s Garrett Street.34 Regarding her conversion to Communism, Rajani Palme Dutt’s memoirs provide an account. The USF sent Mary Moorhouse, Dutt, R. Blackwood and Wilkinson to an international student socialist conference in Geneva in December 1919.35 During long conversations into the night, she initially objected to the Bolsheviks’ dogmatic style, ‘This is the most ghastly, callous, inhuman machine I have ever witnessed.’ Yet, apparently, Dutt – impressed by Bolshevik pragmatism – eventually convinced her. She wrote a brief conference report in the Labour Leader and appealed for those interested in drawing ‘together the groups of Socialist and revolutionary students’ to contact her as chair of the returning British delegation.36 Wilkinson intervened in the vigorous internal debates inside both the ILP and the NGL about Communism. As for the ILP left, Wilkinson participated in the committee that issued a declaration urging affiliation to the Third International and published a newspaper entitled The International.37 As regards the guild socialists, Wilkinson was a delegate to the Communist Unity Convention, alongside Mary Moorhouse, from the Manchester Communist Guild Group, which had been formed in February 1918.38 In May 1920, Wilkinson wrote for the NGL’s pro- soviet wing in The Guildsman.39 She noted both guild socialism’s growing influence and the political divergence within the Manchester 22
Socialist ideas and movements group between the revolutionaries and the building guild (which was planning co-operative house-building).40 With acerbic wit, she concluded that the forthcoming NGL conference amounted to the choice between playing with a box of bricks or joining with the revolutionaries across Europe ‘offering the Guild theory as its contribution to the building of a Communist society after the transference of power has taken place’. At the NGL conference, the left carried the motion on Soviets and democracy 67 to 55 votes. The resolution on Soviet Russia established a committee of inquiry to which R. Page Arnot, W.N. Ewer, Walter Holmes, William Mellor and Wilkinson were delegated to consult other pro-Soviet organisations and formulate a programme of action.41 Wilkinson also tried to draw women’s organisations into the NGL’s debate on Soviet Russia.42 At a special conference in December 1920, the recommendations of the committee of five were accepted. They defended a revolutionary approach to guild socialism, envisaging a violent culmination of struggle and rejecting Fabian gradualism. As such, they sought to clarify and support the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat.43 Even so, they did not accept the Russian model as universally appropriate or as an alternative to guild socialism.44 Their victory within the NGL prompted several resignations, including those of executive members, notably R.H. Tawney.45 As a consequence, Wilkinson was co-opted onto the executive.46 She remained with the NGL after joining the CPGB.47 In February 1922, Wilkinson clarified her attitude to guild socialism, taking as its starting point the NGL executive’s pamphlet for trade unionists. She worried that the pamphlet would discourage intellectual curiosity as it presented matters too simplistically. It also expended too much time discussing the need to persuade the expert. Such staff were written off as bosses’ men and therefore, she implied, such an emphasis ran counter to rank-and-file trade union consciousness. From the revolutionary viewpoint, workers could learn expertise; and if specialist staff opposed the workers, they could be replaced. She proposed ‘shop talks on workers’ control’ at which workers could discuss the possibilities and difficulties of workplace democracy in their own trade.48
Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920–24 British socialists in various organisations sought amalgamation, the establishment of a Communist Party and Comintern affiliation. A Joint Provisional Committee representing the British Socialist Party, the Communist Unity Group and the South Wales Communist Council called a conference to establish unity amongst those favouring a workers’ dictatorship, the Soviet system and the Comintern. The Communist 23
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Unity Convention opened on 31 July 1920 in the Cannon Street Hotel with Arthur MacManus’s presidential address. The conference gathered together 152 delegates and 211 mandates. After unanimity over the establishment of a Communist Party and Comintern affiliation, the next motion considered parliamentary action. This had been a matter of considerable debate among British Bolshevik supporters. An ‘ultra-left’ rejected parliamentary action (and Labour Party affiliation). Lenin had challenged Sylvia Pankhurst and William Gallacher by name in his LeftWing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. In line with Lenin’s position, the resolution proposed that parliament and elections were a platform for revolutionary propaganda rather than a means to bring socialism. Wilkinson intervened into the evening session, supporting democratic centralism against local autonomy: If we were going in for a revolutionary party we must have a general staff and be willing to obey it. After the revolution we could have local decentralisation. The present discussion was important, because if the Convention was laying down the lines on which the Communist Party was to be formed, and if it was got into the heads of people who were to draft the constitution that they were to go on the same old lines, we could not have a revolutionary party, much less a revolution. A revolution meant discipline and obedience.49
This period was the high point of the European revolutionary wave and enthusiasm for Bolshevism in Britain was peaking.50 It is instructive how persuaded Wilkinson was at this time of the main Communist principles of proletarian dictatorship, democratic centralism and revolution. This casts doubt on the assumption that her commitment to Communism was incomplete or that she was a temporarily displaced libertarian.51 On the convention’s second day, Labour Party affiliation dominated the debates. Given the Labour Party’s unique constitution, affiliation would allow Communists to be in touch with the broadest swathes of working-class opinion.52 While these two positions were compatible in 1920, Wilkinson’s departure from the CPGB coincided with the affiliation campaign’s evident futility, confirming the CPGB’s marginal status within the Labour movement. In summer 1921, Wilkinson travelled to the Soviet Republic.53 Having had a ‘very rough time of it’ on the journey, Wilkinson entered via the Estonian border on 22 June.54 Her plan was to stay for no more than six weeks. Her visit coincided with those of various luminaries of the British revolutionary movement: the syndicalist Tom Mann as well as Harry Pollitt, J.T. Murphy, Jack Strain, Tom Bell and Tom Quelch.55 Fellow NUDAW organiser Mary Bamber also arrived, having recently been arrested for her part in a demonstration of the unemployed in Liverpool.56 The Third Congress of the Comintern, the Red International 24
Socialist ideas and movements of Labour Unions (RILU) Congress and the Comintern Women’s Congress were taking place at roughly the same time.57 Three overlapping networks mingled: revolutionary trade unionists (many of them pre-war syndicalists), socialist women’s movement activists and revolutionary socialists. Wilkinson’s group arrived in Moscow on 1 July, staying at the Hotel Lux.58 Mann wrote of visiting Moscow’s mills, workshops and factories where the workers’ committees were elected on a delegate basis, exercised real power and the manager was appointed by the Council of Economy and the Metal Workers’ Union.59 For Mann, revolutionary Russia was a ‘beacon light to all the world’.60 Wilkinson later recalled talking with Lenin in the Kremlin and meeting Krupskaya.61 Mann also had a two-hour meeting with Lenin – who was ‘unassuming, pleasant spoken, … perfectly clear as to what he is after, and centres all upon the complete “dictatorship of the proletariat”’ – as well as Trotsky who was ‘equally nice’.62 Mann confided in his wife that he was ‘deeply impressed with the whole situation here, with Moscow itself and the management of affairs’.63 They were rubbing shoulders with the most celebrated revolutionaries of their time: Bill Haywood, Emma Goldman, Victor Serge, Klara Zetkin, and Peter Kropotkin, several of whom Wilkinson would re-encounter in later life. Some of them came to play a significant role in the development of left oppositional campaigns or the realignment of the left: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Victor Serge, Joaquín Maurín and Andrés Nin. Wilkinson’s view of the New Economic Policy (NEP) debate holds clues as to her political trajectory. The NEP constituted ‘concessions to Capital’ that Lenin deemed to be necessary to appease the conservative peasantry. Wilkinson admired the People’s Commissar for Social Welfare, Alexandra Kollontai, an NEP opponent and Worker’s Opposition leader, a critical current within the Communist Party. For Kollontai, the NEP revived all the peasantry’s profiteering instincts and undid the previous three years’ work. In the debates about the international situation, Wilkinson approved of Lenin’s challenge to the elitist conception of some German Communists, instead arguing in favour of a mass Communist movement. Indeed, ‘back to the masses’ was a theme that Wilkinson wholeheartedly supported for its condemnation of the sterility of small group purity. Ultimately, such arguments contributed to Wilkinson’s reasons for leaving the CPGB and her continued criticisms of it thereafter. The conference ended with a memorable contrast: the band of the Red Army playing the Internationale in the great palace of the Kremlin, that ‘monument of the luxury and tyranny of a thousand years’. She wistfully speculated about the heroic futures of the delegates there: ‘Many of those present would never meet again. To all lands they 25
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson were returning. Some to the gallows, some to long years in prison, some to the bullet of the assassin.’64 Wilkinson was to meet several of these delegates again; however, their political trajectories were more complex than she envisaged. The RILU Congress aimed to launch a revolutionary international trade union confederation in opposition to the ‘yellow’ Amsterdambased International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), to which the TUC was affiliated.65 The RILU’s founding conference (3–19 July 1921) was a significant moment for revolutionary syndicalism, when many devotees drew closer to Communism. Partly, this reflected Wilkinson’s own intellectual evolution, though she was never a pure syndicalist. The British delegation was no exception in that it attracted several prominent names of British syndicalism such as Mann and Murphy.66 The RILU conference opened on 3 July in the Hall of Columns, with 342 delegates gathered together from 42 countries.67 Wilkinson reported the key divisions between the syndicalists, the middle ground and the Communists as well as identifying the principal areas of debate. She accepted Communist positions on the need to work within the existing unions, on the need for revolutionary trade unionists to use political weapons in their struggles and for a link between the Comintern and the RILU. She agreed with the assessment that the existing trade union leaders and the Amsterdam International had betrayed the workers and sabotaged the possibilities of revolution in the past three years. The conference helped to instil in her a conviction in the correctness of the Communist position, concluding: ‘The conception is magnificent, the logic is irresistible. If we desire the Revolution, this is the only way to get it.’68 Wilkinson returned from Moscow after the RILU conference. Mann noted that she was beginning her return journey to England at the same time as Pollitt on 23 July 1921.69 Pollitt, Wilkinson and Murphy all promised Mann that they would call in on his wife Elsie on their return. State intelligence documents alleged that Murphy’s trip was used to transfer RILU cash from Moscow to Berlin.70 Pollitt recalled their return via Petrograd, Reval, Riga, and Danzig, meeting Philips Price in Berlin.71 Price provided vivid eyewitness accounts of the brutal terror against the German left and the general strike that had defeated the Kapp putsch (the military’s attempt to overturn the Republic).72 This coincided with a significant development in the Comintern’s organisational history: the establishment of Worker’s International Relief (WIR) in Berlin or, as it came to be known, the Münzenberg Trust. Beginning with soviet famine relief, Willi Münzenberg – chief of the Comintern’s Western European Agit-Prop Bureau – was able to establish campaigns of startling variety: anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, 26
Socialist ideas and movements anti-militarism, strike solidarity and various cultural ventures, including mass circulation newspapers and films. As Babette Gross remarked, Wilkinson was willing from the first to ‘assist Münzenberg in all his activities’.73 Back in Britain, Wilkinson reflected upon her Russian experiences in the Communist press. Her Russian visit had transformed ‘so many’ of her ‘views and opinions’. She noted the internationalism of the Russian leaders, whom exile had rendered experienced travellers. Their leitmotif was that Communism could only succeed in Russia if revolution succeeded abroad. As Wilkinson curtly remarked, it was ‘no more possible to have a Communist Russia in a capitalist world than to have a Communist Manchester in a Capitalist Britain’.74 These were the very terms of the debate within the Soviet Union in the aftermath of Lenin’s death in 1924 and it was this commitment to international revolution that Stalin’s concept of ‘socialism in one country’ displaced. For Wilkinson, Trotsky’s ‘great speech on the world situation’ was the analytical centrepiece of the Comintern congress. She sensed the tantalising proximity of revolution in Germany (with the ‘March action’) and Italy where the workers seized the factories in the autumn of 1920. Wilkinson wrote in Labour Monthly about the famine. She outlined the bias of western reporting and the difficulties of knowing exactly what was going on in Russia’s distant interiors. Tsarism, war, revolution, foreign intervention and blockade had shattered the country. She then described the famine in the Saratov region: Russia’s spirit is alien to the democratic forms we know but she is working out a great experiment in government that the world cannot afford to lose. From the depths of age long oppression she struggled to the light in 1917. The capitalists of the world have tried to thrust her back, and what they have failed to do with bayonets may be accomplished through natural calamity, under the guise of benevolence. Can the world’s workers afford to allow this?
Russia needed to survive, being the ‘front-line trench in the class war’.75 This was not the only occasion that Wilkinson made urgent appeals for help for Russia, explicitly connecting it to the imminence of Europewide revolution. In these months, her hopes of revolution were highest, and success seemed palpable. Her experiences at home and abroad seemed to confirm such hopes and embolden her rhetoric and activism, which reverberated with emotional intensity and impatience. The rise and fall of the revolutionary tide of 1917 to 1921 that was so clear in the pattern of European events carried with it Wilkinson’s aspiration for change. By April 1922, however, Wilkinson observed that the possibility of revolution spreading to Europe was lost – for the time being at least – and that the new regime would have to accommodate itself 27
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson to a capitalist world. This could be seen in the NEP and a new diplomatic pragmatism regarding imperialist powers. The implication, for her, was that the Comintern should become independent from Moscow to retain its revolutionary credentials. She also advocated a Communist opposition within Russia.76 Wilkinson’s initial enthusiasm for orthodox Communist positions was waning and open disagreements already beginning to emerge. Her criticism of Moscow for its lack of radicalism shows that her divergence from Communist orthodoxy was not simply a rightward drift or just a deeper-seated or career-orientated reformism reasserting itself. After its first congress, the RILU established fifteen industrial propaganda committees with Wilkinson featuring on the employee’s committee.77 As well as writing for The Communist, she worked on the British RILU’s monthly periodical All Power.78 Wilkinson, Murphy, John Strain and Nat Watkins composed the British RILU’s propaganda committee and she sat on its bureau as well.79 Wilkinson, Williams and Murphy were to liaise with the CPGB executive on the RILU’s behalf. Wilkinson implemented Comintern directives on working women, agreeing to co-author a draft British RILU manifesto for working women with Bamber. Wilkinson’s column in All Power was explicitly ‘our woman’s page’. In April 1922, Harry Webb, the acting CPGB national organiser, enlisted Wilkinson’s help to animate a network of women’s groups that a visit from a ‘comrade from Berlin’ would precipitate. The executive allocated space in The Communist to assist with the women’s agenda. One immediate aim was to get Communist women delegated to the National Labour Women’s Conference in Lemington on 9–10 May. Wilkinson was successful in getting her union to delegate her, alongside Bamber and Mrs Martin.80 In early 1923, the CPGB constituted a women’s national committee composed of Mary Moorhouse, Minnie Birch, Wilkinson, Nellie Lansbury, Esther Enever, Crawfurd and Willie Gallacher.81 All Power noted that Wilkinson was ‘an energetic organiser, a logical thinker, a tireless worker for the cause’.82 An editorial indicated that her brief was to ‘destroy that idea’ that the revolution was ‘the special preserve of men … by showing the struggles of the women in the workshops’.83 In the RILU press, Wilkinson articulated the working-class woman’s viewpoint. She was able for a time to synthesise her Communist and gender politics. She perceptively observed how the war’s end had transformed working women’s situation. Women’s trade union membership had collapsed. Wilkinson criticised the ‘attitudes of the great men’s unions’ that had coaxed women to ‘run along and make a little hell of your own’.84 Whether she deemed NUDAW to be a ‘great men’s union’ is unclear, though previously she had reserved her criticism for 28
Socialist ideas and movements craft unions. Her thrust was against the TUC General Council, staffed as a reward for long service. She viewed their establishment of a women’s group as a manoeuvre. Wilkinson wanted the group to coordinate the work of women trade union officials and objected to male officials negotiating agreements detrimental to female members. Furthermore, declining female union membership needed analysis: was it due to indifference, employer intimidation or deep disgust at the trade unions since the war? She outlined how the war had transformed women’s economic activity. More women sought employment, fewer adult daughters remained in the family home, fewer women left work on marriage and more married women were returning to work, either because their husbands were unemployed or the second wage was needed for household subsistence.85 Her contact with working women through her job confirmed these impressions. Those who had performed unskilled war work were in a terrible situation as work dried up. The outlet of domestic service had diminished as middle-class budgets tightened. Criticising middle-class feminism, Wilkinson questioned the ‘boasted victories of women’ from the war. These might have satisfied professional women and university entrants but ‘we can hardly expect Mary, who used to be an oxy-acetylene welder, and has been on the dole for these two years, or Polly, skilled on the capstan lathe and now forced into domestic service, to get very excited about it.’86 Female unemployment had become a serious but overlooked problem.87 Wilkinson subjected the gendered operation of unemployment provision to withering criticism. Unemployment insurance officials routinely discriminated against women and failed to lay on social amenities for unemployed women as they did for men. Though apparently accepting the family wage, she challenged women’s unequal treatment: It is natural for the married man with a dependent family should be the first object of consideration, but it is unfortunate that the young women should be so completely ignored by the many agencies that are providing halls, magazines, and recreations for the unemployed men.88
Instead of the right to unemployment insurance, most women were treated as poor law cases. At the labour exchange, the rota committees – composed of employers, male trade unionists and social workers – seemed to ignore the legislation. The officials had internalised the need for economy, the employers wanted to cut benefits to drive down wages and middle-class women social workers were, in her words, ‘soaked’ with the condescending spirit of charity. One woman – Wilkinson alleged – had been told to return to her husband or lose her benefit. Unemployed women faced ‘something like an inquisition’, systematic discrimination and every sort of subterfuge to deny them benefits: their household status, 29
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson employment status (office cleaners were classed as domestic servants as were public employees in laundrettes), training schemes and work relief only targeted men.89 Strong workers’ representation on the committees was needed and for the whole labour movement to campaign for ‘work or maintenance’ rather than this remaining a ‘pious platform platitude’.90 Wilkinson appealed to women to involve themselves in the unemployed movement and for the establishment, as had already happened in some towns, of women’s sub-committees for this purpose. Indeed, she was organising unemployed women in the Manchester district to show how such sub-committees could work and maintained a dialogue with Crawfurd about how this might be done.91 An internal party report mentioned the ‘considerable’ work of Wilkinson’s own Manchester district amongst the unemployed women.92 At the Labour Women’s Conference of 1922, she moved a motion protesting at the treatment meted out by the Board of Guardians, urging greater labour representation on these bodies and local relief to be based on grants from the government rather than relying on local ratepayers.93 Wilkinson highlighted the psychological deprivation of a young working woman ‘who gives 48 hours hard work to the community to be restricted to a life which includes no fun, no pretty clothes, no sweets and cinemas’. To add to undernourishment and insecurity was growing tyranny in the workplace as employers pushed through wage cuts and induced women into leaving the unions. She wondered how women workers could live on their wages, budgeting examples of weekly income and expenditure for readers. Even continuous employment left the working woman in many industries ‘always on her last shilling’.94 Consequently, by 1922, women’s trade union membership tumbled by more than a third. Wilkinson believed women allowed employers to intimidate them and, she recalled from experience, failed to attend union meetings called to defend their interests. Working men were to blame as well. In some districts, she noted that women perceived trade unionism as a force to drive them from the workplace. Wanting a shift in attitudes, Wilkinson urged fathers to encourage their daughters to take a union card. Wilkinson wrote about the crucial engineering lock-out of spring 1922 from a woman’s perspective. The situation was unfavourable: male trade unionists had written women off as strike-breakers and had undermined women’s wages in collective bargaining. Now engineering employers used these divisions.95 Her tone was urgent, suggesting impending disaster: But now all are in a life and death struggle, and we make a special appeal to the women who were trained as engineers during the war. If the employers try to use you now, it is only to grind down the women still further when 30
Socialist ideas and movements they have beaten the men. Today the call must be UNITY. The employers are winning all the way along every line. Only the most whole-hearted cooperation of every section of the working class can stem the tide.
She considered the locked-out wife, who while her husband was in the pub or on the picket line, had to supplement diminishing strike pay with dressmaking or charring. Ultimately, Wilkinson argued the fight was between the tired housewife and the millionaires of the Engineering Employers’ Federation. She noted the housewife’s potentially damaging isolation from collective union organisation. As an antidote, she encouraged the spread of wives and mothers’ meetings, which had started in some areas and called for the formation of women’s committees to support the strike.96 Wilkinson’s last articles in the Communist press were no longer under the rubric of the ‘woman’s page’ and her journalism dropped its explicit gender dimension. In one, she demystified the government’s Retail Price Index in order to show the folly of sliding scales agreements that tied wages to prices.97 Her article on the cotton industry of her native Lancashire anticipated her analysis of Jarrow years later in The Town That Was Murdered (1939). Capital had spun a complex web of social relations and circumstances that combined to depress the Lancashire textile industry. A stock market bubble in the cotton industry had racked up company debts, and impoverished the many local working-class shareholders. Industrial reorganisation under Central Cotton Board auspices had failed to resolve matters and Lloyd George’s policy in the Turkish–Greek war deprived the industry of important markets as did the punitive terms of the Versailles Treaty. Moreover, the brutality of British rule in India encouraged opposition to Lancashire goods and American restrictions in cotton crop pushed up raw material prices. In Lancashire, the mill-owners’ control over local councils and the Boards of Guardians meant inadequate relief for the unemployed. Having invested in cotton shares, the cotton unions could only hope for a trade revival. She called on cotton operatives to break their dependence on capital, reject the shareholder mentality and fight for a better future. Wilkinson’s last article for the CPGB press was 8 September 1923. Her association with the British leaders of the RILU continued into late 1923, when she attended a meeting at the Victoria Hotel, Farrington on 28 September. The surveillance report noted that ‘most people drank heavily and many left “far from sober”’.98 In terms of the patterns of social contention, declining cycles of protest affected trade union struggles, the transnational wave of revolution and therefore the CPGB’s fortunes, prospects and resources. Defeats disorientatingly sapped militancy and enthusiasm. Wilkinson’s journalism indicates as much. Her articles disclose the reverses that the trade 31
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson union movement was experiencing (and this was even more true for working women): mass unemployment, the engineering lock-out, the difficulties of organising laundry workers in the context of wage cuts. For all their verve and lucidity, the contrast with Wilkinson’s early days as an organiser for the AUCE – when full employment and successful strike action won ready recruits to the union – could not be starker. Her woman’s page reveals that her personal experiences as a union organiser were coloured by the worsening situation for women workers both materially and in terms of their combativity and workplace strength. In one article, she depicted the scenario of arriving outside a laundry at the end of a shift and having to explain to tired workers that the Trade Board had reduced their wages. Outside the women found a pale young organiser waiting for them, and they proceeded to vent their wrath on her. Trade unions indeed! What were trade unions doing but reducing wages. Paying to keep a lot of lazy officials like her, that’s all it was. It was her fourth meeting that day, and the girl was half dead with fatigue, but she tried to hold them together.99
Another article depicted employers at a fictional East End sweatshop using ethnic division and paternalism to victimise women union activists.100 The motifs of defeat, overwhelming odds, urgent action and recriminations suffused Wilkinson’s RILU journalism. The conjuncture was increasingly unfavourable to mobilising women workers. Government intelligence reports in April 1922 noted the lack of resources and other priorities was limiting Communist women’s work. This must have frustrated Wilkinson.101 Furthermore, Hunt and Worley identified a persistent residue of masculine culture in the early CPGB.102 While Wilkinson had channelled her radicalised gender politics through involvement in the CPGB, RILU and admiration for the Russian Revolution, after leaving the party her participation in the women’s movement picked up once more.
Frustrations with Communist trade union work Wilkinson grew frustrated with the CPGB’s impact in the trade union movement as well. NUDAW delegated her to the 1922 annual conference of the TUC in Southport where she spoke on women’s unemployment, the increasing gender pay gap and futility of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).103 In New Dawn, criticising the TUC’s ‘narrowness and conservatism’, she wrote about her union’s concerns: Jagger’s condemnation of the Joint Committee of Trade Unionists and Co-operators (JCTUC), the growing gender pay gap, the clash between the platform and the TUC women’s group and the lack of women’s representation.104 32
Socialist ideas and movements However, in the Communist press, her interpretation of the congress was that – despite praise-worthy interventions from Communists such as Pollitt, Jagger and Richards – every constructive motion was quashed or postponed. She found the debate on unemployment particularly disappointing. Speaking on the National Unemployed Workers’ Committee Movement’s (NUWCM) behalf, fellow Communist Halstead, who had been allotted half an hour, spent too long on formalities and statistics. Crucially, she argued, he neglected the NUWCM affiliation to the TUC.105 Openshaw CPGB branch complained to the Kings Street headquarters. Discussing the Openshaw grievance on 22 September 1922, the CPGB sub-executive decided to write to Wilkinson to explain that she should not have used a party publication to air her objections.106 Pollitt criticised Wilkinson’s assessment of Southport and was deputed to write to The Communist. At the Central Executive Committee of the Party three weeks later, Wilkinson’s reply was read out. She had met with comrade Halstead and realised that on reflection she had done him a disservice and would consult with The Communist’s editor in order to rectify the matter. When, the editor, Tommy Jackson, who was present, stated that he had received no such communication from Wilkinson, the committee resolved that she be asked to write an apology for the newspaper.107 Rather absurdly, months afterwards, a Russian Communist authored a second conference report favourable to comrade ‘Galstead’s’ [sic] intervention in the RILU magazine in order to contradict Wilkinson’s account.108 Wilkinson’s letter to Dutt in August 1923 exposes her growing frustration with the CPGB. As regards the Openshaw complaint, she commented opaquely: About the other matter – glad you dropped that silly note in the fire and waited until I recovered. But it wasn’t temper – an abysmal self abasement after my interview with you would be nearer the mark.109
Although this had taken some ‘wrangling’, she continued, NUDAW would sponsor Communist parliamentary candidates. Then it ‘would be up to the Labour Party to make trouble if it wants’. She confided in Dutt that she was having doubts about the CPGB, perhaps even a ‘real divergence of views’ because she believed the ‘whole CP faction in this country’ to be increasingly unrealistic and out of touch with the workers. The discussion, she wrote, would have to wait because she was throwing her energies into the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) strike. Wilkinson’s trade union activity bore the imprint of her continued Communist affiliation. Delegated to the 1923 TUC Congress in Plymouth, she wrote to a Communist colleague that she desired to ‘awaken the echoes … Hope that we [she and Pollitt] shall at least shock 33
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson that dull old Congress’.110 The CPGB organised outdoor meetings every night attracting between 70 and 500 with a special women’s meeting on Wednesday. Among the speakers were Wilkinson, Pollitt, Tom Clark, Crawfurd and Jagger. The last’s Communist connections occasioned a complaint from the Plymouth NUDAW branch. He defended himself at one of these meetings. If he did his duty to the union, his politics were no matter. He was ‘at the extreme left of the extreme left’ because Labour in office would only slightly modify capitalism while he wanted its abolition ‘by force of arms if necessary’.111 After the frustration of the 1923 TUC congress, she took the step of complaining in the ILP’s New Leader that without prior preparation for the conference there was no concerted left opposition capable of providing a clear lead.112 As a NUDAW organiser and a CPGB member, Wilkinson argued for industrial action and was candid about the limits of negotiation. In New Dawn, in early 1922, Wilkinson highlighted the contradictions that she as a union official faced in the transformed labour market. The contrast with her early days as a union organiser could not be greater. She noted that all trade boards were allowing wage reductions, despite the efforts of workers’ representatives. She herself was involved in both the Women’s Light Clothing Trade Board and the Laundry Trade Board. Determined opposition in the negotiations – she confessed – could only secure small concessions such as the postponement of wage cuts.113 Yet Wilkinson tried to manage the contradiction of being a revolutionary and a trade union official in conditions of retreat, making the case when it arose for strike action. Thus, she was heavily involved with the 1923 strikes at Silvertown and Pelaw CWS. Wilkinson also sought to secure NUDAW affiliation to the RILU. She had unsuccessfully pushed affiliation to the RILU at the Labour Women’s conference of 1921, shortly before leaving for Russia.114 Wilkinson outlined the case for affiliation in New Dawn in March 1922. She denounced the conservative Amsterdam International for squandering the opportunities afforded by the European revolutions seeking the ‘safety of passing resolutions’ and obsessing about the ILO ‘sideshow’.115 The ‘black Friday fiasco’ in Britain epitomised the IFTU’s antiquated trade unionism. In contrast, the RILU’s opening conference gathered battle-hardened union leaders: the Industrial Workers of the World’s ‘big Bill’ Hayward, William Z. Foster of the American Federation of Labour, strike leaders of the Winnipeg and Seattle general strikes, Michel and Tomasi of the French Confédération Général du Travail (CGT, General Confederation of Labour), the Italians who had led the factory occupations movement, German trade unionists who had stalled the Kapp putsch. The RILU rejected class collaboration, recognised the revolutionary character of
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Socialist ideas and movements class struggle, and sought real international solidarity through backing conference decisions with action.116 The long anticipated debate on RILU affiliation took place at NUDAW’s ADM of 16 and 17 April 1922. Wilkinson proposed the motion on affiliation, arguing that while the RILU had tried to ‘raise the banner of revolt’, leaders like J.H. Thomas and Vandervelde simply saw trade unions as part of capitalism. She concluded powerfully on the IFTU’s constitutional inability to prevent strike-breaking and its inadequate leadership.117 The debate swung back and forth. True to form, R.J. Davies teased Wilkinson about the proliferation of internationals and identified the choice between Amsterdam and Moscow as one between the parliamentary socialism and bloodshed. The motion fell by 54,855 to 17,083. A significant minority favoured Wilkinson’s fighting rhetoric but, symptomatic of the movement as a whole, a gloomy mood prevailed.118
A Communist-Labour candidate: Gorton South ward and Ashton constituency With influence on the Gorton Trade Council, Manchester CPGB and Jagger were able to secure Wilkinson’s candidature for Manchester council. Wright Robinson privately observed ‘Miss Wilkinson, against all betting, has wangled her way into R.J. Davies’s … Ward.’119 Wilkinson had allies such as Stella Davies (who had established Gorton Labour Party Women’s Section) on Gorton Trade Council.120 Correspondence between the CPGB political bureau and the Manchester district discussed Wilkinson’s selection. They preferred her to the non-Communist Purcell; only if her cause was lost would Pollitt be proposed.121 On 19 September 1923, the political bureau noted how the Labour Party was attempting to block Wilkinson’s adoption by Gorton Trades Council and believed that this would make an excellent test case.122 Ultimately, Labour opposition came to nought. The CPGB press promoted Wilkinson as ‘one of our fighters’ who was a ‘thorn in the flesh of Labour mandarins’.123 Wilkinson won the ward of Gorton South for Labour with 3,341 votes against 2,501 for the Conservative candidate.124 Shortly after her election to Manchester Council, on 7 November, Wilkinson spoke at a public meeting commemorating the October Revolution. Three thousand had come to the Manchester Free Trade Hall to hear Wilkinson, Shapurji Saklatvala MP and Manchester Guardian journalist Morgan Philips Price. Thirty of the crew of a Russian ship moored in the Manchester docks were guests of honour; as they marched in, the audience spontaneously sang the Red Flag. Soviet stars and hammers and sickles adorned the packed hall. After a ‘burst of cheering’ greeted the announcement of her victory in Gorton, Wilkinson 35
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson made a ‘fine appeal for the unity of all workers’.125 Price called for the withdrawal of British troops from Germany. Saklatvala received a rousing ovation for his condemnation of capitalism.126 Wilkinson had clearly established herself as one of the CPGB’s most effective orators.127 Sitting on Manchester City Council between 1923 and 1926, Wilkinson’s major concern was women’s joblessness. She inquired into the relief that was being dispensed for women and called for the extension of the council’s employment of women as home helps in relation to maternity services and in public health.128 In the council chamber, she proposed better treatment of Manchester’s 6,000 unemployed women. Those aged 18 to 25, unlike men, were rarely given extensions to unemployment insurance benefits after the statutory period. With an amendment requiring further investigation of the question before an application for earmarked funds from the Ministry of Labour, the resolution was passed.129 Wilkinson remained Gorton South councillor until her parliamentary commitments were too great to continue, announcing this in September 1926.130 The CPGB conceived of the December 1923 general election against a horizon of capitalist breakdown, successive governmental failures, efforts to make workers pay for the crisis and the ‘grim spectres of unemployment and stagnation’. In this circumstance, the Labour leadership’s ‘double-tongued faltering’ was encouraging a political and industrial offensive from the ruling class. The CPGB therefore sought to capitalise on the election through securing Labour endorsement of its candidates in up to ten constituencies. Wilkinson was on the CPGB’s long list of potential candidates.131 This required financial resources. The King’s Street premises were mortgaged and wealthy sympathisers approached. The procedure whereby the CPGB was able to capture the candidature in a given constituency was based on its ability to provide finance, to have local influence from within the Labour Party or a sponsoring trade union. NUDAW sponsorship was Wilkinson’s best hope of adoption as a council or parliamentary candidate. However, on 26 June 1923, the Labour Party Conference voted against CPGB affiliation by 366,000 to 2,514,000.132 The door was closing on the possibility of CPGB entry into the Labour mainstream. Despite slightly grander ambitions initially, the CPGB was only able to stand two candidates (Newbold for Motherwell and Gallacher for Dundee), but several others received Labour endorsement. There was only one sitting Communist Shapurji Saklatvala for North Battersea, who had received Battersea Trades Council endorsement. Having high regard in the local Labour movement, NUDAW support and given Communist influence on Gorton Trade Council, the CPGB Political Bureau called on the Manchester district ‘to take every possible step’ 36
Socialist ideas and movements and ‘spare no effort’ to secure Wilkinson’s selection.133 There was even the possibility, according to Pollitt, of a clash between the NUDAW and the Labour Party NEC in the event of the latter overturning her candidacy.134 After correspondence with the Labour Party, the NUDAW executive council of 14 October 1923 discussed Wilkinson and her Gorton selection conference.135 In the financially tight situation that NUDAW found itself in 1923, its policy towards sponsoring parliamentary candidates was carefully weighed. Although recognising the responsibility of the union to field as many candidates as possible, the executive judged that six candidates would ensure ‘real candidates and not men of straw’. Through bitter experience, the union had learnt how the resources at the disposal of Conservative candidates in particular could swing matters. In Shipley, MacKinder’s opponent could count on 170 cars to assist in the campaign and had donated a £20,000 park to the constituency. With two sitting MPs, the decision to field six candidates opened up four vacancies. The executive polled the membership with the list of nominees. In total, 23 stood in the ballot; all but Wilkinson and Bamber were men. The result was announced in August 1923 with Wilkinson, former MP Tom Myers, Yorkshire divisional organiser William Mackinder, and national organiser William T. Scott being successful. Wilkinson topped the poll with a remarkable 14,715, over two thousand more than her closest rival. Her dramatic victory could be attributable to a combination of factors: her obvious talents, her popularity, her role in wartime strikes, Communist support and the attraction of the women’s vote.136 Wilkinson wrote to her union executive on 17 November 1923 to explain the situation concerning selection process in Gorton and ask for its endorsement as a parliamentary candidate in Ashton. The previous night she had attended Gorton Trades Council alongside other candidates: Councillor Crompton of the Vehicle Builders and Dennison of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation. Crompton was successful. Wilkinson had been invited to stand for selection in several constituencies (including Aston and Duddeston in Birmingham, Moss Side, Hulme, Rusholme and Portsmouth). Although not as certain as Gorton, she felt that Ashton was the most hopeful.137 Wilkinson managed to secure endorsement as a Labour candidate for Ashton-under-Lyne despite her CPGB membership, contesting the December 1923 general election.138 She had a stiff test as the seat had a Conservative majority of over 3,000. The Liberal candidate was the former mayor who had been instrumental in saving the local pit when its owners went bankrupt. Wilkinson’s campaign started late with NUDAW ‘diving into the constituency’ a fortnight before polling day.139 The union provided the electoral agent, Harry Ford. He worked in the union’s legal department 37
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson and was secretary of the Ashton Trades Council, and was assisted by Wolstencraft (NUDAW central office and Ashton Labour Party secretary). A correspondent from Ashton noted that Wilkinson had mounted a ‘hurricane campaign’ with the assistance of both local NUDAW members and the unemployed, presumably through the local branch of the NUWCM. Her Communism became a significant issue during the campaign. Tom Bell remembered discussing her election address with Wilkinson and Jagger, when both refused to use the word ‘Communist’.140 Wilkinson corrected the Manchester Guardian when they described her as a Communist candidate for Ashton-under-Lyne, pointing out that she was the official Labour Party candidate.141 Even after this correction, the Manchester Guardian stressed Wilkinson’s Communism, highlighting CPGB efforts to infiltrate the official Labour Party. The paper reported the local miner’s lodge’s support for the Liberal candidate with some relish and criticised Wilkinson’s scorn for free trade.142 Pressed on the matter in the Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter, she confirmed that she was a Communist.143 Nevertheless, commentators expected a close result. Even unsympathetic newspapers noted the good attendance at Wilkinson’s public meetings and her effective oratory.144 She emphasised the capital levy and the need for greater parliamentary representation for women’s and children’s interests. While Wilkinson observed that Conservative patronage (‘Tory wealth and beer’) had won the day rather than Liberal jobs or Labour arguments, the effect of the campaign, which targeted working-class women in particular, scythed the Conservative majority to 239.145
Leaving the party, abandoning Communism? Indications of Wilkinson’s impending departure from the CPGB appeared in early 1924. Tensions between the party membership and the national headquarters in King Street were growing. Nowhere was this stronger than Manchester, where feeling was ‘running high’ after headquarters had instructed branches to attend a special conference that Manchester District Committee had called. Wilkinson was at the forefront of this dissent, making a highly revealing statement on 3 January 1924. She wanted ‘some straight talking’ at the conference. She bitterly criticised the leadership of ‘Murphy, Inkpin and Co.’, blaming them for ‘ruining the Party’ and alienating the majority of British Communists. Since 1921, it had squandered opportunities and frustrated ‘the magnificent work of the rank and file’. Consequently, the leadership of the left had fallen into ILP hands. She concluded: ‘That is why I am so thankful that the Conference is to be held. Meantime, I am not accepting CP engagements until the whole position is cleared up. We must take a stand.’146 38
Socialist ideas and movements An exchange of letters in the spring and summer of 1924 between Wilkinson and Dutt revealed the ambiguity of her departure from the CPGB. Her letter of March 1924 complained that at a London conference people were saying that she had quit the party three months before. She denied this. Instead, she recalled a careful statement indicating a ‘very strong disagreement’ with the policy of the British executive rather than a difference of principle.147 She wanted Dutt to send her statement to Communist conference delegates. Dutt sent a terse officious reply, that there had been no communication to the executive up to then and that comrades who had worked for her candidacy were justifiably dismayed at her position.148 In their next correspondence, in June 1924, referring to a conversation the day before, Wilkinson talked of the ‘ghastly muddle of the last few months’, blaming ‘an emotional reaction to Communism’. Interestingly, given her abiding future associations with Communist-initiated campaigns, she wanted to ‘sort things out – so as to be of some use’. She sought to rebuild her relationship with Dutt and re-assert her connection with Communism, asking him for advice on reading for a ‘post-graduate course’ in Marxism.149 Furthermore, she praised Pollitt’s ‘political leadership of the left’ at the TUC Congress in Hull (1–6 September) being ‘easily the foremost man on the floor of Congress’.150 The charge of opportunism greeted her departure. On Thursday 4 September 1924, The Times featured an article that asserted that Wilkinson had left the CPGB in order to secure adoption as a Labour Party parliamentary candidate. She rebutted the claim: While a member of the Communist Party I was placed on the official list of Labour Party candidates. As such I received endorsement from Ashtonunder-Lyne. I resigned from the Communist Party some weeks before I was invited to stand for Middlesbrough East, but no question has ever been raised as to my endorsement, which was given by the Labour Party as soon as applied for.151
Given that her endorsement as the prospective candidate for Middlesbrough East occurred on 14 April 1924, she most probably resigned from the party some time in March 1924. Her brother Harold was negative about the CPGB in Manchester, saying of her quitting the party: I think that they were about to kick her out … nah … I think it was pointed out to her by several people that she wouldn’t get anywhere in that and that with the Labour Party there was some hopes of advancement. … She fought Ashton under Lyne as a Communist. She wanted to get into Parliament and I think that convinced her …152
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Wilkinson’s break with the CPGB was not clean. She remained from 1920 to 1930 and again from 1933 until May 1940 on the LRD executive, which had started life as the Fabian Research Department, but had come under Communist influence.153 She also served on the British executive of the Workers’ International Relief (WIR), which was Münzenberg’s creature, and a variety of initiatives that sprung from that source. Thus, in January 1925 she signed a public declaration that the WIR was not a Communist front in response to R.J. Davies’s claim to the contrary.154 At the 1925 Labour Party Conference, Wilkinson supported reference back of the part of the executive’s report pertaining to the WIR.155 She also sat on the National Committee of the British Section of the International Class War Prisoners’ Aid (ICWPA).156 Under its umbrella, she campaigned for the defendants of the Communist conspiracy trial arrested in October 1925. Wilkinson was withering in her criticism of ‘Jix’ – Baldwin’s Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks – over the raids, arrests and seizures of documents of Communists that preceded the trial. Perhaps, she joked, he was not a ‘flint-hearted pursuer of alien reds’ after all, but a covert Communist intent on making the secret service look ridiculous.157 She supported the right of Communists – like the great mass of the Labour movement – to preach the doctrine of class war and appeal to soldiers to refuse orders during labour troubles.158 Nonetheless, she agreed with MacDonald about the CPGB’s naivety for not expecting a raid after an election in which the Zinoviev letter (a forgery designed to discredit Labour) played such a damaging role for Labour.159 On 24 January 1926, she spoke at a Leeds Labour Party demonstration, describing the prisoners – nine of the twelve of whom she knew personally – as ‘saints and martyrs’.160 On 11 April, together with George Lansbury MP, A.J. Cook, Dr Marion Phillips, Mann, and John Beckett MP, she marched to Wandsworth prison where the Communists were detained.161 In another ICWPA campaign, she also spoke at a meeting in a Commons committee room on behalf of the ten Cramlington women, who were campaigning, with help from the ICWPA, for the release of their husbands and sons imprisoned for alleged offences during the General Strike.162 She questioned the sentences and suggested that the State had used agent provocateurs in the Northumberland mining town. Thus, for nearly two decades, she worked in a variety of organisations alongside Communists: the NUWM, anti-fascist organisations, anti-war movements and the Left Book Club. Her work with Communists extended beyond Britain. Visiting Bulgaria in 1925 alongside Lady Clare Annesley and Dr Marion Phillips, this women’s delegation sought to bear witness to the brutal anti- Communist repression after the Sofia Cathedral bombing.163 This was the beginning of transnational work alongside Communists, which 40
Socialist ideas and movements reached its peak over the Reichstag fire trial and Spanish solidarity. There were complaints about such activity within the Labour movement. In December 1925, former Communist MP and Wilkinson’s former fiancé, Newbold denounced the Communists’ campaigning methods as setting out to dissolve and corrode the Labour movement using figures such as Wilkinson ‘as magnets of attraction for the masses’.164
An organisational trajectory: Left-Wing Movement, Plebs, ILP On leaving the CPGB, Wilkinson began a political trajectory which encompassed intellectual, organisational and strategic dimensions. In a sense, Wilkinson’s departure from the CPGB was product of changed circumstance as much as a dramatic shift in her own outlook. The secret report into Wilkinson in the Hoover archives stressed as much: ‘Resignation of membership in the Official Communist Party does not necessarily mean any change of Communist characteristics.’165 The accusations of embittered CPGB members – who condemned her as a dilettante – missed the point. When Wilkinson first joined the CPGB, membership of it, the Labour Party, and for that matter, the NGL, were entirely compatible. When she quit that was no longer the case.166 Her review of a Keir Hardie biography revealed her attitude to the Labour Party. Significantly this was written in late 1922 a time when she was firmly committed to the CPGB. She praised Hardie’s threefold vision: the Labour Party as a revolutionary party of the working class; a rejection of MacDonald’s strategy of alliance with the Liberals; and unity between the party and the unions. This was, as far as she was concerned, the nature of the Labour Party and it was a view that she retained for several years to come. Even MacDonald’s leadership could not alter that essence, given that Hardie performed ‘the pioneer spade work, and MacDonald played Paul to his Christ’.167 Wilkinson’s departure from the CPGB did not entail a conversion to mainstream Labourism. Finding an outlet for her Marxism, she wrote regularly for Plebs (the journal of the Plebs League that organised the National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC)) and attended the NCLC summer schools (such as in Cober Hill in 1924 and Kiplin Hall in 1927).168 Wilkinson’s union supported the NCLC and she saw ‘independent working-class education’ as a central part of her mission as national organiser. She argued that the great CWS strike – when class-conscious workers understood the fundamentals of solidarity – demonstrated the need for such education. The ability to formulate an understanding from a working-class viewpoint was also needed in the struggles to come, as she predicted a ‘stand-up fight with the capitalist system’.169 She was elected to the Plebs League executive in 1924. Indeed, the CPGB’s 41
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson hostility to Plebs may have been a factor in her decision to quit the CPGB, as with Postgate and Horrabin who left around the same time.170 She contributed intermittently to the magazine until the mid-1930s, providing articles and book reviews as well as co-authoring Plebs books Why Fascism? and Why War? She lectured for the NCLC on such topics as Marxist economics, factory legislation and parliament. A shorthand simplification for her politics for at least a decade after quitting the CPGB might be ‘Plebs Marxist’ (her feminism notwithstanding). This combined an orientation on the institutions of the Labour movement, anti-imperialism, an anti-war position, qualified support for the Soviet Union and a much looser more independent brand of Marxism than existed in the CPGB. Wilkinson left the CPGB so as to transform the Labour Party, via the Left-Wing Movement. A letter to Arthur Woodburn of 25 July 1924 reveals her involvement in the secret discussions amongst Plebs League executive members about the launch of the Left-Wing Movement. Several Plebs contributors – the Horrabins, Newbold, Postgate, Price, Mark Starr and Wilkinson – had left the CPGB between 1922 and 1924.171 Initially, Postgate circulated the Plebs executive about this project; the first Labour government’s failings demonstrated its urgency. Wilkinson fully accepted this premise given that the MacDonald government was ‘thoroughly discredited amongst socialists’. She was unsure that the Plebs League was the best instrument for such an initiative and worried that if news of such discussions leaked to the membership it would wreck the project.172 Pollitt assessed Wilkinson’s departure in late 1924.173 For him, those who had recently quit the CPGB did so on the grounds of either opportunism or careerism, proving themselves unable to work under the direction of the Comintern. He said that they suffered from confusion and were hypnotised by electoral fever and remained silent at the recent Labour Party conference, failing to criticise MacDonald’s leadership. He reported that at a meeting of the Left-Wing Movement, which Communists Saklatvala and Crawfurd attended, the new Labour lefts believed that they could transform the Labour Party into a new workers’ party, though he saw this as a simple rationalisation of careerist treachery. Willie Gallacher later recalled how Wilkinson worried that association with the Communists would undermine the project.174 Indeed, at the 1926 Labour Party Conference, she moved the reference back of the part of the NEC’s report that implied that the Left-Wing Movement was financed by the CPGB, which she contended was untrue.175 Plebs and the NCLC allowed Wilkinson space to articulate a Marxist analysis. Thus, at the Cober Hill summer school in 1924, she reflected upon capitalist modernity with its scientific management, 42
Socialist ideas and movements the proletarianisation of white-collar work and the feminisation of the workforce. Within this process, employers were instrumentalising gender divisions and the gender pay gap. Although this drift was inevitable given the dynamic of capitalism, in Britain ‘men’s trade unions’ were resisting it. Faced with this opposition, the employers would use scientific management to intensify the work process, with piece rates and incentive systems. Taylorism reduced workers to machine-minders performing repetitive timed tasks and through the use of psychology transformed them into ‘good wage slave[s]’. While craft unions (used interchangeably with ‘men’s unions’) had had successes thus far, mass unemployment and jealousies of the unskilled would undermine that. A workers’ state, however, would harness Taylorism to reduce drudgery and prevent the slacker exploiting the situation.176 As well as Plebs, Wilkinson contributed regularly between 1925 and 1927 to a paper closely associated with the Left-Wing Movement: Lansbury’s Labour Weekly. She provided a column that dealt with parliamentary matters and Labour Party strategy. In July 1927, Lansbury’s Labour Weekly was incorporated into the ILP’s New Leader.177 Wilkinson’s articles together with Horrabin’s cartoons appeared regularly in the New Leader between 1927 and 1930.178 Horrabin drew the couple bowing to the readers in their first contribution to the New Leader on 22 July 1927.179 Simultaneously, Lansbury’s ginger group joined the ILP.180 For a time, the group operated within the ILP as a faction after the London Ginger Club members had met at Mortimer Hall on 29 July and decided not to disband.181 Her recruitment to the ILP signalled a mellowing of her political outlook. Only three years earlier, Wilkinson had described the average ILPer as ‘a Doctor of Divinity’, incapable of cracking open a coconut.182 With her return, she accommodated to some ILP policies that she had previously rejected. She thus became more sympathetic to the ILP’s policy of the Living Wage though continuing to note the need to reconcile it with the trade union position.183 Wilkinson continued to contribute as a weekly correspondent to the ILP’s paper up to 21 March 1930. She had become one of its most prominent journalists for a spell, providing the front page article (June 1929-March 1930).184 At times, the New Leader’s weekly editorial meeting convened at Wilkinson’s John Street flat in Bloomsbury.185 After March 1930, however, she broke with the ILP policy. Tensions were increasing between the ILP and the PLP leadership; this compromised Wilkinson because she was a Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS). At the same time, some within the Labour Party were pressing for a statement of loyalty from the ILP and in this eventuality expulsions were considered a real possibility. Thus, while the ILP’s 12 MPs (that included Horrabin) voted against the Anomalies Bill on 32 occasions, Wilkinson only voted 43
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson against it twice.186 When the ILP boycotted nominations for the PLP Consultative Committee in July 1930, Wilkinson was a nominee.187 The origins of Wilkinson’s break with the ILP can be detected in her journalism. During the second Labour government that was forced to compromise on socialist ideals, she appreciated the ILP’s ‘Oliver Twist’ role, always asking the party for more. Yet she cautioned against an ‘opposition complex’ which considered the front bench to be the enemy. A desire for martyrdom and Commons melodrama jeopardised the ILP’s constructive worth.188 Hence she regretted an ILP amendment to the Coal Mines Bill as it embarrassed Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB)-sponsored MPs mandated to support the Bill.189 With such criticisms, signs emerged that New Leader’s readers were losing their patience with Wilkinson. When she complained that the Labour government did not make sufficient use of young talent, she cited William Adamson, Secretary of State for Scotland, as a ‘dear old soul but well past the work’. She received a torrent of letters; 156 sacks from Scotland alone, she joked.190 The press deemed such comments to be inappropriate for a PPS. Tom Johnston, Adamson’s under-secretary, replied publicly that Wilkinson’s ‘strictures and her aspersions are without the slightest foundation’ and that one of the government’s hardest workers was being ‘suddenly stabbed in the back – stabbed wantonly and woundingly and patronisingly’.191 A letter defending Wilkinson described Johnston’s comments as ‘grotesque – a mixture of insincerity, pomposity, and rank melodramatic twaddle!’192 With her tongue in her cheek, she promised to be nice and not criticise the front bench again. She apologised to those whose feelings she had hurt, intending only honesty and not malice. Within the month, she had left the New Leader. There was no hint of a political break in her farewell article, only that she was taking the opportunity of the change in editorship to move on and that she would be writing a column in the Daily Herald.193 She paid tribute to the support that she had had from successive editors (Brockway and Hunter) who allowed her to write as she chose, including criticism of the ILP, and who had stood by her in the controversies she had prompted. Her departure meant breaking the partnership with Horrabin (‘a great joy to both of us’) that had existed since the General Strike at Lansbury’s Labour Weekly. She disclosed that the two of them had disagreed over ILP strategy: Horrabin favouring Maxton’s line and Wilkinson, Ernest Hunter’s more moderate position. The two had agreed that it was unfair on the ‘plucky ILP group’ to impose Wilkinson’s position in her weekly report.194 In July 1932, the ILP disaffiliated from the Labour Party.195 Its trajectory and that of Wilkinson had diverged during the Labour government. Even though her ideas were to radicalise in the early 1930s,
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Socialist ideas and movements there was no question of her leaving the Labour Party with her ILP comrades.
From atheism to socialist sermons Wilkinson has been labelled as a Christian socialist.196 While she was brought up in a devout Wesleyan Methodist household and her father was a lay preacher, this was far from a constant element of her politics. Usually, Wilkinson kept her politics and religion separate but on exceptional occasions brought them together publicly and systematically. Symptomatic of Wilkinson’s political itinerary were the shifting relationships between politics and ethics, secular and religious views, principle and pragmatism. Earlier, Wilkinson’s first political radicalisation marked a break from religion. In the CPGB and perhaps for some time before, she sought to be a ‘thorough-going atheist’ during the ‘storm and stress of the revolutionary period’. After having questioned her childhood faith when she became an ‘ardent Marxist’, she found greater space for her Methodism after quitting the CPGB as her interview with the Methodist Times demonstrated. Moreover, in spring 1926, Wilkinson supported the campaign against betting taxation alongside Wesleyan Methodists.197 Nevertheless, religious language rarely entered her political discourse.198 Moreover, she often denounced religious conservatism. At a seamen’s mission, she criticised the charity of those slumming amongst the poor in the expectation of gratitude, preferring the real brotherhood rather than condescending do-gooders.199 Indeed, when she was invited to speak at a Methodist church in Bradford in November 1925, she gave what was essentially a political speech about the battles of modern women and the duty of Christians to oppose war.200 She also questioned the intensity of the Commons debate about the prayer book of 1927 in which religion meant ‘to get wildly excited about some change in a form and a ceremony when you [Conservatives] and your friends have condemned a million miners to the living death’. She asked what the ‘founder of the Christian Church’ would make of such priorities.201 Having said that, she favoured the proposals as progressive. The new marriage vows would remove things that many good Christians found painful, particularly the wife’s obedience to the husband.202 Yet in the same article, she employed a Marxist and materialist analysis to explain the Reformation as connected to the rising merchant class based in the north-western seaboard, attempting to overcome Mediterranean domination. She also condemned the role that organised religion played in sanctifying the slaughter of the Great War, concluding with a messianic quote about a new revelation in which
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson the hungry sheep will be fed. A few months later, she made no mention of her faith and smiled ‘as a Marxist’ upon the hypocrisy of lecturing trade unionists about the constitution during the General Strike but now encouraging the Church to defy parliament.203 In another sign of her secular politics, she supported Sunday opening for cinemas in the face of religious opposition and complained about the purgatory of a boring Sunday.204 She also controversially held political meetings on Sundays in Middlesbrough when the Conservatives and Liberals respected the Sabbath.205 However, after quitting the ILP, in late November 1930, she gave the sermon at the Colne Road Wesleyan Church (where her brother Harold was the minister). It signified that she was looking to religion to make sense of her political drift. She called for a return to ethics and realism in the face of too many petty-minded Christians who did the religion a disservice. She condemned Christians who refused to donate to missionaries on the grounds that they had brought unrest to India.206 She articulated a distinctly militant Christian socialist vision in which Christianity would challenge the idea that it cost too much to provide decent housing, education, or sanitation. No doubt, this was a way of putting a socialist message that side-stepped the Labour government’s failure to implement a socialist programme. (Her lecture tour in the USA around the same time could be seen in the same light.) Simultaneously incorporating Marxism and deviating from it, Wilkinson’s sermon was concerned to focus on the individual rather than the mass, ‘man’ rather than the machine and to see people as ‘God’s children’ rather than ‘canon or profit fodder’. This ethical critique of Marxism indicates a drift in her political ideas. Finally, for her, Christianity was essentially a militant religion, fighting against wrong and injustice. Thus, her public re-engagement with religion was on terms suited to participation in social movements and social contestation.207 The sermon brought out into the open and fused together Wilkinson’s politics and her religion in a way that had not happened up to that point. She gave a further sermon on ‘life and machinery’ at the City Road Wesleyan Chapel, London in March 1931.208 In this she observed that although night clubs might be fun, the rootlessness of modern life meant that there were more unhappy people than at any time before; many were suffering from a ‘hunger of the human soul’. Thus, she framed her critique of industrial modernity and understanding of alienation in religious terms. Symptomatic of an intellectual disorientation or drift, there are signs that Wilkinson flirted with other spiritual directions at this time. Though it may have been idle curiosity, she attended a seance in March 1931.209 She also occasionally articulated a relativistic or frivolous view of religion. Hence she admired Buddhism’s wheel of life in contrast to ‘static 46
Socialist ideas and movements Christianity’ and assumed that ‘[w]hatever being created this world must possess a marvellous sense of humour’.210 As a consequence of her relationship with Astor, Brian Harrison has identified that Wilkinson moved towards Christian Science. In their correspondence, Wilkinson thanked Astor for giving her Christian Science literature and the spiritual help that she had found in it. Furthermore, she wrote in a Daily Herald article of the compatibility of modernity, science and religion, while trenchantly rejecting religious obscurantism and dogmatism.211 Whether this was a conversion to Christian Science is more doubtful. It may say more of the relationship between Astor and Wilkinson. Wilkinson developed a deep friendship, confided her private feelings and vulnerabilities and depended on the patronage of the older woman. Wilkinson’s letters are suffused with gratitude and she may have indulged Astor’s religious views to please her. The Christian socialist interlude notwithstanding, Wilkinson tended to be secular and anti-clerical in her politics. In 1934, explaining non-conformity’s links to the Labour movement, she described non-conformity as ‘compensatory balance’ for wage slaves in the last century who believed capitalism would live on forever; socialism simply replaced heaven.212 There is a danger of misunderstanding the separation that Wilkinson made between religion and politics and of taking too selectively what she said in Myself When Young or in interviews with the Methodist press. While a case can be made that there is a continuity of form, of passionate intensity with her religious upbringing and that she kept her faith to some extent throughout her life, her understandings of peace, the State, industrial relations, or fascism did not have a religious departure point but a roughly Marxist one, until 1940 at least. After 1940, with her conversion to more conventional Labourist politics, she made more sentimental appeals to religion and to the hardships of her youth.
From the ILP to Tribune and the Left Book Club Wilkinson identified with the left opposition within Labour during the 1930s. The principal force in this regard became Sir Stafford Cripps. Wilkinson worked with Cripps who was at the centre of a succession of projects: the Socialist League (1932–37), the Unity Campaign and Tribune (1937–), and support for the Popular Front.213 During 1930 and 1931, Wilkinson became attached to the group of Labour Party activists wishing to ‘restore a sense of socialist purpose’ to the party. They met at Lady Warwick’s home, Easton Lodge in Essex.214 She had worked with many of those previously in the USF, NGL, the Left-Wing Movement and Plebs. This group developed into the Society for Socialist Inquiry 47
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson and Propaganda (SSIP).215 Her relationship with the SSIP and the Socialist League that followed was ambiguous. At times, she worked alongside them and praised their work. Thus, while Transport House seemed ‘content to shrug their shoulders’, she approved of the SSIP, as they were developing the ‘only pieces of research and propaganda that can be taken seriously’.216 Two years later, she praised Socialist Leaguer under Frank Horrabin’s editorship for ideologically and territorially challenging the Blackshirt.217 At other times, she kept her distance and resisted joining the Socialist League. Indeed, in 1933 Margaret Cole and E.A. Radice wrote to the editor of Time and Tide complaining about Wilkinson’s dismissive comments about the SSIP and the Socialist League, inviting Wilkinson to join both.218 Wilkinson commented that the Socialist League was like a lemon meringue, a wonderful top layer but nothing much underneath.219 From its inception, she had criticisms of the Socialist League, which was comprised in the main of those ILPers who decided not to leave the Labour Party when the ILP disaffiliated in 1932. Its first meeting induced a ‘little moan’: though well-meaning, the sharp minds present missed the opportunity to grapple with the social crisis, privileging instead electoral strategy. Indicating her preference for revolutionary solutions, Wilkinson lamented Sir Charles Trevelyan’s ruminations about 1640 and 1832 for failing to mention 1917. For her, it was an inauspicious start, there were too many old slogans and a failure to attract a working-class base.220 Reversing her rightward drift between 1927 and 1931, this was symptomatic of a second radicalisation of Wilkinson’s thought. During this period, Wilkinson reasserted her commitment to revolution. Revolution, the barricades and class struggle returned to her lexicon, strategic perspectives and analysis. In a letter to Lady Rhondda, written in the early 1930s, Wilkinson confirmed that she was a revolutionary, though would prefer to avoid bloodshed and barricades if possible.221 Alongside Aneurin Bevan, George Strauss, Harold Laski, Cripps, H.N. Brailsford and its editor William Mellor, Wilkinson joined the Tribune editorial board at its inception on 1 January 1937.222 They had planned the periodical to advocate a robust socialism as well as domestic and international anti-fascism. Wilkinson wrote about Jarrow, the Unemployment Assistance Board, hire purchase, Spain, (against) family allowances, the TUC, and the Durham Miners’ Gala.223 At its peak, its circulation reached 30,000 but the publication relied on Cripps financially. Wilkinson complained to Dalton about the influences within Tribune that wanted opposition for opposition’s sake (presumably meaning ILP influence).224 After Mellor was replaced in 1938, Tribune drifted closer to the CPGB’s positions under H.J. Hartshorn’s editorship. The latter, however, was dismissed in the aftermath of the Hitler–Stalin Pact, when 48
Socialist ideas and movements Postgate took over. Later she commented that Cripps had a good brain and a good heart but that the two organs sometimes got in the way of each other.225 The presence of Tribune supporters Wilkinson, Cripps, D.N. Pritt and Laski on the NEC set them on a collision course with the Labour Party leadership from 1937. Their strategy unravelled with the expulsion of Cripps from the Labour Party in early 1939. Wilkinson was also associated with another prominent movement of the 1930s left: the Left Book Club (LBC). Wilkinson participated in the LBC – formed in 1936 – which brought together publisher Victor Gollancz with prominent figures on the left such as John Strachey, Cripps and Laski. By March 1938, it had 58,000 members. Wilkinson wrote the Town That Was Murdered for the LBC – being its ‘August choice’ in 1939 – and spoke at several of its events.226 The LBC drew the scrutiny of the NEC that was seeking to clamp down on Popular Front-style activism. Given that Clement Attlee had written for the LBC, disciplining members for participation in LBC activities was less straightforward than other campaigns involving the CPGB. The NEC received a long report detailing participation in the LBC, surveying the period 12 October to 16 December 1938, and discovered that Wilkinson had spoken on LBC platforms in Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Leicester.227 At the Queen’s Hall, London, she spoke on an LBC platform over Spain that included Gollancz, Sidney Silverman, Eleanor Rathbone, the Dean of Canterbury, Edith Summerskill and Bevan.228 However, with the Hitler–Stalin Pact, the outbreak of the Second World War and the Soviet invasion of Finland in November 1939, the tensions between pro- and anti-Communist factions of the LBC sharpened. Like Wilkinson, Gollancz and Strachey both broke their links with the CPGB and by July 1940, the LBC was fully committed to the ‘People’s War’.229
Attitude to the Soviet Union Even in her days in the CPGB, Wilkinson was not an uncritical supporter of Soviet Russia or of the party line. Her attitude towards the Soviet Union itself evolved over time. She never wrote a thorough analysis of the regime and therefore her views can only be reconstructed from piecemeal writings reacting to events or particular issues. As Kevin Morgan has observed of Lansbury, Wilkinson had a ‘two camp’ understanding of world politics.230 She worried about capitalist encirclement and the war threat against the USSR.231 An unreasoning political and class partisanship underscored hostility to the Soviet Union on the part of the Conservative Party and the conservative press. They were willing to smear and fabricate, as the Zinoviev letter demonstrated. Their goal was to overturn the regime by war if necessary. This meant that 49
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson in public Wilkinson felt obliged to defend the Soviet Union. This had two implications. First, she was sceptical of reports of atrocities of the regime. Secondly, there was almost definitely a gap between her public statements and her evolving private views on the USSR. This was a process that many of her generation underwent, until many broke with the regime in disgust. Wilkinson became entangled in a series of press controversies about the Soviet Union. She compared the press hysteria against the Soviet Union with the wartime propaganda atrocity stories and called for people to retain an open mind. On 12 May 1927, British security services raided the All-Russian Co-operative Society (Arcos), which was responsible for Anglo-Soviet trade, seizing documents and severing diplomatic relations. Her attitude was that this was an excuse to conjure the Russian bogey. She had no doubt that Russia was conducting secret service operations on British soil, as Britain was on Russian soil: ‘a dirty game whoever plays it.’ Her fear was that this was being used to foment war against the Soviet Union and speculated that had Churchill rather than ‘Jix’ been Home Secretary, tanks would have been used in the raid.232 In February 1930, during the campaign for her private members’ bill on the Soviet Union trade, she became embroiled in several controversies no doubt intended to undermine the bill.233 Thus, Koutepof’s sympathisers claimed that the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) had bundled the white Russian general into a grey limousine from the streets of Paris.234 Wilkinson alleged this to be fabrication.235 Relying on Moscow’s official denials, she also refuted the reported execution of 200 naval officers, recalling the great discrepancies between the foreign press and her experiences of Russia.236 After a delegation of the Free Churches visited Wilkinson about religious persecution in the Soviet Union, she condemned the corruption of the Orthodox Church and stated that the repression targeted those seeking to undermine the regime.237 As part of her campaign to persuade the Labour government to establish trade agreements with the USSR, Wilkinson worked with the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee, supplying a foreword for its pamphlet AntiSoviet Lies Nailed (1930).238 Wilkinson also roundly criticised Katherine Murray, the Duchess of Atholl’s The Conscription of a People (1931), for relying on second-hand evidence and class prejudices.239 Her pro-sovietism had a cultural dimension as well, seeing Soviet literature and film as a model of working-class culture.240 She saw screenings of Soviet films such as The General Line (about collectivisation of the land, 1929) and Turksib (about the Turkestan–Siberian railway, 1929) at the Soviet Embassy. On 24 February 1930, Wilkinson was prominently associated alongside filmmaker Ivor Montagu in organising a Commons committee room meeting on film censorship 50
Socialist ideas and movements after the London County Council’s ban on Masses and the Stage and Film Guide’s attempt to show Pudovkin’s Mother.241 The meeting established a Parliamentary Committee on Film Censorship with Wilkinson issuing a protest statement.242 Despite the prominent signatories to the statement, the LCC confirmed its decision the following day.243 In March 1931, she organised a showing of another banned Soviet film, Abram Room’s The Ghost That Never Returns, for the parliamentary film committee. Its plot concerned a trade union activist in a South American oil field and his battle with the authorities.244 Among the audience was J.R. Clynes, the Labour Home Secretary, who could see no objection to it. No doubt Wilkinson also had a hand in the showing of Pudovkin’s Storm over Asia (1928) to the Jarrow Crusaders while in London.245 The film narrates the rebellion of impoverished Mongolian fur-trappers against the British occupation force in 1918. After reading Trotsky’s autobiography, in particular its chapter ‘Planet without a Visa’, Wilkinson tried unsuccessfully to secure his asylum in Britain between July 1930 and June 1931.246 Writing to Trotsky in Prinkipo in August 1930, she argued that the Labour government should consider it an honour to grant him asylum and recalled his kindness to her in Moscow.247 She and Montagu discussed Trotsky and fellow left oppositionist and former ambassador Christian Rakovsky who faced persecution and internal exile. Wilkinson pressed Clynes on Trotsky’s behalf.248 She also enlisted the support of Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health Susan Lawrence to approach the Soviet ambassador.249 This did not mean that Wilkinson embraced a Trotskyist perspective; rather she was open to currents oppositional to Stalin. Wilkinson declared agnosticism about Trotsky’s ideas, who the pro-Stalin left denigrated, arguing in 1934 that a Fourth International would only form after the next war.250 Wilkinson was cautious when making statements about the USSR ‘that would be seized on by the other side’, namely the conservative politicians and newspapers. She thus balanced her support for Trotsky and Rakovsky against her campaign for Anglo-Soviet trade agreements and she used her contacts such as Soviet diplomat Alexander Bogomolov behind the scenes on Trotsky’s behalf.251 Their correspondence did not last long. In their last exchange in November 1931, Trotsky wrote a letter of introduction for Max Schachtman who was about to visit London.252 She admired Maurice Dobb’s Russian Economic Development since the Revolution, which argued that Russian workers were consciously planning their own state.253 At that very moment, Stalin’s hold over the Soviet Union strengthened through the five-year plan and land collectivisation. Her reading of Trotsky’s alternate programme was that he had succumbed to a ‘bossing complex’ in the emergency circumstances of 51
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson the civil war. She complained shortly afterwards that Humphrey’s Case for Socialism avoided the worker’s status in socialist industry and that he simply referred back to Cole’s guild socialist ideas without examining the ‘Russian experiments in practical socialisation’.254 In 1930, for Wilkinson, the Soviet Union was an inspirational object lesson in the feasibility of planning and socialism.255 She deemed the collectivisation of the land to be ‘[h]ow to kick or coax 100 million peasants to leave the 12th century for the 20th is the great problem facing Stalin and his comrades. In tackling it they have my respectful sympathy’.256 Like others in the Labour Party, against the backdrop of world economic crisis, for Wilkinson the Soviet Union’s five-year plan appeared to transcend irrationality of unemployment. As she told a NUDAW audience, she believed that Russia was the only country without unemployment and, despite their hardship, Russian workers had communal facilities and, unlike elsewhere, hope in their future.257 Nonetheless, she did not wish to follow the Russian model, envisaging ‘agreed’ rather than ‘enforced’ planning.258 It is significant that she knew Louis Fischer well, corresponded with him intermittently between 1929 and 1941 and looked to him as an authority on soviet Russia. He suggested that she read his Soviets in World Affairs, when she asked his advice in 1930, which she consumed with ‘very great interest’.259 They had significant dealings during the Spanish Civil War, because of the privileged position that Fischer had with the Spanish government, especially Negrín, and with the Russians, and Wilkinson’s prominent position in Labour Party and non-party Spanish solidarity campaigns. Their friendship continued.260 Fischer was initially sympathetic to the USSR, living in Moscow for a time and marrying a Russian, but grew disillusioned from 1936 onwards, ultimately becoming a prominent anti-Communist during the Cold War. Wilkinson’s attitude to the Stalinist regime during the 1930s was one fraught with doubts, qualified criticisms and equivocations that persisted until after the outbreak of the Second World War. In an interview in summer 1933, she indicated that she had modified her views since her youth, when ‘it seemed possible to do anything’, now believing that the world would not change so easily. Nevertheless, she retained a commitment to Communist ideas: ‘I think that the hope of the future lies in a kind of Communism that still encourages and develops individual initiative. I don’t believe Russia’s quite got it, although the Russians I know are happy. As happy as any Russian can be.’261 She did criticise the Soviet Union. After a Communist called Dexter wrote that her Why War? served imperialist interests, Wilkinson scolded Communist ‘ink coolies’. They woke each morning and tried to second guess Moscow, like waiting to watch which side of its whiskers a cat would wash first, perhaps the left 52
Socialist ideas and movements or the right, in a capricious and arbitrary sequence.262 Wilkinson and Edward Conze stated that Moscow disposed of a huge colonial empire inherited from Czarism. She objected to Soviet militarism: ‘Apparently those parades in the Red Square are to teach them to play marbles.’ What lay behind Dexter’s ‘pailfuls of personal abuse’ was Wilkinson’s challenge to the radical reversal of Soviet foreign policy. The substantive point in both Why War? and Why Fascism? was that Comintern strategy was fatally flawed from a revolutionary perspective, serving instead the national interests of Soviet Russia. Revolutionary ardour was being diluted in order to appease social democrats and to secure allies, such as France. Wilkinson responded to the CPGB’s pamphlet For a Soviet Britain with ‘friendly criticism’.263 She spelt out the following case. The Communist International’s subservience to Moscow had grown to the extent that every Communist movement outside Russia had been sacrificed to Russian interests. Russian diplomacy had pulled the French Communist Party into ‘an uneasy quadrille’ with the socialists for the purposes of the Franco-Soviet Pact (May 1935). While underground activists known to Wilkinson had risked their lives during the Saar Plebiscite campaign, Commissar of Foreign Affairs Litvinov had congratulated Hitler over the result. The CPGB should ‘remove its head from Soviet clouds’. The party casually assumed that it alone would achieve a soviet Britain, eschewing parliamentary democracy. For a Soviet Britain had unwittingly revived the concept of workers’ control.264 Unfortunately, the Labour Party (under the influence of Dalton and others) had become enamoured of the public corporation as the ideal of nationalisation. Workers’ representation on state-appointed management boards was a far cry from workers’ democracy in the workplace, particularly given the cautionary tale of Frank Hodges (MFGB secretary, 1919–24) who joined the Central Electricity Board in 1926. Following recent European experiences, she observed the grave mistake of ‘essentially revolutionary resolutions’ at the Labour Party’s Southport conference without preparing workers for the conquest of power. This was the error of continental socialists now crushed in fascist regimes. Instead, it was urgent, returning to Cole’s vision of guild socialism, that the ideas of workers’ control and workplace democracy were put at the heart of Labour policy. The CPGB should not misrepresent the idea of workers’ councils as an instrument of party dictatorship.265 Wilkinson’s explicit rejection of the public corporation and her reprise of workers’ control is a significant if overlooked marker in her second radicalisation (1932–36). It sets her wartime reconciliation with more mainstream Labourist ideas from 1940 in greater relief.
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson In February 1937, Wilkinson referred to the Moscow show trials in Time and Tide, indicating her abiding emotional investment in and personal connections to the Russian Revolution. Unpersuaded by Pritt’s defence of the Moscow proceedings, she reflected: ‘Too many of us here knew personally some of the men who have recently been shot or jailed.’ Yet she still rationalised these actions in relation to the persistent war threat against the Soviet Union. She was unsure if the charges were falsified or whether such ‘test men’ as Radek and Sokolnikov had betrayed Russia. For her, this missed the real question which was: how had the atmosphere in Russia become so poisoned as to render either scenario possible? Even so, despite observing that workers were happier in Britain than Russia, she continued to admire Stalin and his allies for their achievements.266 She returned to the Moscow trials in July 1937, again expressing uncertainty. During the Anglo-French Parliamentary Delegation to Paris, the French wife of a diplomat told Wilkinson that foreign officers had supplied Moscow with the evidence that had resulted in Marshall Tukhachevsky’s execution after the show trial of June 1937 and that they had done this because of his implacable hostility to Hitler. Wilkinson mused about the veracity of the assertion, noting that it added to the ‘macabre fascination’ of Europe’s fate.267 Around this time, it appears that Wilkinson visited the USSR for a second time. Perhaps she visited with Jagger on the NUDAW delegation in early August 1936.268 Uncharacteristically, Wilkinson did not write about her visit to the Soviet Union. Leah Manning recalled encountering her in Moscow and that she was part of a delegation from her trade union.269 Manning’s account is unclear as to precisely when this was. Indeed, the ambiguity of Manning’s account and the absence of other evidence of Wilkinson’s visit raises suspicions as to whether it actually occurred. Working with Maisky, the Soviet ambassador, and Otto Katz over Spain, Wilkinson continued at times to accept Moscow’s official version of developments. After the prosecution in the Rakovsky trial of March 1938 claimed that Lady Muriel Paget had worked for British intelligence in Russia, Wilkinson repeated the allegations in the Commons. Lady Paget’s secretary denied this.270 However, at this very time, Wilkinson was beginning to define the Soviet Union as totalitarian.271 This was symptomatic of her conflicted ideas about the USSR. Her opposition towards appeasement and her passionate support for the Popular Front compelled her to present the USSR as a potential partner in a peace alliance and even – when pressed in the Commons debate on the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact – as a democratic state. This public position in the two-party setting of the Commons masked a more nuanced and evolving private one that her journalism only partly revealed.272 54
Socialist ideas and movements Final break with Communism, 1940 Intellectually, Wilkinson continued to see herself as a Marxist as late as early 1940. She complained in 1938 that the views of ‘poor old Karl’ were being twisted.273 In January 1940, in a review of Leonard Woolf’s Barbarians at the Gate, she continued to use the Marxist analytical framework of the productive base and political-ideological superstructure.274 Woolf’s LBC book had sparked controversy amongst pro- and anti-Stalin voices within the LBC. Wilkinson carefully avoided this territory in her review. She eventually severed her collaborative links with Communists in spring 1940 over Finland. The Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939 divided those who had stood together on the pro-Popular Front Labour left. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland, the Winter War provided a second instance of Russian aggression and lasted until March 1940. It unsettled Tribune, reordered alignments on the Labour left more generally and led to the disenchantment of several pro-Soviet Labourites, Wilkinson included.275 The NEC took up the issue. In February 1940, Wilkinson and Morrison reported to the NEC that Tribune editor Hartshorn had resigned because he was too close to Communism.276 Finland was the issue Wilkinson gave for quitting Tribune’s editorial board.277 The NEC of 20 March 1940 discussed Pritt’s support for the Soviet invasion of Finland. While Walker moved Pritt’s expulsion, Susan Lawrence and Wilkinson proposed no action be taken until the next annual conference. Their amendment fell and the expulsion passed by 17 to 3. Finland also precipitated the end of Wilkinson’s two-decade association with the LRD. In her resignation letter, she indicated her sharp disagreement with the LRD since the Russian invasion of Finland and, that ‘as I can so seldom attend the Executive Committee meeting I have to take responsibility for a policy with which I do not agree.’278 As Wilkinson parted company with the LRD, she was in the process of renewing her ties with the Fabian Society, speaking at its event about ‘socialists and the situation’ on 11 October 1939 and joining the executive in 1940.279 Before that break in early 1940, her participation in Communistinitiated campaigns had been systematic. Of the proscribed organisations listed in the Labour Party pamphlet denouncing them, evidence can be found for Wilkinson’s participation in all but one.280 Her involvement, given the cycles of protest and competing commitments, varied from being at the centre of matters to celebrity endorsement. These campaigns themselves varied from the short-lived lobbying groups, existing more on paper than in reality, to sustained broad social movements with real social roots, most notably the NUWM or Spanish solidarity movement. In a sense then, Wilkinson’s relationship with Communism had 55
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson two phases: formal membership (1920–24) and sustained association (1924–40). Several features characterise this second period. First and most obviously, Wilkinson was willing to work alongside Communists in campaigns, created at their initiative. She would even pursue this commitment in the face of Labour Party bans to the very brink of expulsion. This entailed strong personal links with a transnational network of Communist activists centred around Münzenberg. Despite her outsider status as a non-Communist, they perceived Wilkinson as part of that network. This had a lot to do with Münzenberg’s pragmatism and, despite appearances, heterodoxy. Secondly, Wilkinson sought to combat the CPGB’s pariah status within the Labour movement, whether that be in the shape of affiliation, dual membership, the Popular Front, the Unity Campaign or the peace alliance. Thirdly, in spite of having always retained a critical, provisional and undogmatic attitude to Communism, Wilkinson maintained sympathy for the Soviet Union as a socialist or workers’ state until the final straw of Finland. The Soviet invasion of Finland meant that there could be no doubt about the Hitler–Stalin Pact. The pro-Stalin rationalisation was that the Soviet Union – desiring peace and security – had been forced into Hitler’s hands because of Anglo-French hostility in order to buy time. The Winter War exposed the plunderer’s secret agreement to seize territory in Poland and Finland. Yet Finland, for Wilkinson, was the denouement of accumulating doubt and anxiety. She did not travel this intellectual itinerary alone, others did so and for many of them Spain played a crucial role. Thus, used to the habit of each other’s company, some fellow travellers journeyed together after having parted ways with the Communists.
Conclusion Shaped by changes in contemporary thought, events and her networks of acquaintances, Wilkinson’s socialism underwent dramatic twists, subtle drifts and contradictory developments. Wilkinson joined, or collaborated with, or was influenced by different socialist organisations, parties and informal groupings, sometimes several simultaneously. Although this is not necessarily unusual in itself, in Wilkinson’s case, her specific trajectory of ideas and organisational affiliations means that until the last six years of her life it would be wrong to view her as being a figure of mainstream Labourism. Examination of her relationship to socialist ideas and organisations is necessary but insufficient to clarify her intellectual itinerary. An outline can be sketched with two radicalisations (1917–24 and 1932–36) but scrutiny of her participation in social movements is necessary to deepen an understanding of her trajectory.
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Socialist ideas and movements Wilkinson’s Communism was therefore much more than a short interruption or a casual mistake. Even David Reid presents a committed but ‘libertarian’ Communist. During her membership of the CPGB, she initially accepted the main principles of Leninism and the Comintern including democratic centralism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Over time, her differences with the stagnating British section grew. In 1922–23, she looked to a transnational Communist opposition within the Comintern. Crucial to explaining her disenchantment with the Communism was that her expectation of revolution in Europe did not bear fruit. Consequently, she believed the CPGB’s strategic orientation in the Labour movement, its work among women and in industrial struggles were flawed and she also wanted for more effective leadership of the left via a new formation: the Left-Wing Movement. Although no doubt the consideration of Labour candidacy played some role, in itself this is an insufficient explanation of her departure.281 By the same token, while her exit may have coincided with fellow former guild left intellectuals, her reasons cannot be seen as identical given her connections to trade unionism and the women’s movement.282 After quitting the CPGB, Wilkinson would defend its members against repression and collaborate in a range of domestic and transnational campaigns. Until the Soviet invasion of Finland, Wilkinson defended the Soviet Union publicly, seeing it as an imperfect but nonetheless workers’ state. This had an important implication for domestic party politics, given the hostility of the Conservative Party and the conservative press to the Soviet Union. In such circumstances, Wilkinson chose sides to the extent of compromising her wider values and denying palpable realities. Wilkinson therefore had a lingering contradictory association with Communism, viewing herself as a Marxist and therefore the break with the CPGB was not as clean as some have suggested. This has two further ramifications. First, it puts her resignation from the party in new light. While old Communist accusations of careerism do not capture the complexity of her decision, neither does the idea of a libertarian Wilkinson who never really accepted the tenets of Comintern policy or who was intellectually resistant to Bolshevisation. Explanation of this decision has both individual and collective dimensions. Certainly, Wilkinson’s desire to enter parliament was part of it. Even in her journalism in Communist publications, Wilkinson bemoaned the absence of working-class women in parliament. She knew that, given the backing from her trade union, she was in an unusually favourable position to achieve this goal. Secondly, it means that Wilkinson was not fully incorporated as a conventional Labourite until 1940 and that this date is a sharp break in her intellectual trajectory. After leaving the CPGB, a succession of left formations (the Left-Wing Movement, ILP, Socialist 57
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson League) helped to frame her political direction. Like her membership of the CPGB, cycles of social contestation complicated her associations with these groups, as did the Labour Party and NUDAW. Wilkinson’s vision of the left was only revealed in glimpses. Nevertheless, between 1924 and 1940, her view seems fairly consistent. First, she wanted to see strong leadership of the Labour movement, modelled on the qualities of leadership demonstrated by Lenin and Trotsky. It was for this reason that she worked for Morrison’s leadership, despite their political differences, rather than a left-winger such as Cripps. Secondly, she wanted the Labour Party to take seriously the need to build itself as a movement of workers, to support strike waves and unionisation drives, to fight fascism, to support anti-colonial movements and to engage with the women’s movement. She contrasted this movement-building approach with MacDonald’s play for middle-class respectability. She articulated this as the distinction between the spirit and machine of the Labour movement. Being elected into office was not sufficient to bring socialism. Thirdly, she wanted the Labour Party to include the Communists. She continued to argue for Communist affiliation or Popular Front coalitions with the Communists on the occasions that they came to Labour Party conference. On one occasion, she observed that Pollitt would play a brilliant role as a chief-of-staff to Morrison.283 Finally, she had little time for what she saw as hair-splittingly theoretical differences preferring the pragmatism of movement-building and it was for this reason that she paid little attention to what she saw as squabbles between Trotskyists, Stalinists and anarchists.284
Notes 1
Seeing Wilkinson as part of the Women Labour League’s (WLL) legacy on parliament, Christine Collette, For Labour and for Women: the Women’s Labour League, 1906–18, Manchester, 1989, p. 203. 2 Vernon, Wilkinson, pp. 60–65. Philip Spratt, Blowing Up India, Calcutta, 1955, pp. 21–22. 3 John Rylands Library Newbold papers. There are various references to Wilkinson in these papers. Newbold underestimated Wilkinson’s ability. 4 Dale, God’s Politicians, p. 120. 5 Reid, ‘Ellen Wilkinson’, p. 20. 6 Bob Stewart, Breaking the Fetters: The Memoirs of Bob Stewart, London, 1967, p. 90. Tom Bell, Pioneering Days, London, 1941, pp. 191. 7 Karen Hunt and Matthew Worley, ‘Rethinking British Communist Party women in the 1920s’, Twentieth Century British History, 15, 1 (2004), pp. 1–27. 8 Methodist Times, 26 February 1925. 9 Oxford, Myself, p. 407. 58
Socialist ideas and movements 10 Ibid., p. 409. 11 Ibid., p. 405. 12 Or at least this is how she liked to present her conversion. Kabi Hartman, ‘“What made me a suffragette”: the new woman and the new (?) conversion narrative’, Women’s History Review, 12, 1 (2003), pp. 35–50. June Hannam and Karen Hunt, Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s to 1920s, London, 2002, p. 45. 13 Oxford, Myself, p. 406. James Wedgwood Drawbell, A Gallery of Women, London, 1933, p. 153. 14 Brighton World, 11 February 1933. Nottingham Journal, 7 August 1933. 15 Oxford, Myself, p. 414. From press cuttings, Clarion, [n.d. c. 23 June 1927]. NUSC Lucy Middleton to Reid, 4 July 1971. Wilkinson to Lucy Middleton, 13 July 1938. 16 Manchester Guardian, 28 May 1910. 17 On syndicalism, Fabian News, September 1912. 18 Ibid., September 1912, p. 71. 19 Ibid., June and July 1911. 20 Ibid., August 1912. 21 Ibid., January, July 1911 and December 1912. 22 NUSC TDWR Arnot to Reid, 21 September 1972. 23 National Guild League, The Guild Idea, London, n.d., p. 1. Marc Stears, ‘Guild Socialism and Ideological Diversity on the British Left, 1914–1926’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 3, 3 (1998), pp. 289–305; Anthony W. Wright, ‘Guild Socialism Revisited’, Journal of Contemporary History, 9, 1 (1974), pp. 165–180. 24 Wallace Martin, The New Age under Orage, Manchester, 1967. G.D.H. Cole, Self-Government in Industry, London, 1972. 25 Mentioning her as the Manchester Group Secretary, having replaced H. Derbyshire of Rusholme, NGL, Annual Report 1917–1918, London, 1918, p. 16. The Guildsman, January 1919. With Miss G. Smith as her replacement, The Guildsman, April 1919. 26 NUSC TDWR Arnot to Reid, 21 September 1972. Fabian News, April 1915. 27 Labour Leader, 9 December 1915. S.G. Hobson, Guild Principles in War and Peace, London, 1917. 28 NUSC TDWR Arnot to Reid, 21 September 1972. 29 New Statesman and Nation, 17 February 1947. 30 NUSC TDWR Arnot to Reid, 21 September 1972. 31 NUSC TDWR Lord Brockway to Reid, 18 March 1972. 32 Ken Coates (ed), British Labour and the Russian Revolution: the Leeds Convention: a Report from the Daily Herald, London, 1974. 33 Reid, ‘Wilkinson’, p. 18. 34 NUSC TDWR Irene Clephane to Reid, 13 August 1975. Francis Meynell, My Lives, London, 1971, p. 236. 35 Labour Party Archive and Study Centre (LPASC) CP IND DUTT 01 01 Dutt’s Confidential MS Easter 1970. 36 Labour Leader, 8 January 1920. 37 Ruth and Edmund Frow, The Communist Party in Manchester 1920–1926, 59
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Manchester, 1978, p. 8. 38 Hugo Dewar, Communist Politics in Britain: the CPGB from its Origins to the Second World War, London, 1976. www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/unity_convention/delegates.htm, accessed 10 August 2012. 39 The Guildsman, March 1920. 40 S.T. Glass, The Responsible Society: the Ideas of the English Guild Socialist, London, 1966, pp. 54–56. 41 NGL, Annual Report 1920–1921, London, 1921, p. 4. Glass, Responsible Society, p. 52. The Guildsman, September 1920. The Guildsman, September 1920. Criticising guild socialism for its abstraction and utopianism, W. Mellor, ‘Critique of the Guilds’, Labour Monthly, November 1921, pp. 397– 404. W. Mellor, ‘Exposé et critique du socialisme des Ghildes’, La Lutte de Classes: Bulletin de L’internationale Syndicale Rouge, 20 July 1922, pp. 4–6. 42 British Library of Political and Economic Science (BLPES) WILPF executive committee minutes, 16 September 1920. 43 Dutt’s article on proletarian dictatorship, The Guildsman, October 1919, pp. 4–5. 44 NGL, Report of the Committee of Five, London, 1920. 45 NGL, Annual Report 1920–1921, London, 1921, p. 5. As well as A.E. Baker, F.W. Dalley, A.J. Plenty, M.B. Reckitt and Mrs Townsend. 46 Only attending one out of four meetings, NGL, Annual Report 1920–1921, London, 1921, p. 10. 47 Leaflet for series of lectures: ‘What is the Future of Trade Unionism?’ 28 October 1921 to 27 January 1922: speakers Cole, Dutt, Wilkinson, Arnot. Guild Socialist, August–September 1922. 48 Guild Socialist, February 1922. 49 CPGB, Communist Unity Convention: London, July 31st & August 1st, 1920, Strand, 1920, p. 24. 50 Andrew Thorpe, The British Communist Party and Moscow, 1920–43, Manchester, 2000, p. 35. L.J. Macfarlane, ‘Hands off Russia: British Labour and the Russo-Polish War, 1920’, Past & Present, 38 (1967), pp. 126–152 51 Wilkinson accepted the need for revolutionary repression. Writing about Marx’s Civil War in France, she noted ‘how little excuse the ruling classes of France have for their humanitarian denunciations of the Bolsheviks, who had learned by the failure of the too trusting Communards, to deal sternly with counter-revolutionaries’. New Dawn, 28 May 1921. 52 CPGB, Communist Unity Convention, p. 57. 53 On the financing of the trip, TNA CAB 24 125 Report on revolutionary organisations in the UK, 9 June 1921 & CAB 24 129 Foreign support of Communist agitators in the UK, 15 October 1921. 54 Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI), f. 495, op. 2, d. 35, Questionnaire, no. 407: Ellen Cecily Wilkinson, 24 July 1921. Reid, ‘Ellen Wilkinson’, Appendix 1: Letter from Mrs Bamber to family, 26 June 1921. 55 Modern Records Centre (MRC), MSS 334 3 6 2 letter Tom Mann to Elsie Mann, 4 July 1921. MRC MSS 334 3 6 3 letter Tom Mann to Elsie Mann, 60
Socialist ideas and movements 16 July 1921. 56 New Dawn, 15 April 1922. 57 Communist Review, October 1921. 58 Tom Mann, Russia in 1921: Report of Tom Mann as Delegate to the Red Trade Union International at Moscow, July 1921, London, 1921, p. 11. 59 Ibid., pp. 28–29. 60 Ibid., p. 24. 61 The Listener, 13 October 1938. Time and Tide, 8 May 1943. 62 MRC MSS 334 3 6 3 letter Tom Mann to Elsie Mann, 16 July 1921. 63 Ibid., 4 July 1921 64 The Communist, 27 August 1921. 65 Constitution of the RILU, Adopted at the First World congress held in Moscow, July 1921, London, 1921, pp. 1–3. 66 Tom Mann, ‘Du Syndicalisme au Communisme’, La Lutte de Classes: Bulletin de L’internationale Syndicale Rouge, 10 October 1922, pp. 1–4. 67 J.T. Murphy, ‘The “Reds” in Congress: Preliminary Report of the First World Congress of the Red International of Trade and Industrial Unions’, 1921. At Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/archive/murphy-jt/1921/ xx/reds.htm, accessed 5 June 2012. A. Lozovsky, Les Syndicats et la Révolution, Paris, 1922. Mann, Russia in 1921, pp. 11–12. 68 The Communist, 17 September 1921. 69 MRC MSS 334 3 6 4 letter Tom Mann to Elsie Mann, 21 July 1921. Tom Mann was not to return until 28 September having stayed on for other meetings and conferences and visited the famine district in the Volga, MSS 334 3 6 9 letter Tom Mann to Elsie Mann, 4 September 1921. 70 TNA CAB 24 128 Monthly review of revolutionary organisations, 23 September 1921, p. 63. 71 Harry Pollitt, Serving My Time: an Apprenticeship to Politics, London, 1961, p. 142. 72 Morgan Phillips Price, Dispatches from the Weimar Republic: the Origins of Hitler’s Germany, London, 1998. 73 Babette Gross, Willi Münzenberg: a Political Biography, East Lansing, MI, 1974, pp. 242–244. Also, Crawfurd, British WIR secretary, Marx Memorial Library (MML), manuscript of Helen Crawfurd’s unpublished autobiography, pp. 153–154. 74 The Communist, 27 August 1921. 75 Labour Monthly, September 1921. See also interview with her, Manchester Guardian, 10 August 1921. 76 The Communist, 15 April 1922. 77 Internationale Syndical Rouge: Bulletin du Bureau Éxécutive, 10 October 1921. 78 Daniel F. Calhoun, The United Front!: the TUC and the Russians, 1923– 1928, Cambridge, 1976. 79 TNA CAB 24 131 Report on revolutionary organisations in the UK, 22 December 1921, p. 9. Reporting on a bureau meeting with Murphy, Peet, Lismer, Arnot, Burns, Williams, Bamber, Wilkinson, Holder, Booth and Moorhouse attending, TNA CAB 24 120 Report on revolutionary 61
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson organisations in the UK, 17 February 1921, p. 4. 80 New Dawn, 18 March 1922. 81 TNA CAB 24 159 Report on revolutionary organisations in the UK, 15 February 1923, p. 3. CAB 24 159, 15 February 1923, p. 3 82 All Power, November 1922. 83 Ibid., January 1922. 84 Ibid., September 1922. 85 New Dawn, 27 May 1922. 86 All Power, September 1922. 87 Frow and Frow, Communist Party, p. 16. 88 New Dawn, 27 May 1922. 89 All Power, May 1922. 90 New Dawn, 27 May 1922. All Power, February & June 1922. 91 Crawfurd was about to go to a women’s conference in Berlin, CAB 24 132 Report on revolutionary organisation in the UK, 20 January 1922. 92 LPASC microfilm of miscellaneous CPGB materials for the 1920s and 1930s: report n.d. c. June 1922. The other districts identified in this regard were London and Dundee. 93 Labour Woman, 1 June 1922. 94 All Power, November 1922. 95 Wilkinson also argued that middle-class feminists were aggravating the problem by calling for an end to all restrictions on women’s trade unionism; perhaps she meant employment which would make more sense. Ibid., April 1922. 96 Ibid., June 1922. 97 Ibid., August 1923. 98 TNA CAB 24 162 Report on revolutionary organisations in the UK, 4 October 1923, p. 5. 99 All Power, July 1922. 100 Ibid., August 1922. 101 TNA CAB 24 136 Report on revolutionary organisations in the UK, 27 April 1922. 102 Hunt and Worley, ‘Rethinking British Communist Party Women in the 1920s’. 103 Report at Proceedings at the Fifty-Fourth Annual Trades Union Congress (Southport), 4 to 9 September 1922, London, 1922, pp. 87, 387–388, 447. 104 New Dawn, 16 September 1922. 105 The Communist, 16 September 1922. Ellen C. Wilkinson, ‘Le congrès des syndicats britanniques’, La Lutte de Classes: Bulletin de L’Internationale Syndicale Rouge, 25 September 1922, pp. 5–7. 106 LPASC CPGB Sub-executive committee meeting minutes, 22 September 1922. 107 LPASC CPGB Central Executive Committee minutes, 13 October 1922. 108 M. Ch. [M. Cherchewsky], ‘Le Congrès des Trades Unions à Southport’, La Lutte de Classes: Bulletin de L’Internationale Syndicale Rouge, February 1923, pp. 22–24. 109 LPASC IND DUTT 06 03 Wilkinson to Rajani Palme Dutt, c. August 1923. 62
Socialist ideas and movements 110 TNA CAB 24 161 Report on revolutionary organisations in the UK, 6 September 1923, pp. 12–13. 111 Ibid., 13 September 1923, p. 3. 112 New Leader, 21 September 1923. 113 Using the example of the laundries, New Dawn, 21 January 1922. 114 Labour Woman, 1 June 1921. 115 New Dawn, 18 February and 4 March 1922. 116 Ibid., 18 March 1922. 117 Ibid., 29 April 1922. 118 The following year Wilkinson lost RILU affiliation once more, albeit by a smaller margin. 119 Manchester Central Library, M284 Wright Robinson, Diary 1921–26, 27 October and 1 December 1923, pp. 129 and 131. 120 C. Stella Davies, North Country Bred: a Working-class Family Chronicle, London, 1963, p. 222. 121 LPASC CPGB Political Bureau minutes, 22 March 1923. 122 Ibid., 19 September 1923. 123 Weekly Worker, 19 October 1923. 124 TNA CAB 24 162 Report on revolutionary organisations, 8 November 1923, p. 11. 125 Weekly Worker, 16 November 1923. Frow and Frow, Communist Party, p. 16. 126 TNA CAB 24 162 Report on revolutionary organisations, 15 November 1923, p. 4. 127 Having spoken alongside Harry Webb, I.P. Hughes and H. Martin in Liverpool three weeks before to an audience of five to six hundred, TNA CAB 24 162 Report on revolutionary organisations, 25 October 1923, p. 5. 128 Manchester Guardian, 30 November 1923. 129 Ibid., 6 December 1923. 130 Ibid., 25 September 1926. On Wilkinson’s articulate and rowdy presence on the council, Reid interviews: Lady Simon. 131 TNA CAB 24 162 Report on revolutionary organisations in the UK, 22 November 1923, pp. 1–9. 132 Manchester Guardian, 5 December 1923. 133 LPASC CPGB Political Bureau minutes, 23 October 1923, 13 November and 15 November 1923. 134 Ibid., 3 October 1923. 135 New Dawn, 27 October 1923. 136 Ibid., 15 September 1923. 137 Wilkinson to Executive of NUDAW, 17 November 1923. Davies, North Country Bred, p. 226. 138 New Dawn, 19 November 1923. 139 Ibid., 22 December 1923. Methodist Times, 26 February 1925. 140 Bell, Pioneering Days, p.232. 141 Manchester Guardian, 28 November 1923. 142 Ibid., 3 December 1923. 143 Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter, 1 December 1923. 63
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 144 Manchester Guardian, 4 December 1923. A ‘very striking achievement after a short campaign’, The Communist, 14 December 1923. 145 For results of the two elections, Manchester Guardian, 8 December 1923. Direct comparison with the previous election is difficult because it was previously a straight Conservative–Labour contest. 146 TNA CAB 24 164 Report on revolutionary organisations in the UK, 10 January 1924, p. 2. 147 LPASC IND DUTT 06 03 Wilkinson to Dutt, c. March 1924. 148 Ibid., Dutt to Wilkinson, 1 April 1924. 149 Ibid., Wilkinson to Dutt, 5 June 1924. 150 New Dawn, 27 September 1924. 151 The Times, 6 September 1924. 152 Reid interviews: Harold Wilkinson. 153 TNA CAB 24 162 Report on revolutionary organisations in the UK, 1 November 1923. She was elected with the fifth highest vote onto a 14-person executive. See also R. Page Arnot, History of the Labour Research Department, London, 1926, p. 53. TNA KV2 1034 Report on the Labour Research Department executive, 5 December 1929. Her membership reconstructed from TUC Library LRD 1 B 1–11. 154 Daily Herald, 21 January 1925. 155 Labour Party Annual Conference Report (hereafter LPACR), 1925, pp. 200–201. 156 BLPES ILP 5 1926 22 George Lansbury, The ICWPA at Work, London, 1926. Alongside Cook, Gossip, Hannington, Inkpin, Lawther, Maxton, Pollitt, Rust, Wallhead, Wedgwood. 157 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 13 June 1925. 158 Ibid., 5 December 1925. 159 Ibid., 5 December 1925. 160 The Times, 25 January 1926. Yorkshire Observer, 25 January 1926. 161 The Times, 10 April 1926. 162 New Leader, 9 December 1927. 163 Manchester Guardian, 23 September 1925, 2 October 1925 and 7 October 1925. Western Daily Press, 22 September 1925. 164 Railway Review quoted in The Mercury, 25 December 1925. 165 Hoover Institution, Stanford University, National Republic Records, box 380, Special Report: Radical History of Miss Wilkinson of England Now Lecturing in USA, n.d. 166 Kevin Morgan, Bolshevism and the British Left: Labour Legends and Russian Gold, London, 2006, p. 115. 167 Labour Monthly, November 1922. Morgan, Bolshevism, pp. 131–4. 168 Daily Herald, 11 July 1927. 169 Plebs, August 1923. 170 Ibid., July 1925. 171 Andy Miles, ‘Workers’ Education: The Communist Party and the Plebs League in the 1920s’, History Workshop Journal, 18 (1984), pp. 102–114. 172 NUSC TDWR Wilkinson to Arthur Woodburn, 25 July 1924. 173 Harry Pollitt, ‘L’Aile Gauche du Movement Syndical Anglais’, L’Internationale Syndicale Rouge: Bulletin du bureau executive, December 64
Socialist ideas and movements 1924, pp. 901–905. William Gallacher, The Tyrants’ Might is Passing, London, 1954, p. 94. LPACR, 1926, pp. 188–189. New Dawn, 30 August 1924, pp. 6–7. Manchester Guardian, 15 July 1927. Hazel Kent, ‘“A Paper not so much for the Armchair but for the Factory and the Street”: Fenner Brockway and the Independent Labour Party’s New Leader, 1926–1946’, Labour History Review, 75, 2 (2010), pp. 208–226. 179 New Leader, 22 July 1927. 180 BLPES ILP 3 18 NAC minutes, 23 July 1927. 181 New Leader, 5 August 1927. 182 New Dawn, 27 September 1924. 183 New Leader, 14 October 1927. 184 Ibid., 28 June, 5 July, 12 July, 8 November, 15 November, 29 November, 6 December, 20 December 1929, 14 February and 14 March 1930. 185 NUSC TDWR Florence Paton to Reid, 27 June 1972. 186 New Leader, 24 July 1931. 187 Manchester Guardian, 26 July 1930. 188 New Leader, 1 November 1929. 189 Ibid., 14 February 1930. 190 Ibid., 21 February 1930. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 22 February 1930. 191 Manchester Guardian, 28 February 1930. 192 New Leader, 7 March 1930. 193 Ibid., 21 March 1929. 194 Ibid., 21 March 1930. 195 David Howell, ‘Traditions, Myths and Legacies: The ILP and the Labour Left’, in A. McKinlay and R.J. Morris (eds), The ILP on Clydeside, 1893– 1932: From Foundation to Disintegration, Manchester 1991, pp. 204–232. Gidon Cohen, ‘Myth, History and the ILP’, in Matthew Worley (ed.), The Foundations of the British Labour Party: Identities, Cultures and Perspectives, 1900–39, Farnham, 2009, pp. 95–112. 196 Dale, God’s Politicians. 197 The Register, 29 April 1926. 198 Methodist Times, 26 February 1925. 199 Methodist Recorder, 14 May 1925. 200 Ibid., 3 December 1925. 201 New Leader, 23 December 1927. 202 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 2 February 1927. 203 New Leader, 22 June 1928. 204 Time and Tide, 23 April 1932. Making the same point about Good Friday closures of galleries and museums, Clarion, 31 March 1934. 205 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 12 January 1925. 206 Northern Daily Telegraph, 24 November 1930. 207 Burnley News, 29 November 1930. 208 Women’s Life, 28 March 1931. Leeds Mercury, 3 February 1931. Methodist Times, 26 February 1931. 209 Northampton Evening Telegraph, 21 March 1931. 174 175 176 177 178
65
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 210 211 212 213 214
Time and Tide, 28 December 1935. Daily Herald, 25 November 1931. Clarion, 5 May 1934. Michael Bor, The Socialist League in the 1930s, London, 2005. Including Margaret and G.D.H. Cole, Beales, Postgate, Attlee, Lansbury, Cripps, Hugh Dalton, Frank Horrabin, Mellor and Dick Mitchison, Meynell and Pritt. 215 John and Mary Postgate, A Stomach for Dissent: The Life of Raymond Postgate: 1896–1971, Keele, 1994, p. 165. 216 Time and Tide, 9 April 1932. 217 Clarion, 23 June 1934. 218 BLPES New Fabian Research Bureau Miscellaneous Papers J 51 1 Margaret Cole and E.A. Radice to Editor, Time and Tide, 16 January 1933. 219 Clarion, 2 June 1934. 220 Time and Tide, 28 January 1933. 221 Quoted in Time and Tide, 17 May 1941. 222 Ben Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s, Cambridge, 1977, p. 107. 223 Tribune, 16 April, 16 July, 5 November, 17 December 1937, 25 March, 8 July, 19 August, 4 November, 23 December 1938. 224 BLPES Dalton Papers 5 2 60 Wilkinson to Dalton, ‘Wednesday’ [autumn 1937]. 225 Time and Tide, 8 May 1937. 226 MRC MSS 318 2 1 12 ‘The Town That Was Murdered’. 227 LPASC LP NEC minutes, 23–24 November 1938. 228 Daily Worker, 12 October 1938. 229 Kevin Morgan, Against Fascism and War: Ruptures and Continuities in British Communist Politics, 1935–1941, Manchester, 1989, p. 267. 230 Kevin Morgan, Bolshevism and the British Left: Labour Legends and Russian Gold, London, 2006. 231 Sunday Worker, 14 June 1925. 232 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 23 May 1927. 233 Manchester Guardian, 3 February 1930. Objecting to the ‘playboy of the West End World’ Lord Birkenhead’s anti-soviet comments, New Leader, 28 February 1930. 234 Le Matin, 29 January 1930. 235 The Times, 7 February 1930. 236 HC Deb, 5 February 1930, cols 1923–1989. 237 Manchester Guardian, 19 February 1930. 238 W.P. Coates, Anti-Soviet Lies Nailed, London, 1930. 239 New Leader, 1 December 1931. 240 Plebs, May 1926 & November 1929. 241 Manchester Guardian, 25 February 1930. 242 Ibid., 5 March 1930. 243 Ibid., 6 March 1930. 244 Ibid., 16 March 1930. 245 News Chronicle, 3 November 1936. PRO MEPO 2 3097 minute sheet, 30 October 1936, reported that they were to see another Soviet film Bed and 66
Socialist ideas and movements Sofa and the musical Call of the Flesh. 246 HC Deb, 3 July 1930, cols 2131–2132; New Leader, 16 July 1930. 247 Harvard University Trotsky papers BMS Russ 13.1 (5984) Wilkinson to Trotsky, 4 August 1930. 248 Ibid., E 167 (10874–10875) Trotsky to Wilkinson, 15 November 1931 (13930). Clynes to Wilkinson, 24 July 1930. Trotsky to Wilkinson, 2 September 1931. TNA CAB 24 214 Clynes’s memo to Cabinet, 18 July 1930. 249 LPASC CP IND MONT 04 10 Wilkinson to Ivor Montagu, 25 March 1931. LPASC CP IND MONT 04 10 Letter Wilkinson to Ivor Montagu, 2 June 1931.Trotsky asked Montagu to thank her for the parliamentary material, TNA KV2 598 Letter Trotsky to Montagu, 22 August 1931. 250 Clarion, 26 May 1934. 251 LPASC CP IND MONT 04 10 Wilkinson to Montagu, 8 June 1931. See also letters to anonymous British woman, possibly Wilkinson (or Margaret Wells) Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur les Mouvements Trotskyste et Révolutionnaires Internationaux (CERMTRI) Leon Trotsky letters: ‘No illusion about the visa’, 17 July 1930; ‘Refusal of the British visa’, 2 September 1930. 252 Harvard University Trotsky papers E 167 (10874–10875) Trotsky to Wilkinson, 15 November 1931. (13930) Clynes to Wilkinson, 24 July 1930. Trotsky to Wilkinson, 2 September 1931. CERMTRI Leon Trotsky letters: ‘No illusion about the visa’, 17 July 1930; ‘Refusal of the British visa’, 2 September 1930. 253 Plebs, March 1928. 254 Ibid., August 1928. 255 Ibid., July 1930. 256 Ibid., July 1930. 257 Lynn Advertiser, 8 July 1932. 258 Nottingham Evening Post, 14 September 1934. 259 Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University Louis Fischer papers MC 024 13 16 Louis Fischer to Wilkinson, 15 October 1930; Wilkinson to Louis Fischer, 30 October 1930. They discuss the memorandum between Lord Milner and Clemenceau of 23 December 1917 that Fischer published as an appendix. The memo indicated early British and French cooperation with counter-revolutionaries and the establishment of zones of influence. Louis Fischer, The Soviets in World Affairs, vol. 2, London, 1930. 260 Louis Fischer, The Great Challenge, New York, 1946, p. 63. 261 James Wedgewood Drawbell, A Gallery of Women, London, 1933, pp. 153–154. 262 Communist International, 22 (1934–35). Ellen Wilkinson and Edward Conze, Why War? A Handbook for those who will take part in the Second World War, London, 1934, p. 37. Plebs, January 1935. 263 New Dawn, 4 May 1935. 264 Variations on this theme had persisted in her union, in a critique of the Rochdale vision of co-operation, John Jagger, Workers’ Control in Industry, 1931. 265 G.D.H. Cole, ‘Workers’ Control’, Railway Service Journal, April 1934. 67
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274
Time and Tide, 27 February 1937. Ibid., 3 July 1937. New Dawn, 12 December & 26 December 1936. Leah Manning, A Life for Education, London, 1970, p. 112. HC Deb, 9 March 1938, cols 1868–1870. Time and Tide, 12 March 1938. HC Deb, 24 August 1939, cols 2–63. Time and Tide, 19 February 1938. Ibid., 6 January 1940. Victoria Glendinning, Leonard Woolf: a Biography, New York, 2006, p. 309. 275 Bill Jones, The Russia Complex: the British Labour Party and the Soviet Union, Manchester, 1977, pp. 33–35. 276 He had actually been dismissed. LPASC NEC minutes, 28 February 1940. 277 Postgate and Postgate, A Stomach for Dissent, p. 209. Although Pimlott citing Strauss gives an alternative account, Pimlott, Labour Left, p. 175. 278 TUC Library LRD 1 B 1 11 LRD executive minutes, 6 May 1940. 279 Fabian News, September-October 1939 & May 1941. 280 Labour Party, Communist Solar System, London, 1933. 281 Kevin Morgan, Gidon Cohen and Andrew Flinn, Communists and British Society, 1920–1991, London, 2007, p. 76. 282 Thorpe, The British Communist Party and Moscow, p. 80. 283 Time and Tide, 27 February 1937. 284 Failing to understand how the Asturian UHP was product of such discussions, Wilkinson worried that the ‘theoretical struggles between Communists, Trotskyists, socialists and anarchists’ would break the spontaneously formed the Workers’ Alliances, The Student Outlook, February 1935. Disputes between Trotskyists and Stalinists in New York, Time and Tide, 20 February 1937.
68
2 Feminism and the women’s movement
According to Wilkinson, two movements – the labour movement and the women’s movement – moulded her politics.1 During her lifetime, the women’s movement underwent significant metamorphoses as did her attitude to it. She belonged to the generation that participated in the suffrage movement’s most intense phase and had the dual status of participant in and heir to the suffrage battle. She defined the women’s movement broadly as ‘that surging rebellion of lots of ordinary women against the crushing conventions that had grown beyond all sense and reason’.2 For her, women’s enfranchisement constituted the ‘greatest bloodless revolution of any time’ and ‘a vivid human story of the formative years of our own times’, paying tribute to the suffrage heroines – Josephine Butler, Lydia Becker, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Millicent Fawcett – who had made it possible for women to sit in parliament. They were starved, imprisoned and even gave their lives for the cause.3 Through conference attendance, transnational networks and travel, Wilkinson also encountered feminist leaders from across the world. Yet once women over the age of 30 gained the vote in 1918, the movement faced a dilemma. There was still the equalisation of voting rights to fight for, but also a wider agenda of women’s concerns that had been neglected in the pursuit of the vote. The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act of July 1928 ended the great era of women’s suffrage campaigns and proved a significant threshold for the women’s movement. Manchester was a heartland both for the NUWSS and for the Women’s Political and Social Union (WPSU). The suffrage movement was active on the university campus while Wilkinson was studying.4 As regards suffrage activists, Wilkinson admired Annot Robinson greatly, with whom she worked politically in her years in Manchester after university. Robinson was a suffragette, having been imprisoned twice. Robinson’s daughter Helen Wilson recalled that Wilkinson learned the art of public
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson speaking from her mother, who was much practised in outdoor meetings and hostile crowds. Every Saturday and Sunday, they would speak in Manchester for the ILP, or women’s organisations.5 At Robinson’s memorial service in Manchester Cathedral in 1925, Wilkinson reflected: ‘Had there been no Mrs Annot Robinson, there would have been no Ellen Wilkinson MP.’6 While Wilkinson respected those who were jailed or force-fed for suffrage activities, she sharply criticised the WPSU’s undemocratic turn under ‘Mrs Pankhurst’s imperious dictatorship’, as much for its abandonment of the working-class and socialist women of Lancashire as its lack of democracy. Wilkinson was thus a militant and democratic suffragist in her outlook, admiring Charlotte Despard, Robinson and Sylvia Pankhurst.7 Glimpses of Wilkinson’s suffrage activism remain. When in November 1910, Henry Brailsford stood in South Salford on a suffrage ticket against Liberal Hilaire Belloc, the local NUWSS responded enthusiastically. 8 Stella Davies recalled Wilkinson at an open-air meeting during the campaign. When hecklers called her ‘carrots’ and threw stones, she complained that they were lunatics and criminals and could not even throw straight.9 In 1913, Wilkinson became an organiser for the NUWSS, which had entered into a complicated alliance with the Labour Party after disillusion with the Liberal Party over the Conciliation Bill (of 1910, which failed to deliver votes for women). While for some this was a limited expediency, the NUWSS’s northern societies, notably the Manchester society, wanted to work more closely with the Labour movement and appeal to working-class women. Wilkinson’s views fitted with this democratic suffragist current. Her work was connected to the Election Fighting Fund (EFF) that had been set up the year before.10 The EFF would support Labour candidates to punish the Liberal government for its failure to enact the women’s franchise.11 In late May 1914, Wilkinson was appointed the election fund organiser for the Manchester and District Federation of Suffrage Societies.12 Margaret Ashton, Fenner Brockway, Robinson and Wilkinson spoke at nightly open-air meetings between 29 June and 5 July for the ‘Suffrage & Labour Campaign’, culminating at the Market Ground on Sunday 5 July.13 Wilkinson balanced commitments to the women’s and socialist movements. She was also involved in the Labour women’s organisation, the Women’s Labour League (WLL), being Tyldesley branch secretary (1913–15). This campaigned over social welfare such as free school meals.14 NUWSS secretary Margaret Corby-Ashby recalled Wilkinson’s admirable wit, energy and her special talent in putting her case to the factory workers.15 However, in Labour Leader, Wilkinson noted the constraints that she felt as a suffrage worker unable to ask women to join a party.16 While Wilkinson campaigned in 1913 and 1914 for the vote, she 70
Feminism and the women’s movement believed that the ILP should attempt to reap what suffragism had sown and should educate women prior to franchise extension. Explicitly as a ‘feminist’, she challenged the ILP over its gender politics.17 She was worried that a ‘man-made socialism’ would reflect male prejudices. While women activists focused exclusively on the vote, for some on the left, notably the syndicalists, the vote was obsolete. Women needed to combine the franchise campaign with building the socialist movement, otherwise there would be no place for them in the socialist state. Responses filled the Labour Leader’s letters page, with opinions ranging from enthusiastic support to male condescension.18
The women’s movement and the war The First World War transformed the EFF campaign. Its organisers were made available to relieve the distress that the war caused. An EFF committee minute noted that Wilkinson was ‘still employed by the Women’s Emergency Corps in Manchester and would continue in their employ until September’.19 From the outbreak of war, Wilkinson was organising relief workrooms for local women workers under the aegis of the Stockport Relief Committee.20 As honorary secretary of the Women’s Registry Office for Women Workers, she wrote to the Manchester Guardian appealing for donations for the ‘Tipperary Club’ for the wives of ‘our brave soldiers’.21 Women’s Co-operative Guild member Mrs Wrigley recalled assisting Wilkinson in establishing a maternity centre: ‘we came across many pitiful homes where father had gone to the war, and four or five children had to be fed’.22 By January 1915, the Committee had distributed 450 parcels containing nearly 2,000 garments and had helped 25 new mothers.23 Wilkinson was also the Women’s War Interests Committee secretary in Manchester where she helped to secure women munitions workers a £1 minimum wage for a 48-hour week.24 Wilkinson sustained a long-standing relationship with the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF) formed by anti-war NUWSS activists.25 Opposition to the war split the NUWSS while Wilkinson was still an organiser. When the war prevented the International Woman Suffrage Alliance’s (IWSA) biennial congress in Berlin in 1915, prominent activists called a women’s congress for peace at The Hague. The conference called for the resolution of international disputes by peaceful means, disarmament, democratic control of foreign policy and an international organisation of countries. The invitation to The Hague prompted the NUWSS scission. Its Manchester branch split at a meeting of 8 June 1915.26 Wilkinson sided with the NUWSS’s anti-war faction. With other pacifists from the suffrage movement, she joined the WILPF, addressing the Manchester branch in 71
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson February 1916 on women’s wages, trade unionism and their right to post-war employment.27 Through Wilkinson’s work as AUCE national woman’s organiser, she forged connections with the wider women’s movement. Wilkinson attended the Women’s Guild Congress of late June 1916 held in Central Hall, Westminster. She reflected positively upon this organisation because it had ‘overcome the supreme difficulty’ of organising married working women, focusing on their citizenship rather than their domesticity. Politicians, she argued, should begin to heed the opinions of these voteless women. She enthused that more than 2,000 attended the conference and that progressive motions secured handsome majorities. Particularly noteworthy was a motion on equal pay and access for working women to all occupations after the war and that her union would on this count press ‘the prejudice-clogged minds of many co-operative committees’.28 She also censured the ‘academic feminist’ sitting in the gallery because this conference evoked ‘the presence of a revolt which went even deeper than her cry of independence – a passion for justice, based on the desire to give to their children a better start in life than they had known, a determination to lift the burdens which so unjustly weighed down the working woman, often due as much to her class as to her sex’. Her union journal noted how Wilkinson’s two interventions captivated the conference with her lucidity, her grasp of political economy and her arresting personality.29 On 15 October 1917, she attended a meeting of the British Section of the Women’s International Council of Labour and Socialist Organisations in WLL offices. The meeting read correspondence from colleagues in Germany, Norway, Sweden, the USA, Holland, Switzerland and Finland. It discussed the abortive conference in Stockholm and outlined the international demands of socialist women and the situation of Klara Zetkin, Angelica Balabanoff and Mrs Petroff.30
The post-war women’s movement The war had transformed the situation of women. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act extended the vote to all men of 21 or over and most women of 30 or over. With the extensions of the franchise in 1918, some women active in the pre-war suffrage campaign moved towards other movements that seemed to offer the possibility of improving the situation of women. The Russian Revolution, the establishment of the CPGB and the electoral rise of Labour drew in women activists seeking to transform the lot of their gender. Organisationally, the women’s movement had been transformed. Some pre-war organisations such as the Women’s Freedom League (WFL) remained. However, 72
Feminism and the women’s movement the NUWSS had now become the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC). The new feminism of the 1920s, closely associated with Eleanor Rathhone, looked beyond the franchise to an agenda of birth control, family allowances and protective legislation for women.31 New organisations and periodicals appeared. Lady Rhondda launched Time and Tide in May 1920. Neither with exclusively female writers, nor with the intention of an exclusively female readership, it featured women’s issues alongside general political and literary matters.32 A year later, Rhondda established the Six Point Group alongside former suffragettes. In a recrudescence of the suffrage campaign, the Equal Political Rights Campaign in 1926 drew in much of the women’s movement until the vote for adult women was achieved two years later. In that same year, the Open Door Council began its campaign against protective legislation. After Wilkinson’s election in 1924, while critical of others in the women’s movement, she collaborated alongside feminists in the National Union for Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC), Joint Committee on Women in the Civil Service (JCW), the Six Point Group, WFL and the WILPF. The end of the 1920s – with the victory on the franchise front secured and the arrival of the depression – signalled a change in fortunes for women and their movements. While an older historiography had underestimated the levels of activity of women’s campaigns in the 1920s, the 1930s was a period of severe doldrums for women.33 Wilkinson circulated in the feminist milieu of Bloomsbury, counting amongst her friends feminists Vera Brittain, Winifred Holtby and Lady Rhondda, and wrote for the latter’s Time and Tide.34
The 1919 International Congress of Women Wilkinson attended the International Congress of Women in Zurich as part of a 28-strong British delegation.35 The conference attracted 91 delegates from twelve countries. She travelled with Helen Crawfurd, stopping in Paris on the way where they visited the sites of the 1789 and 1871 revolutions: the Bastille and the graves of the communards. Crawfurd remembered how Wilkinson was ‘full of revolutionary fervour’. The Zurich conference intentionally coincided with the Paris peace talks. At the first International Women’s Congress at the Hague in 1915, they had resolved to send delegations to governments with a set of demands for a peaceful solution to the war as well as planning to hold an international conference at the opening of the peace settlement to maximise the pressure that they could exert on the victors to establish a durable peace. The WILPF claimed credit for shaping Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, and he acknowledged the clarity of their proposals.36 73
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Those at the Zurich congress had a very immediate connection with revolution, given that across the Alps in Bavaria, a revolution was under way, with some conference delegates hailing from that region. Wilkinson intervened in the debate on the League of Nations on the first afternoon of the Congress. She contrasted compromising liberals with ‘young democrats’ who sought ‘to take a stand for new times, and shall not let ourselves be frightened by the old story that what is ideal is unpractical. We maintain that we shall be able to find the practical way to realise our ideal.’37 The following afternoon, Wilkinson sought to amend a resolution on collectivist principles, objecting that it defined socialism too narrowly and excluded notions of workers’ control of industry.38 Her fiery speech drew Ethel Snowden’s ire. Chrystal Macmillan from the chair intervened to say that Wilkinson had the right to express her opinions as she pleased.39 On Friday morning, in the debate on the League of Nations’ educational programme, Wilkinson argued that self-government should be extended to schoolchildren, and that this would teach them democratic citizenship.40 The conference highlighted Wilkinson’s aspirations for revolutionary change as well as her place in a transnational network of women activists, some of whom, like Crawfurd, were adopting revolutionary outlooks. In the context of the regular association with the Manchester group (amongst whom were long-standing friends like Robinson), Wilkinson’s sister Annie was the full-time secretary of the Manchester district of the WILPF, working in the office, organising meetings, campaigns and the occasional conference.41 The WILPF became a vehicle for Wilkinson to pursue anti-imperialist campaigning based on Marxist – rather than feminist – analysis. Even within these institutional bounds, she did not construct, as others did, a feminist perspective of war and imperialism, wherein women’s maternal natures predisposed them to be essentially pacifist. Instead, her arguments connected war with finance capital and vested interests in the armaments industry in terms that are recognisably Marxist.42 Despite her long association with the WILPF, she remained critical of its approach. Thus, her book Why War? exposed the limits of the WILPF with its appeal to the ‘upper and middle classes’ with lectures to demonstrate ‘war was a bad bargain’, the result of which would not ‘weigh a featherweight at the moment of crisis’.43
Second conference of Communist women The Russian Revolution recast Wilkinson’s gender politics. She attended the Second Conference of Communist Women in Moscow, in 1921. For the foreign women delegates, Moscow’s revolutionary optimism appeared to open possibilities for both workers’ and women’s 74
Feminism and the women’s movement emancipation.44 This conference established the Communist Women’s International and elected an International Women’s Secretariat, with its headquarters in Berlin. Back in Britain, Wilkinson wrote of working women in Soviet Russia.45 Lurid stories of the nationalisation of women featured in Western anti-Bolshevik propaganda but contrasted with the regime’s claims about women’s emancipation. She observed that the Communists had achieved great legislative advances for women.46 It allowed for divorce on demand of either partner, removed the inferior status of illegitimacy, legalised abortion, rendered marriage a civil affair and established legal equality between husband and wife. In the realm of political, economic and reproductive rights, ‘women revolutionaries had stamped their ideas on the new regime, and women in Russia to-day have been given the most complete freedom that legislation can bestow’.47 She praised the attitude of Russian Communist women that communal provision should alleviate women’s domestic burdens or ‘take housework out of the home’.48 Yet, for Wilkinson, material reality jeopardised this progress. The Soviet Republic was predominantly a peasant country that war and economic blockade had ruined. In such circumstances, the efforts of revolutionary women to organise collective provision of childcare, education and clinic was ‘as wonderful as it was pathetic. Pathetic because the western visitor realises how much precious human energy and skill has had to be absorbed in getting round the artificial difficulties caused by our blockade’. The contrast between a conservative peasantry and the regime’s audacious emancipatory agenda characterised the conjuncture. The New Economic Policy (NEP) signalled a retreat regarding women, appeasing the peasantry with the partial re-introduction of market relations and curtailing socialised housework.49 Wilkinson’s response was a thoughtful one, recognising the tentative, even provisional, but very real nature of these achievements. She was clearly impressed that ‘the Bolsheviks have carried out their feminist principles … logically and methodologically’. Wilkinson then described the Commissar for Social Welfare, Alexandra Kollontai – who ‘would look distinguished wrapped in a blanket’ and impressed Wilkinson enormously. Kollontai’s humour, common sense and energy created an atmosphere unlike the ‘hectic “ultra-feminist” one characteristic of the Women’s Committee in Berlin’. Kollontai, a theoretician of women’s oppression, novelist and revolutionary leader, criticised the NEP and led the Worker’s Opposition, wanting greater democracy within the revolution.50 Wilkinson greatly admired Trotsky’s opening contribution to the Women’s Congress, ‘not as the British MP condescendingly does to crack little jokes with the ladies, but as a great leader facing intelligent helpers anxious for their co-operation and sympathy’.51 Trotsky described 75
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson the uncertain global conjuncture, in which, beyond Russia, capitalism had withstood the initial post-war wave of revolutions and radicalisation. Trotsky stressed the capacity of human beings to transform their world. He explained the role of working women in the revolution, in terms of the wider cognitive patterns of working-class conflict, in which a group of workers school, burns its fingers, retreats to the rear’. The ‘backwardness’ of working women within labour movements was not a signal that they would not engage in revolution. The very opposite was true because they would not suffer from the conservatism of more established, privileged male workers. The ‘most backward, the most oppressed, the lowliest of the low’ could become ‘the most active, the most revolutionary … section of the working class’. Not to be limited to being ‘the sister of mercy’, women would be a ‘direct participant on the main revolutionary battlefront’.52 Wilkinson underlined the message of the conference: class exploitation and women’s oppression were connected and the franchise would not emancipate working women; only through revolution could women achieve real freedom. Wilkinson’s CPGB membership had implications for her feminism. First, it entailed an identification with a transnational network of female revolutionaries, the most notable being Kollontai, Elena Stasova and Zetkin. Secondly, it meant categorising women’s organisation along class lines. Thus, the WILPF and the NUWSS were judged to be ‘bourgeois’. Wilkinson had been closely connected with both of these movements. She maintained her relationship with the WILPF, but operated as a revolutionary within its ranks in the early 1920s, trying to shift it onto radical terrain. The Women’s Cooperative Guild, the women’s section of the Labour Party and women’s trade union bodies were seen in contrast as part of the workers’ movement. Thirdly, there were considerable national variations in Communist practice with regard to women depending on circumstances. A Communist publication surveying the activity of different Communist parties noted the distinctive situation in Britain. By 1923, Communist work in the field of women’s issues was tentative with small resources at its disposal having only (an exaggerated) 2,000 women members. Work was restricted principally to two areas: unemployment most importantly, but also famine relief for Russia.53 Wilkinson’s enthusiasm for the gender dimension of the revolutionary wave of 1917 to 1921 provides a crucial part of the context for her disillusion with the CPGB, suggesting that her exit was more than just careerism. Where revolutionary Russia was concerned, there was a cycle of mass women’s participation, bold policies designed to transform everyday life for working women, retreat and then reversal of those ambitions.54 Wilkinson visited Russia at the very moment of the 76
Feminism and the women’s movement first retreats and the debate about whether material circumstances rendered these necessary or not. Both the Comintern women’s movement and the Soviet women’s organisation the Zhenotdel were to become marginalised and ultimately closed down. Yet this was symptomatic of wider events. Revolutionary possibilities subsided after 1921 and this had enormous ramifications for those who, like Wilkinson, had expected widespread revolution after war’s end.
Women’s organisations and Wilkinson’s election in 1924 After 1918, the women’s movement could help elect women into parliament. NUSEC, the National Council of Women and the WFL campaigned for wider female representation in parliament irrespective of their party colours.55 Alice Shofield Coates reported on WFL involvement in Wilkinson’s election campaign in Middlesbrough East. During the campaign, Wilkinson regularly mentioned her agreement with the WFL’s objectives and its members canvassed on her behalf. Men were also enthusiastic about the candidate and there was apparently never ‘any sign of sex prejudice’. Victory meant that Labour women and the WFL were very proud that the first woman to stand for election in Middlesbrough had been successful.56 Woman’s Leader revealed the distance between Wilkinson and contemporary mainstream feminist opinion: while seeing Wilkinson’s election as a ‘triumph for her party and her sex’, her ‘extreme left’ politics ‘would no doubt be strongly antipathetic to a large section of our readers’.57 The Labour Party had increased its women candidates from 14 to 20 in the 1924 election but only Wilkinson was elected, with sitting MPs Susan Lawrence, Dorothy Jewson and Margaret Bondfield losing their seats.58 Wilkinson thought her party ought to be ashamed that she was its only MP. Eva Hubback, NUSEC’s Parliamentary Secretary, asked why so many women candidates had failed at the general election. Of the eight female MPs in the previous parliament, only three were re-elected. She sought to dispel the illusion that women were liabilities as candidates, observing that women were often selected for difficult constituencies. Indeed, none of the 33 new women candidates were offered seats that were already held by their party.59 Of these 33, only Wilkinson had won. As Wilkinson had promised, she did not forget the women’s movement after the election. Over the course of her time in parliament, she maintained networks of friends and political acquaintances as well as helping the cause where she could. On 12 November, the NUSEC held a conference at the Caxton Hall, London to ascertain why the number of women MPs had fallen. Wilkinson was among the speakers alongside Swanwick, a League of Nations Assembly delegate, and Astor, 77
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson with Eleanor Rathbone presiding. Speaking ‘simply and with decision and [making] an excellent impression’, Wilkinson observed that women faced ‘personal calumny and clamour beyond all experience’.60 Wilkinson thus achieved candidate status for NUSEC’s ‘white list’ of MPs with untarnished voting records on matters in its programme.61 Woman’s Leader also thought that Wilkinson’s maiden speech had a ‘very distinct NUSEC ring’.62 If women’s organisations had contributed to Wilkinson’s electoral campaign, they also sought to exert a lobbying influence over her once elected. On 16 December 1924, the Six Point Group invited women MPs to a luncheon in their honour. Wilkinson made a good impression. She commented that she would like to go beyond the Group’s sixth point (equal pay for women teachers and women civil servants). She wanted equal pay for all working women as economic dependence was the principal source of inequality between men and women. Wilkinson was the principal speaker at the WFL event celebrating Charlotte Despard’s birthday at Kingsway Hall, on 21 May 1925. Wilkinson talked of the need to restate the ‘feminist faith’ to capture the young woman’s imagination so that social wrongs committed against women as well as ‘curious old ideas’ of past generations could be challenged. The Widows’ Pension Bill exemplified both the persistence of the view that women should be kept by somebody, as well as the failure to recognise raising children as a service to the State.63 While Wilkinson collaborated with a wide range of women’s organisations during the 1920s, she could also be highly critical of feminists. Wilkinson signed the Saint Joan’s Quincentenary Celebration Appeal alongside the Catholic feminists in the Saint Joan’s Social and Political Alliance.64 She addressed their public meeting for the vote in Caxton Hall in May 1926, alongside Bishop Brown, Fawcett and Robert Newman MP.65 Yet, when novelist Mary Borden criticised women MPs for failing to concern themselves about divorce reform, Wilkinson condemned the fashion among ‘feminist societies’ for criticising women MPs over their ‘particular fad’.66 At the Women’s Engineering Society’s International Conference of Women in Science, Industry and Commerce (15–17 July 1925), Wilkinson spoke on industrial organisation alongside Astor in the chair, Rhondda and Professor Winifred Cullis.67 Considering the exclusion of women from engineering after the war, Wilkinson struck a decidedly trade unionist rather than feminist note, arguing that this was due to craft and skill pride rather than sex prejudice and that she would prefer to see women excluded from industry than act as blacklegs or undercut wage rates. It was the duty of women to join a union on entering industry and to maintain the esprit du corps.68 She criticised the prevailing pro-imperialism of British feminists. On 25 June 1928, 78
Feminism and the women’s movement when the British Commonwealth League held a lunch for delegates returning from the IWSA conference in Paris, Wilkinson chose to speak on women and industrial conditions in the Empire. She stressed that progress could only be measured by the status of the mass of women in the Empire and that the fate of Lancashire cotton operative was tied together with her sister in the Indian factory.69 Through the gender segregation in the Commons, Wilkinson developed a relationship with other women MPs irrespective of their political affiliation. They shared the women’s members room at the Commons. Astor acted as ‘mother hen’ to new women MPs all of parties.70 Wilkinson saw Astor as one of the ‘decent members of [the other] side’, praising her whenever she challenged her own government over education or the equalisation of the franchise. 71 Woman’s Leader noted that Astor and Wilkinson could not be more unalike ‘in type and their views’.72 Nevertheless, Wilkinson recalled that they had worked together during the wartime strike in Plymouth and this augured that they might find common ground on women’s interests. This happened intermittently over the following years.73 Astor saw herself as a feminist and drew Wilkinson into several campaigns. At the same time, Astor sought to provide support for her fellow women in the Commons and Wilkinson was grateful to her for occasionally providing financial help, or somewhere to recuperate or relax. Margaret Stansgate recalled that Astor was very generous but teased Wilkinson as ‘you red-hot socialist’, inviting her to their Cliveden mansion when she did not have the means to support herself while writing a book.74 Wilkinson recovered from illness at Rest Harrow, the Astors’ seaside retreat in Sandwich, Kent.75 In March 1929, because Rest Harrow was already offered to someone else, Astor offered to pay for a nearby hotel so that Wilkinson could recover her strength.76 On another occasion, Astor invited her to stay after leaving a nursing home having been struck down by ‘this year’s flu’.77 It seems clear that Astor provided emotional support for Wilkinson in darker moments, including drawing Wilkinson towards the Christian Science movement. Thus, Wilkinson thanked Astor because after the ‘end of a nightmarish five weeks’ the former was sleeping much better since their talk.78 Despite criticism from socialist friends for associating with upper-class women and wishing that she would abandon suffrage and feminist movements to concentrate on the socialist cause, Wilkinson maintained her relationship with Astor.79 By the 1930s, the correspondence between Astor and Wilkinson revealed an intimate friendship as well as a private side of Wilkinson which was periodically demoralised, exhausted, subject to indecision and a loss of faith in humanity. Wilkinson’s relationship with the Astors seemed all the more incongruous as the myth emerged of a pro-fascist 79
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson ‘Cliveden set’ with its centre in the Astor’s mansion on the banks of the Thames.80 Claud Cockburn, who coined the phrase, captured a grain of truth in that the Astors entertained many of the prominent politicians and newspaper editors and the like who were doggedly committed to appeasing the Third Reich. Nevertheless, George Bernard Shaw debunked the Cliveden set myth, with reference to anti-fascists like Wilkinson, Atholl and Charlie Chaplin, all of whom might equally be found there.81 For all Astor’s efforts to establish a women’s bloc in the House of Commons, the logic of party affiliation was stronger than gender solidarity, even where Wilkinson was concerned. As Mary Hamilton observed, during the second Labour government, Astor taunted the ten women Labour MPs for failing to doing anything for the unemployed.82 Wilkinson enjoyed the ‘set-to’s’ between Lawrence and Astor over the Widows’ Pension Bill in an otherwise dull debate.83 Asked about crossparty cooperation between women in the Commons, Wilkinson said that it was rare and only on social questions.84 The press delighted in the ‘unladylike scenes’ of disagreement between women MPs. For instance, Wilkinson and Astor clashed over maternity services. Wilkinson observed that Astor, as a millionaire, could afford the best for herself and her children but was opposing the extension of maternity and child welfare services for others. Astor rebuked Wilkinson, saying she had no right to talk about children as she was not a mother.85 Despite this, Wilkinson continued to hold Astor in high regard. Amid all the ‘muddle’ after the 1931 election, Wilkinson felt like cheering Astor for conducting ‘half-a-dozen private wars of her own all at once’ against her own party. 86 As for sisterly feelings for others on the other side of the House, Wilkinson could be scathing. Wilkinson called the new women MPs (who entered after the 1931 poll) ‘duller each session’. She paid them the dubious compliment of being quite up to the standard of their male Conservative colleagues.87 Mary Pickford was ‘easily the brainiest’, Mrs Smith ‘grim’, Mrs Copeland unheard, Horsburgh a ‘Government echo’, Mavis Tate ‘like Melisande in the Haunted Tower’ and Marjorie Graves ‘in a state of bewildered apology’. Wilkinson speculated that this was because ‘no woman under the rank of viscount has a look in’.88 Wilkinson also continued to participate in transnational networks of women. Held on 9–10 July 1925 in Caxton Hall, Wilkinson was invited to speak at the British Commonwealth League, an initiative of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship (IAW), seeking ‘to secure equality of liberties, status and opportunities between men and women in the British Commonwealth of Nations’. With Lord Cecil, Lady Rhondda, Lady Astor and Ramsay MacDonald as other speakers, this was not an anti-imperialist organisation.89 80
Feminism and the women’s movement Wilkinson contended that women should retain their nationality on marriage to a foreigner.90 She also took her place alongside female parliamentarians from other countries in the IWSA’s tenth congress in the Sorbonne held between 30 May and 6 June 1926.91 Discussions centred on the international spread of women’s franchise, the work of women in parliaments, war, paternity laws, an equal basis for morality and the nationality of married women. On 4 June, an evening public meeting of women members of parliament included Wilkinson who received top-billing.92 She continued to work intermittently with the IWSA, the International Council of Women and the IAW.
Campaigns for the modern woman: police, electricity and citizenship The promise of modernity was a recurrent theme in Wilkinson’s understanding of women’s emancipation. The modern age promised to dispel drudgery and modern women would not accept the Victorian place allotted to their mothers and grandmothers. Her construction of the ‘modern woman’ indicated a cultural divide between the daughter and her mother’s and grandmother’s generation over such things as ‘lace fripperies’, haircuts, clothes and small flats requiring a minimum of housework.93 When she felt it necessary to justify her shingled hair, she did so on the grounds of aesthetics and convenience. The modern woman needed clothes and haircuts that fitted with fast-paced public life.94 Wilkinson’s dress became the matter of some controversy during Manchester Chamber of Commerce’s Cotton Week in May 1930. Unlike fellow women MPs, Wilkinson did not participate because she could not find anything appropriate to wear. The episode made her pessimistic about the state of politics when she received seven phone calls from national newspapers before 8am on whether she would wear a cotton frock in parliament.95 That same week, Wilkinson addressed the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries on the topic of ‘Are business girls slaves to fashion?’ Wilkinson deplored the tyranny of fashion, preferring the sensible and democratic ‘uniform’ dress of a couple of years previous to the return of the long skirt. She feared that the crinoline (the steel-framed petticoat) might even make its return.96 For Wilkinson, modernity was transforming housework, freeing women from a home-centred existence. She would ‘rather cope with a crisis in world affairs than one mess of dishes on a cottage sink’.97 The International Conference of Women in Science, Industry and Commerce that Wilkinson attended in July 1925 led to the Electrical Association of Women (EAW)’s formation.98 The EAW was part of the international domestic science movement which had a vision of Taylorised modernity 81
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson as vehicle for freeing women.99 Wilkinson attended the Manchester branch’s launch, acted as its president for a time, addressed the EAW’s annual general meetings in 1925 and 1926 and wrote for its magazine.100 The organisation championed the use of electrical equipment in the home. Such labour-saving devices allowed women to participate more fully in public affairs. Its slogan was ‘emancipation from drudgery’. She retained her connection to the EAW, periodically attending its events such as the annual luncheon of 1934 and remained a national vice-president until her death.101 With this issue, class and gender intersected. At the Ideal Home Exhibition of 1928, which was ‘one gigantic proof of the emancipation of the mind of the modern woman’, she praised the electrical domestic appliances – the floor polisher, vacuum cleaner, electric iron, washer and fridge – that freed women from the time-consuming and arduous ‘down on the knees’ method of old, heartily approving of ‘press-button housekeeping’.102 The United States was a model for this modernity. She preferred the situation in the USA where, with cosy apartments and little housework to be done, married women could go out and have a career.103 Finding supporters from both sides of the Commons, the EAW itself was non-political. With its aristocratic and royal patrons, it rarely raised the question of class. As with other women’s campaigns, Wilkinson found common cause with middle-class and aristocratic feminists but inflected her conception of the modern woman with class.104 Speaking at the fourth annual luncheon of the Harrogate and District Branch of the EAW in October 1937, Wilkinson stated that she was mainly concerned that electricity should reach mothers of large families from poorer backgrounds. Cheap or free electricity was needed to lighten the domestic duties of those women most burdened. Electricity could also reduce the pollution and ill health in Britain’s towns.105 Wilkinson’s effort to protect consumers using hire purchase was partly an extension of her interest in domestic appliances. She introduced two private members’ bills to eliminate the ‘snatch back’ abuse in 1930–31 and 1937, being successful on the second occasion.106 The campaign for women police constituted another of Wilkinson’s campaigns for the ‘modern woman’. She contrasted her position with that of the ‘extreme feminist’.107 Women police were needed because they were more suited to dealing with particular cases involving women and children.108 Wilkinson’s campaigning began in February 1925.109 In that November, she (with Astor’s support) introduced a private members’ bill to amend the Municipal Corporations Act of 1882, apparently because the Manchester Watch Committee was blocking the employment of women police.110 The campaign encompassed teaching unions and women’s organisations such as the National Association of Headmistresses, 82
Feminism and the women’s movement the NUT and NUSEC. Wilkinson, Astor and Rathbone were part of a delegation to Joynson-Hicks, the Home Secretary, on 7 December, the day before the bill was introduced into the Commons.111 Despite the Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women’s Organisations (SJC, the women’s advisory committee to the Labour movement) deciding to take no action when NUSEC contacted them in February 1927, Wilkinson assisted when Astor revived the campaign.112 In July 1928, Wilkinson wrote to Astor indicating that she agreed with Astor’s campaign and that she had managed to win Susan Lawrence’s support. Moreover, she participated in a delegation to the Home Secretary that Astor organised in August 1928.113 When Astor was composing a written question to the Home Secretary, she enlisted Wilkinson’s support for a supplementary question the following year.114
Widows’ pensions When, in 1925, the Baldwin government introduced widows’ pension legislation, Wilkinson spoke repeatedly against its contributory basis and that the payments were too low.115 While women’s organisations had campaigned for pensions for widows with young children for some time, Wilkinson could not understand why the Widows’ and Orphans’ Pensions Bill did not adequately provide for this group, while the childless able-bodied widow capable of working was endowed for life.116 She became an expert in the technical detail of the bill, earning praise in the press for ‘her amazing alertness’.117 The Times commented that Wilkinson had successfully mobilised the ‘feminist sympathies’ of the Commons. With Astor’s help, concentrating on a few points that were well prepared in advance, she was able to score small victories.118 This included the deletion of a subsection over ministerial discretion in the suspension of benefit.119 She moved amendments to include a woman on appeals tribunals (which she won) and to prevent a spouse having to give evidence against the accused in fraud cases (which she lost). Woman’s Leader noted that the concessions were due to Astor’s and Wilkinson’s feminism as well as NUSEC’s parliamentary lobbying.120
Speaking for women: workers, unemployed and housewives Wilkinson became the foremost public champion of working women after her election. Thus, within weeks of her arrival, she advocated better pay for the waitresses at the Commons.121 Her comments were eagerly taken up in the press. When a judge suggested that silk stockings indicated the moral decadence of the modern working girl, Wilkinson 83
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson worried about the ‘complex about morals’ of such judges.122 In August 1926, she challenged the Postmaster General over the bar on women serving as dispensers in the Post Office.123 She complained that the ‘ministering angel’ theory of nurses meant that they were paid less than house servants.124 In her journalism, she pondered the situation of working women. Sacked on marriage, facing stressful repetitive tasks at a speed controlled by the machines, the women were chosen because they were faster and more efficient than men. Gendered language veiled their exploitation, they were ‘practised’ rather than ‘skilled’. They accepted low wages because of the platitudes about sexual difference and ‘subtle ways to prove that her superiority is really an inferiority’. Such industrial taboos needed to be broken, just as social and political ones had in the recent past.125 Wilkinson continued to decry unemployed women’s plight. At a public benefit for homeless women, she complained about the ‘pained patience’ in the Commons when she spoke of unemployed women as MPs waited to return to unemployed men.126 She condemned the lack of training provision for women compared with men and urged labour exchanges not to see domestic service as the only option for jobless women.127 Indeed, a gendered hostility confronted the unemployed women. The letters’ pages were littered with middle-class complaints about the difficulties of finding domestic servants while women could draw benefit.128 In April 1925, Wilkinson contested the Conservative MP Sir Joseph Nall’s proposal that women under 30 should not receive benefit given the shortage of domestic servants.129 The industrial struggles of 1926 highlighted Wilkinson’s complex negotiation between class and gender as well as between the workers’ and the women’s movements. During her visit to the US in 1926 to raise money for the miners, her first speaking engagement was with the League of Women Voters at the Roosevelt Hotel, New York, where she spoke about the suffrage campaign, protective legislation and the miners’ strike.130 Reflecting on the ‘hysterical’ reaction of wealthy ladies to her description of the hardship in the coalfields during the lockout, Wilkinson pointed to the class antagonism that she encountered: ‘those women will fight for their perfumed rooms and their face massages as desperately as the miner’s wife will fight for her children. … Take away from the lady her beautiful rooms, her exquisite clothes, her perfumes, her shaded lights, and what has she got left? Nothing.’131 She, by way of contrast, belonged to another social category entirely: ‘I am working class. All my people are weekly wage-earners.’ Her outspokenness sparked controversy in October 1927 when she talked about the wife’s unpaid housework. Working eighty hours a week, Wilkinson explained that this labour was an unrecognised form 84
Feminism and the women’s movement of slavery needed for the efficiency of the male worker and the next generation for industry. She encouraged women to demand more for this work so that employers would in turn have to pay more.132 On suggesting that housewives were unpaid drudges, deserving pay and that they should go on strike, indignant responses appeared in the press, some of which were letters from housewives.133 They challenged Wilkinson’s right to speak on behalf of mothers and housewives who insinuated that a ‘political spinster’ was incapable of understanding their lot. Wilkinson’s address to the Manchester, Salford and District Girls’ Club Union on 7 October 1929 disclosed interesting aspects of her thinking about the ‘working girl in the big industrial city’.134 Yet again, Wilkinson used modernity to frame their condition: the urban environment, the factory entered at the age of 14, its rigorous discipline and the accelerated monotonous routines of the machine. This was at a time when education was focusing more on the individual, making girls freer and more intelligent. Consequently, adolescent women rebelled against the conventions of home life and against maternal authority. The impatient adolescent had replaced the ‘submissive Victorian miss’. Now that the vote had been extended to women aged 21, Wilkinson saw a special place for women’s organisations to encourage active citizenship amongst young women. Wilkinson also acted as a spokeswoman for her gender. On 18 May 1926, she debated ‘Is woman becoming too obtrusive?’ with Major Walter Elliot MP in the LSE public lecture series.135 Similarly on 9 October 1928, the BBC broadcast a debate ‘Should women be paid as much as men?’ between Wilkinson and William Thoday.136 Thoday spoke on behalf of the National Association of Schoolmasters and opposed equal pay for women teachers. In reply, Wilkinson quickly addressed the question of economic worth. Except for heavy trades, women could perform equally well as men. Using census statistics, she demonstrated the fallacy of the husband-as-breadwinner norm. Working women shouldered the double burden of paid work and domestic housework, for whom higher pay could provide domestic services. Wilkinson readily despatched Thoday’s educational arguments, including the idea that women teachers would Americanise or feminise schoolboys. She challenged the perception of female encroachment into the profession, arguing that equal pay was not a feminist case but one of social justice and payment for the job rather than the person. Moreover, she observed that the differences between the teaching of boys and girls was exaggerated. When Thoday countered that his case rested on biological and economic facts, she refuted these assumptions. While Wilkinson made a persuasive case, it seems that the educational establishment and Thoday’s union were satisfied with his performance. He received various congratulations, 85
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson including Tom Davies of London County Council who believed that the Six Point Group ‘must have been figuratively speaking, gnashing their toothless gums around their loudspeakers’.137 Again, acting as an advocate for a woman’s perspective, in 7 August 1931, Wilkinson and G.K. Chesterton debated the play ‘The Love Game’ in the play’s interval. Wilkinson argued that marriage was an institution that men had established before the advent of the new independent working woman and that the old conventions needed to adapt to these realities.138 She had to explain her throw-away comment that ‘most men have typists and kiss them, but wives are sensible, the world goes on’ to the scandalised local press, which she had said at 2am not intended for the press. This prompted her to opine that someone should form a ‘society for the prevention of journalistic cruelty to women MPs’.139
Married women’s citizenship The 1870 Naturalisation Act deprived a woman of her British citizenship if she married a foreigner. Such discrepancies were common and the international women’s movement took up the issue of the citizenship of married women with husbands of a different nationality. As the feminist Ray Strachey recognised, Wilkinson played a key role regarding this campaign in the Commons.140 Wilkinson had served on the commission for the ‘nationality of married women and Heimatlose (statelessness)’ at the 1929 WILPF congress in Prague. The following March, Wilkinson spoke at a demonstration in The Hague called by the International Council of Women and the IAW over the question. The intention was to put pressure on the League of Nations Conference for the Codification of International Law that was considering the matter.141 The nationality convention did eliminate some of the circumstances that caused hardship to married women but failed to establish principle of equality.142 Wilkinson planned to introduce a bill on this question in 1929.143 Eventually in October 1930, such a bill received time and Wilkinson supported Dr Ethel Bentham’s initiative.144 Though ultimately frustrated, the ‘much needed reform’ had cross-party support with Wilkinson and Astor again collaborating.145 The bill proposed to offer women the choice of nationality and the possibility of two nationalities within a marriage, thereby allowing women equal status with their husbands. It proposed that a foreign woman could apply for British naturalisation on marriage to a British husband. Wilkinson catalogued the iniquitous plight of women deprived of citizenship, pensions, freedom to travel or right to redress for desertion. Wilkinson responded sharply to her opponents, who were claiming to stand up for the ‘greatest institution of all, family life’, finding the two Lieutenant-Colonels ‘delicious’, being redolent of 86
Feminism and the women’s movement the antediluvian arguments used against the first suffrage bill. She then proceeded to unpick the logic of their positions: if she and Sir Gerald Hurst were both to marry a German, only she would be deprived of her parliamentary seat. Once again, on 17 March 1931, Wilkinson – together with Astor, the Countess of Iveagh, Manning, Megan Lloyd George and Rathbone – met the Home Secretary, J.R. Clynes, and Foreign Secretary, Arthur Henderson, over married women’s nationality. They unsuccessfully pressed the government to allow time for the bill that the late Dr Ethel Bentham had introduced and which Wilkinson was now steering through the legislative process.146
Protective or restrictive legislation One key signifier of inter-war feminism was workplace legislation. On this recurrent issue, Wilkinson held a trade union position and opposed the abolition of protective legislation. Wilkinson’s first private members’ bill was the Factories Bill, which she introduced in February 1925. This sought increased protection for working women regarding working hours.147 On 27 November 1926, Wilkinson chaired and addressed a conference of women’s organisations of nearly 200 delegates concerning the government’s Factories (no. 2) Bill. She observed that the bill was far worse than the one proposed in 1924 and sought to raise public awareness on the matter.148 On 25 January 1927, she addressed the Manchester WILPF on the evils of the two-shift system allowed under the government’s bill.149 She condemned middle-class women with no knowledge of factory conditions objecting to protective legislation that working women were campaigning for everywhere.150 Two days later, the Consultative Committee of Women’s Organisations, of which Lady Astor was the president, hosted a debate on the matter. Wilkinson challenged the American ‘equalitarian’ feminist Doris Stevens who argued that protective legislation ran counter to women’s interests.151 Wilkinson said that protection should be on the basis of the work rather than the sex of the worker, yet while women did not have unions as strong as those of the men, they needed protection in the meantime.152 Wilkinson opposed the feminist view which deemed such legislation to be restrictive and discriminatory, putting herself in the pro-reform, protrade union camp and criticising her opponent for being out of touch with working women. Long hours, excessive overtime, dangerous trades and night work were abuses that she wanted to see abolished for all workers, but the public was willing to protect women on the grounds of sentimentality. She also disputed the claim that these regulations had led to significant numbers of women losing work. Working women welcomed legislation that improved their conditions (and working 87
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson conditions more generally) and employers were too keen on employing women to be excluding them on gender grounds.153 Returning to this issue, Wilkinson underlined the ample evidence provided in factory inspector Rose Squire’s Thirty Years in Public Service against the ‘wealthy society ladies’ who wished to remove the woman worker’s legal protections.154 She continued her campaign against the equalitarian feminist position and the Factory Bill at a Manchester WILPF meeting on 22 February 1927.155 The bill would take workers back to 1841 and would have a disastrous impact on the education of young people. Wilkinson continued to criticise the anti-restriction feminists of the Open Door Council during the 1930s.156
Equalising the franchise at 21 In her first months in parliament, Wilkinson maintained that the Labour Party was the institution that would bring ‘the drastic reorganisation of society’ and that this could only be achieved with ‘a stable majority over several parliaments’. In the era of the women’s vote, this meant that Labour needed the support of women, in particular working-class housewives and working women.157 Baldwin had stated in his 1924 election campaign that the Conservative Party was in favour of equalising the franchise. Wilkinson backed Labour MP Whiteley’s February 1925 private members’ bill to equalise the franchise, intervening memorably in the debate.158 Having indicated as much during the election, the government confirmed that while it was too early in the lifespan of the government, it would ultimately introduce the measure. Given past experience, a suspicious Wilkinson sought to hold Baldwin to his word.159 From January 1926, Wilkinson spoke at public meetings, signed open letters, asked questions in the Commons, and collaborated with a broad range of women’s organisations with the support of the SJC.160 She stressed that the campaign’s slogan should be ‘votes for wage-earning women’.161 The campaign gathered momentum by the summer of 1926, drawing Wilkinson’s participation.162 The Equal Rights Demonstration Committee focused upon a protest in Hyde Park on 3 July 1926, at which Wilkinson spoke. The fourteen platforms assembled some of the most celebrated suffrage or feminist names including Astor, Fawcett, Margaret Wintringham, Emmeline Pankhurst and Rathbone.163 Three thousand joined this first mass mobilisation of the suffrage movement since the war.164 After the demonstration, to Wilkinson’s undoubted frustration, the tensions between the former suffragists and suffragettes as well as between Labour and feminism resurfaced.165 It was only after these had been overcome that a second major demonstration took place on 30 June 1928. Three thousand marchers followed the IWSA 88
Feminism and the women’s movement banner into Hyde Park, with 40 organisations represented. Wilkinson demonstrated with the Women’s Election Committee and was the only MP present on the day. Speaking from the Labour platform, Wilkinson observed – to loud cheers – that a woman could marry at 12, work at 14, but could only vote at 30 if she had a husband or other furniture!166 During the campaign, Wilkinson penned articles appealing to women who would receive the vote were the franchise equalised.167 First, she demolished the caricature of the ‘flapper’ deployed to deny young women the vote: tennis frocks, ‘shingled’ hair and ‘too irritating and attractive’ to be given the vote. Nine-tenths of 21-year-olds were not young debs but would by then have already worked 7 hard years. Without their consent, parliament had regulated their wages and interfered with their working environment, reformed their pension rights and changed the guardianship of their infants. Despite young women being aviators, national debt commissioners, inventors, professionals, for some ‘mystic reason’ when they wanted the vote, they became flappers. Wilkinson ruefully asked young women if their brothers were so wise at the age of 21. Furthermore, women did the bulk of the work for political parties. If the franchise had been extended to all men in 1918 ‘because they had killed for their country’, then the ‘flapper mother’ who bore children for the State also merited the vote.168 With victory within grasp, Wilkinson delighted in the absurdity of the Conservative opponents, making victory all the sweeter. Horrabin’s cartoon pictured Wilkinson as a flapper reducing her foes to water with the caption: ‘Ten little die-hards – feeling good and fine – one saw a flapper – and then there were nine.’169 She turned her merciless wit on each in turn: the ‘cold-hearted, thin-lipped’ Sir Joseph Nall, the ‘great British patriot’ Samuel Samuels ‘talking nonsense about women at the age of 72’ and Esmond Harmsworth ‘whoever would have heard of this boy if he hadn’t been Lord Rothermere’s son?’170 Triumphantly, she witnessed the victory in the Commons, the scene of past betrayals at the hands of the Liberals and Conservatives. As a ‘suffragist’ herself – with Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Margaret Ashton and Mrs Fawcett in the gallery – she evoked a sense of heroic satisfaction at the passing of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act.171
Labour women’s organisation Throughout the inter-war period, the Labour Party sought to contain the influence of feminism on Labour women who were crucial to its activist base.172 Given her shifting attitude to feminism, this complicated Wilkinson’s position inside the Labour Party. The women’s organisations within the Labour movement also provided an avenue for her activism 89
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson and political career. She had been a member of the Women’s Labour League prior to the war and this organisation merged into the Labour Party as a consequence of women’s enfranchisement in 1918. The Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women’s Organisations (SJC) advised the NEC, organised the Annual Labour Women’s Conferences and produced a monthly magazine Labour Woman. In addition, the Women’s Co-operative Guild was associated with the Labour movement. Wilkinson collaborated to a greater or lesser extent with all of these bodies. She was twice elected SJC chair, in January 1925 and in November 1925.173 Wilkinson often criticised the conservatism of Labour women’s organisation. Reporting to her union executive, she described the National Conference of Labour Women of 15 to 16 October 1918 as ‘disappointing’ and ‘timid’, adopting the outlook of ‘the middle-aged, married working woman’. The views of younger women who ‘want co-operative house-keeping on the flat system’ were barely given a voice. She praised Sylvia Pankhurst for her opposition to the ‘pussy-cat programme’ of tame resolutions that characterised the conference that meekly fell into line with the party leadership.174 Annot Robinson proposed four reserve NEC places for women at the Labour Women’s Conference three years later, with Wilkinson seconding.175 At the 1922 Labour Women’s Conference, Wilkinson moved a motion in favour of disarmament, revision of the Versailles Treaty, recognition of Soviet Russia, Soviet famine relief, a League of Nations of the peoples not of the governments and opposition to imperialist power over weaker nations. She rejected the pacifism of ‘well intentioned religious people’ who wanted peace at all costs, notably a Europe ‘mutilated’ by Versailles. Carried by her impassioned invective, the conference passed the motion unanimously.176 Wilkinson broached women’s representation in parliament in her address as chair of the National Conference of Labour Women in Birmingham on 27 May 1925. She opened with a qualified, but forthright, rejection of the idea that Labour women MPs should only be concerned with ‘women’s issues’. Despite the ‘natural specialisation’ of women, they were human beings interested in all dimensions of life, sitting on finance as well as welfare committees, sharing the running of great trade unions. She called for able women to be selected for winnable seats. The party needed to realise the significance of the female electorate and not be duped that women lost Labour the 1924 general election.177 At the 1926 Labour Women’s Conference in Bournemouth, Wilkinson criticised the agenda for its lack of realism.178 Wilkinson also led the criticism of the first women’s TUC congress in 1926, where there was no inquest into the dramatic fall in women’s trade union membership since the war. It was only Margaret Bondfield’s 90
Feminism and the women’s movement assurances from the chair that dissuaded the critics from putting a motion to adjourn. Too many men spoke in the debates and the resolutions were handed down by the General Council. Consequently, it overlooked women workers’ real concerns and gave little meaningful chance for women to articulate their views.179 She had previously written that part of the problem was when the unions were treated as a ‘side line to be controlled and officered by the men’.180 In June 1927, Wilkinson introduced an emergency motion to the National Conference of Labour Women at Huddersfield not to trust Baldwin over equalisation of the franchise.181 She also objected to the way that the bill was being referred to as the ‘flapper bill’, observing that votes had never been based on an intelligence test, otherwise many MPs would fail to qualify. She was concerned that Baldwin was intent on delaying the matter until after the next election. Furthermore, this extension of the franchise offered the Labour movement the opportunity of an influx of youthful enthusiasm that could be harnessed for the purpose of working-class emancipation. The following month, she seized upon Baldwin’s admission that the bill would not be introduced in the next session of parliament, which was a bombshell ‘for the comfortable middle-class ladies’ who had accepted his pledge to equalise the franchise.182 If Wilkinson had cautioned against complacency over the franchise bill, it was because considerable opposition developed within the Conservative Party and in the Tory press. Wilkinson lamented the lack of women’s representation at conferences of the Labour movement. She habitually praised individual women, particularly those from the ranks, who made an impact on proceedings. Thus, at the Labour Party’s Birmingham conference of 1928, a rail worker’s wife made a great impression, holding her own against the polished speeches of the professional politicians. Wilkinson implied that this woman possessed a humble heroism being ‘thin and pale, obviously overworking herself’.183 Wilkinson also complained about the patronising attitude of many men, even Marxists, towards women within the movement. She wrote in Plebs about a bright young woman whose attitude towards the NCLC was, ‘I’ve washed up for Peace, I’ve washed up for Socialism, I’ve washed up for Disarmament, but I’m not going to wash up for Education, because I want to be in the class and not at the sink.’ She argued that while NCLC mixed classes were not a mistake, women’s classes might reach older married women otherwise deterred from attending.184 At the 1926 Labour Party Conference, when allowed to speak because of the chairman’s ‘chivalry’, Wilkinson uttered the barbed response that she was not appealing to his chivalry.185 On occasion, Wilkinson felt it necessary to upbraid Labour MPs for their attitude to women members. Thus, she objected to the patronising 91
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson attitude of miners’ MPs towards Jennie Lee, writing the ‘Commons is not merely a branch of the Aged Miners’ Homes, and Jennie represents as important a mining constituency as any of the others’.186 Another gender battle line within the party was the parliamentary selection process. The Labour leadership resisted the proposal to improve the numbers of women candidates via a special election fund for the purpose. In this long-running campaign, Wilkinson unsuccessfully tried to expedite matters at a meeting of Labour representatives on the SJC by appealing to women’s sections and the SJC’s constituent organisations in 1929.187 Yet, when George Bernard Shaw argued for positive discrimination and quotas for women in political life, Wilkinson objected because party managers would not choose women of independent spirit but ‘yes-women’ and ‘pussy-cats’.188 Wilkinson was especially concerned about reaching a female audience. She argued that the radio held the possibility of reaching the busy housewife but that an impartial public broadcaster was necessary to nurture informed democratic citizenship. Women would not tolerate the platitudes of speakers at the typical public meeting or jokes about ‘my wife’. Radio, she believed, was enlivening politics for women and bringing about a remarkable change in their political receptivity.189
NEC years 1927–29: birth control, family allowances and the flapper election In 1927, Wilkinson was elected onto the Labour Party NEC as one of the four women’s members.190 She remained on the NEC until she was voted off at the Brighton Conference of 1929. While serving on the executive, she tended to follow its decisions on the basis of institutional discipline, although on occasion she revealed that she had personally argued against a given position. Holtby worried about the effects of party discipline for feminists such as Monica Whately, Edith Picton-Turbervill and ‘once a suffrage organiser’ Wilkinson.191 Wilkinson was involved in the party controversy over abortion and birth control.192 While Vernon argued that it was concern about the Catholic vote in her own constituency that swung her, Christine Collette believed that Wilkinson did not campaign on this matter as she viewed class as paramount.193 After her visit to the Soviet Union in 1921, she had applauded its abortion rights as working-class women suffered most if they could not have control over how many mouths they would have to feed. She noted that some feminists failed to appreciate this. The terms of debate were very different inside the Labour Party. Fearful of alienating Catholic working-class supporters, the Labour Party leadership tried to avoid taking a position. Wilkinson chaired the Labour Women’s 92
Feminism and the women’s movement Conference in May 1925 and had to manage a turbulent session about birth control. The motion sought to provide married people with information about birth control, which was banned from maternity centres in receipt of Ministry of Health funds.194 The motion also wanted birth control to be part of the Labour Party programme. Bertha Quinn, of the Tailors’ and Garment Workers’ Union, a veteran of the suffrage movement and a Catholic delegate from Leeds, caused a commotion stating that birth control was a crime against God, that birth control information was filth and would split the movement. Wilkinson felt it necessary to intervene: ‘I shall not allow Miss Quinn to insult the majority of delegates. Miss Quinn must not impute impure motives to other people who hold equally sincere though contrary views.’195 The motion passed with only six votes against.196 The SJC then urged the NEC to put this position to the Labour Party Conference. Instead, the NEC successfully put a motion before the Labour Party Conference of autumn 1925 at Liverpool rejecting support for birth control. Subsequently, the SJC presented a further report to the NEC, explaining the basis of their disagreement with the Liverpool decision. When, in February 1926, Ernest Thurtle unsuccessfully proposed a bill to enable local authorities to provide birth control information, Wilkinson was amongst those in favour of hearing the bill.197 Dora Russell who campaigned with the Workers’ Birth Control Group recalled Wilkinson’s assistance in parliament for their campaign.198 Although Wilkinson and other women delegates pressed for its inclusion at the 1926 Labour Party Conference in Margate, the Standing Order Committee ruled against a birth control motion.199 However, the conference referred back the section of the NEC’s report dealing with birth control.200 Thus, the Labour Women’s Conference of May 1927 in Huddersfield inevitably returned to the matter. NUDAW delegated Wilkinson, Mary Bamber and Amy Wild. 201 In an article for Clarion, Wilkinson praised the spirit of independence of women over both Blanesburgh and birth control, singling out Bamber for praise.202 A motion called for support for birth control information to be made part of the Labour Party programme and for the NEC to receive a delegation on the matter from the conference. The motion passed: 581 voted in favour, 74 against.203 Despite strong support amongst Labour women, the Labour Party Conference of 1927 in Blackpool supported the executive’s recommendation that birth control be a matter of individual conscience and not party policy, thereby maintaining the status quo.204 In an article in New Leader, Wilkinson noted how this was the only debate at the conference where ‘the veils of order were rent by passion’, praising Brailsford’s speech.205 93
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson All this meant that the following National Conference of Labour Women would have to decide what to do in the face of such a defeat. This took place in Portsmouth, 16–17 May 1928. Dora Russell of the ILP moved a motion to refer back that part of the annual report dealing with birth control. Arthur Henderson attended for the NEC. He argued that the question should not be made a party issue and that the opinions of women of all parties would help to turn public opinion in favour. Wilkinson, herself by this time a NEC member, supported the position of the executive, suggesting that this was not a class issue.206 She urged conference to maintain a sense of proportion and that it was dangerous to raise such deep-seated convictions. She also expressed her ‘horror’ that one delegate viewed birth control as a solution to ‘social evils’. Despite several speakers pushing for reference back the motion was lost 254 to 257. Wilkinson’s intervention sparked a vigorous exchange in the Daily Herald letters’ page. Dr Maurice Newfield of the Workers’ Birth Control Group rebuked Wilkinson for using her influence to prevent women gaining access to information ‘that may help them escape the calamity of producing more mouths than they can feed’.207 In a bad-tempered response, Wilkinson explained that ‘while Party opinion is so divided, I cannot see how this can be made a Party plank or a test of Party loyalty.’208 Dora Russell suggested that Wilkinson’s position implied that mothers should suffer in silence.209 Frida Laski objected that Wilkinson had side-stepped the substantive points, that the NEC was misrepresenting women as trying to pledge the party to birth control and that the party machinery was being used to silence the women’s conference.210 Laski believed that a married mother would have other priorities. The one letter supporting Wilkinson hardly helped her cause, describing birth control as ‘racial suicide’.211 After a week of letters censuring Wilkinson, the editor commented: ‘This correspondence is now closed. … Ed DH.’212 Clearly, Wilkinson shifted her position over birth control after joining the NEC thereby estranging herself from the ranks of Labour women. No doubt, she fought for her position inside the NEC but then followed its line once she had lost. This may have contributed to her loss of an NEC women’s seat in 1929. Acquaintances recalled her evasion over birth control. Questioned by a Catholic priest in the 1929 election campaign, she coyly claimed that a spinster could not be expected to have an opinion on such a matter. She advised other women candidates to do likewise.213 A defining issue of the new feminism of the 1920s was family allowances. Wilkinson’s position was, as with birth control, complicated by her NEC membership.214 Wilkinson sat on the Living Wage Commission. This was constituted in July 1927 and subsumed the matter of family 94
Feminism and the women’s movement allowances.215 In a letter to Bondfield, she objected to the way that the report of the Commission handled family allowances, believing that it did not adequately reflect the evidence in favour and threatening to write a minority report if it was accepted.216 A deadlock in negotiations between the General Council and the NEC resulted in July 1928.217 At the NEC before the Labour Party’s annual conference in Birmingham that year, Wilkinson asked if she could speak in a personal capacity over family allowances.218 She was told that she could not. At the 1929 Labour Party Conference in Brighton, Wilkinson spoke in favour of a motion for family allowances submitted by the ILP of which she was then a prominent member and for whose paper she wrote regularly.219 Family allowances formed part of the ILP’s Living Wage policy, which was the centrepiece of its political programme. Wilkinson’s spell in the ILP therefore implied supporting the living wage. NUDAW’s opposition to family allowances further complicated matters for her, after a motion to support the measure fell at the 1929 ADM.220 She also worked at times alongside Rathbone over the family allowances, helping to organise a meeting in a Commons committee room in March 1931.221 When the matter was debated again at her union conference in 1931, she had yet another ‘piquant duel’ with Rhys Davies MP, which he also pursued in print, claiming family allowances to be the very ‘negation of real manhood’ of the trade unionist.222 He deemed the proposal to come from the petty-bourgeois and spinster feminists who presume superiority on the grounds of their education. She retorted, ‘I always feel I am on safe ground when opposed to Mr Rhys Davies.’ Though the resolution in favour of family allowances passed on a show of hands, it lost when a card vote was called.223 When the issue re-emerged in 1938, Wilkinson described family allowances as a means test on wages, saying: ‘As a feminist, I have a certain sympathy. But my trade unionist reaction is precisely the same as Jack Lawson’s.’224 Wilkinson had resisted Rathbone’s efforts to enlist her support, believing ‘hard sell imperialist’ Leo Amery’s proposals for family allowances simply sought cannon fodder on the cheap. Wilkinson disagreed with the feminist case for family allowances that presented working men as wasting money on drink and gambling while their families went hungry. Though some were bullies or charming wastrels, most working-class husbands had a ‘sense of family duty and of sacrifice for his children’.225 Over time then, Wilkinson’s position shifted as a consequence of competing obligations to the ILP, her union and the NEC, showing the limits of her feminism or at least the constraints imposed upon it by these institutions. Wilkinson intervened prominently in the debate about how the Labour Party should respond to the new electorate of young women. She remarked how the additional women voters baffled most male MPs. 95
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Her party would have to re-think its policy and its presentation.226 She carefully analysed their social composition. The larger part of these (3.2 million) new voters were unmarried wage-earners and therefore a new constituency for Labour, given that the Labour Women’s Section mainly addressed the married woman. The distribution of these women depended on women’s economic participation and was therefore highly uneven. In the textile towns, this was high, while in Middlesbrough or the mining districts, it was much lower. She cautioned against an unthinking trade union appeal to these working women because many of them perceived unions as restricting female work opportunities. This perception should be tackled with a commitment to equal pay. She suggested TUC–Labour Party conferences in areas of high women’s employment to elicit their views about policy, rather than ‘experienced men officials’ stifling their ideas. Responding to Wilkinson’s case in the Herald’s letters’ page, a tailors’ union branch secretary complained that women were to blame for their own situation because they refused to join unions; others were quick to contradict him.227 In addition, Wilkinson believed that the party’s message should be brightened up and old clichés put ‘in cold storage’. The party should organise social events with dances and short speeches by young people. Furthermore, Labour parents should make their sons do the washing up and let the daughters go to the Labour club for a change. Wilkinson interpreted the much maligned political apathy as ‘the languor of a people who have been tried too far’.228 She deemed the foremost task for Labour women activists to be to persuade women that the vote is a tool to get things you want and not ‘a mild sort of joke perpetrated on her by a bored House of Commons’. Politics was ‘whether their husband has a job or son will be sent to fight, or whether you and your children are a subject of constant epidemics, have a decent house to live in or clean streets’. The real issue – as Wilkinson saw it – was Labour’s failure to use its advantage in the intelligence and vitality of its female membership. Instead, while many members pessimistically expected an increase in the numbers of Conservative voting women, she maintained Labour could win women’s votes from ‘girls in shop, on the buses, behind post office counters’.229 Labour needed to capture these new voters early while their loyalty was in flux. The women’s sections – usually relegated to fundraising, deprived of speakers and the butt of the chairman’s jokes – were crucial to this. One woman activist from Leeds wrote a letter of appreciation for Wilkinson’s down-to-earth advice, passing the article around neighbours and at the mill.230 Sixty-nine women stood in the general election of May 1929 with 30 Labour candidates, 25 Liberals, 10 Conservatives, three Communists and one Independent. Three Conservatives were elected, nine Labour, 96
Feminism and the women’s movement and one Liberal.231 Previously, only Wilkinson could sport suffrage credentials, but Rathbone, the NUSEC president, was elected, as were NUSEC members Edith Picton-Turbervill and Ethel Bentham.232 NUSEC celebrated the success of fourteen women candidates at the Holborn Restaurant and Wilkinson was one of these guests of honour.233 Indicating the two very different circles of women activists that she worked in, Wilkinson went from this feminist environment to the National Conference of Labour Women in Buxton the very next day. Wilkinson was one of the few activists who regularly crossed between these groups. After the equalisation of the franchise and the election of a Labour government, Wilkinson’s campaigning over women’s issues declined, as did the women’s movement itself. For roughly three years, her gender politics appeared to drift and moderate. Thus, at Labour Women’s Conference in June 1930, she described equal pay as ‘not a sex question, men versus women but a class one’.234
Wilkinson’s feminist turn and the backlash against women during the slump After this, Wilkinson’s gender politics radicalised sharply as her journalism in John Bull, the Star, Pearson’s Weekly and Time and Tide illustrates. Her most explicitly feminist writing appeared in response to the slump of the early 1930s and the cultural backlash against women that accompanied it. In Pearson’s Weekly, Wilkinson addressed matters of everyday life as they confronted women. The voice that she adopted – allowing her to command the interest and respect of her readers – was that of a successful widely travelled woman of intelligence. Her goal was to inflect the mundane with a subtle political sensibility that would appeal to an audience interested in topical matters, contemporary mores and human interest stories. Thus, she broached the rationing of educational opportunities for girls within families, the dilemma of career or marriage, the difficulties of public speaking for women, the pleasures of working-class leisure, the barriers facing women’s progress, the need for housewives to have proper holidays, the relations between men and women, foreign travel, fashion, make-up and clothing, romance, unemployment and censorship.235 Wilkinson wrote regularly for Time and Tide from late 1930 until her inclusion in Cabinet in May 1940.236 This strengthened her links with prominent feminist writers such as Holtby, Rebecca West, Rose Macaulay and above all with its editor Margaret Haig, Lady Rhondda.237 Wilkinson admired these writers, remarking that she found it rather terrifying to write alongside them and thereby invite comparison.238 Indeed, Susan Pedersen attributed the survival of feminism in the 1930s to this 97
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson circle of a ‘few unquenchable voices’: Astor, Holtby, Brittain, Wilkinson and Rathbone.239 Wilkinson’s relationship with them was not straightforward. Thus, in 1931 when Rathbone introduced a private members’ bill to prevent husbands from cutting their wives out of their wills, initially Wilkinson was favourable.240 Yet, after reflection, she wanted a less legalistic and hence costly solution, preferring arbitration and fair play for all parties including ‘the other woman’.241 Wilkinson eventually developed a strong relationship with Rhondda, whose obituary to Wilkinson remarked upon the left-winger’s initial reticence towards someone from a different class background and who had a different political outlook.242 The Maud Meddowes figure in The Clash articulated Wilkinson’s conflicted attitude towards Rhondda, upon whom she was modelled. Also illustrating this, Wilkinson penned an intemperate letter after Rhondda’s ‘aggravating’ comments on class. Wilkinson reasserted Marx’s position that one’s position in relation to production rather than ‘who asks whom to dine’ determined class. She suggested that a local NUR branch secretary ought to teach Rhondda’s ‘nice young man’ with middle-class manners a lesson.243 By 1935, Wilkinson’s aloofness had dissipated despite their political differences. Living in the same block, Wilkinson was invited to dinner most weeks even during the war. Rhondda was confidante and patron in a somewhat similar way to Astor. Writing to Holtby, Wilkinson remarked how she felt guilty about talking Rhondda’s ‘head off’ and what a wonderful psychoanalyst she would make.244 For her part, Rhondda thought Wilkinson a truly exceptional individual who had ‘fought free in the face of insuperable difficulties, with a tenacity of purpose that is almost unimaginable’.245 Circumstances forged a new misogyny against Wilkinson, combining the die-hard’s post-suffrage revanchism, the hostility to working women at times of mass unemployment, a sense of crisis undermining confidence in progressive modernity and the sharp loss of support for Labour from 1930. Wilkinson’s books of press cuttings show what she saw of her public self. From early 1931, the pages were dotted with bilious invective against her. H.W. Seaman denounced her for ‘shrill Feminist shrieks of “Wages for Wives” and “Economic Independence”’.246 Edgar Granville MP advised the ‘spinster of Westminster to change the typewriter for the saucepan’.247 Amongst ‘the women who annoy me’, Wilkinson was a social climber, inverted snob and hypocrite ‘from Middlesbrough East, arriving in … in London West, via Fleet Street and the House of Commons’.248 The British fascist press routinely abused her, talking of her ‘virgin womb’ and saying: ‘It is not possible for one sentient being to dislike another more than we dislike Miss Ellen Wilkinson.’249 The very place of women in politics was questioned. Young aristocratic males opined freely in the press that women should be warming their slippers 98
Feminism and the women’s movement rather than sitting in the Commons. Even ‘many sheltered wives’ resented women politicians.250 On 13 March 1931, Wilkinson addressed a NUSEC luncheon in London. She lamented the father complex in politics where everybody – especially women of the pre-war generation – looked for a heaven-sent leader. Given the terrific sacrifices of the suffrage movement, women’s indifference was tragic.251 The personal and party reversal of the 1931 general election compounded Wilkinson’s feelings of pessimism about women’s status. A March 1932 article entitled ‘Why men hate us’ best illustrates Wilkinson’s gender radicalisation.252 After the ‘marvellous time’ of the 1920s a ‘conspiracy to drive women back to Victorian shackles’ had taken place. She railed against a ‘silent but invincible sex-freemasonry of men’ and a ‘hidden but bitter sex-struggle’. The particular target was the independent woman worker. Local councils, following London County Council’s lead, had debarred married women from skilled work: teachers, doctors and other experts. ‘Sheltered married women’ were even more hostile than men in this regard. In this article, Wilkinson articulated the idea of gender conflict more fully than at any other time, writing of ‘a deep-rooted sex-struggle in which in the past men have always been the victors’. The purdah, the veil and long trailing skirts were the physical expression of this. This backlash denied careers to a new generation of women and some amongst the older generation were being squeezed out. She criticised the League of Nations’ changing promotion and selection practices. She asked why the BBC overlooked women for the best jobs. She observed that the Cabinet of the National government was the first since 1924 without a woman. With mass unemployment, career women provided an easy scapegoat. She also complained that by ignoring women’s low pay, men were weakening their own position that could be defended through pressing for equal pay. She explicitly connected the backlash to the economic circumstances, as well as a cultural climate in which ‘seductive Marlenes and gold-digging blonde bombshells’ epitomised changing idealisations of womanhood. It had, she noted, become fashionable to sneer at women in public life, especially intelligent women, and their achievements were denied. This cultural shift brought into relief, for Wilkinson, the generational differences between women. She explained that she did not marry because she chose a career and campaigned to end the prejudice against married working women. In practice, married women MPs were those with means. The battle against male discouragement and jealousy had become more arduous and housewives were complicit. So angered was Wilkinson that she wanted to throw bricks through Oxford Street windows as her predecessors had done in 1910. She felt sorry for the young 99
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson women who were denied the opportunities that war had afforded. The young women of the 1930s had to defy social and peer pressures and recapture the pioneer suffrage spirit determined that it was her deeds and not her looks that mattered.253 Symptomatic of this gender radicalisation, in the Star, she reworked Marx’s distinction between use and exchange values. Her language was that of a man-made world rather than capitalism. Insatiable male energy had made civilisation. Their obsession with machinery had produced ‘factory-made homes’, reducing housework to a new domestic boredom. While businessmen were obsessed with price, a woman appreciated an item’s value to her household. This shift in register was both an attempt to popularise a radical Marxist message for a female audience as well as an indication of the radicalisation of her ideas on gender in the early 1930s, seeking to revitalise women’s politics during the backlash. At this time, Wilkinson was playing to different audiences, addressing different social movements, with alternate registers. Thus, in her writing for Plebs or New Dawn, or on topics such as anti-fascism or unemployment, her writing was much more framed within categories of class, capitalism and exploitation. She acknowledged the radicalisation in her gender politics by way of an apology to ‘determined feminists’ whom she had abandoned in the late 1920s. She realised the error of her belief at that time that the battle was won in 1918 and that 1928 ‘tidied up a fag-end’. After women in the Commons had attained such landmarks as the Sex Disqualification Act and the Equal Guardianship of Infants Act, she had believed that: ‘Now it is time to use our votes as human beings, and not always be insisting that we are women.’ Yet the slump had transformed women’s status and both men and married women considered the independent working woman a luxury. In this global context, fascism sought to reassert the ‘master in the house’ principle through the interlocking subordination of household and workplace. She argued that if women did not have equality then ‘the feminist attitude, the banding together of women … becomes imperative’.254
Optimism, parliament and equal pay By April 1934, Wilkinson struck a more optimistic tone, noting a new fighting spirit among women. Whately was campaigning over the married women’s right to work. Women teachers and postal workers were once again pushing for equal pay. Women hunger marchers were challenging the anomaly regulations and young women factory workers resisting speed-ups. In her own union, women members mobilised to defeat a motion calling for a ban on women’s employment in grocery shops.255 From the mid-1930s, Wilkinson focused less frequently and 100
Feminism and the women’s movement
1 Will Dyson’s cartoon about Ellen Wilkinson’s Commons triumph on equal pay. Source: Daily Herald, 1 April 1936. Permission: British Cartoon Archive.
episodically on gender. She objected to the proposal for a morganatic marriage between Edward and Wallis Simpson on ‘feminist’ grounds that it inferred upon Wallis Simpson an inferior status, undermining the fight of intelligent women of the country for equality.256 After her return to the Commons in November 1935, Wilkinson was the only Labour woman MP.257 It fell to her to lead the Joint Committee on Women in the Civil Service’s (JCW) campaign for equal pay in the civil service. Until 1940, Wilkinson was one of equal pay’s pioneering and most consistent advocates.258 The report on the reorganisation of 101
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson the civil service in 1920 prompted former suffragists to combine with relevant civil service trade unions to press for equal pay and an end to the marriage bar in the civil service. With its first meeting on 18 February 1925, Major Hills instigated the JCW’s parliamentary committee and Wilkinson was amongst its original members.259 After the November 1935 general election, the campaign secured the parliamentary time for a private members’ bill. The JCW selected Wilkinson to present the case. The campaign invited Wilkinson to speak at a public meeting on the matter in the Caxton Hall, on 17 March 1936.260 A delegation put the meeting’s motion to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.261 On 1 April 1936, Wilkinson’s amendment to the departmental budgets on equal pay for civil servants came before the Commons. Through the JCW’s lobbying and Wilkinson’s persuasive skill, she was able to score a victory in the Commons for the amendment, government opposition notwithstanding.262 This was despite the fact that women MPs were divided on the issue, with Rathbone and Atholl opposing it. The victory was short-lived. Baldwin forced a second vote five days later, making it effectively a motion of confidence in the government and was able to overturn the initial decision.
Feminist internationalism and the UN There was a transnational dimension to Wilkinson’s gender radicalisation in the 1930s. Her travels to the USA, Spain and Germany in particular informed her sense of a global threat to women’s status. She spoke of her travels to Nazi Germany in the women’s movement. As early as March 1933, she sounded the alarm about the plight of German women in Pearson’s Weekly and Time and Tide, calling on British women’s organisations to protest at women’s expulsion from several occupations.263 The following month she addressed the Six Point Group on the treatment of women in Germany.264 She told how storm troopers drove Jewish women out of the universities, medicine, law, social work and local government. Nazism constituted a general assault on women as a whole. The Reichstag – once the parliament with the world’s highest female representation – no longer had a single woman MP. She detailed the despair and the suicides of women. Telling of the brutal beatings inflicted upon women, she displayed the weapons used, photographic evidence and medical certificates.265 In the context of fascist attempts to claim egalitarian credentials, Wilkinson debated ‘fascism means the enslavement of women’ in February 1934 on the invitation of the Women’s Clerks and Secretaries Association.266 Helping to take anti-fascism into the women’s movement, on 4 July 1934, she moved
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Feminism and the women’s movement the main motion of the British women’s conference in preparation for the Paris Congress of Women against Fascism and War to be held in August 1934.267 In autumn 1934, Wilkinson attended the International Women’s Co-operative Guilds conference for NUDAW. She reported about the moving speech from the chair of Emmy Freundlich, the Austrian socialist recently released from Dolfuss’s prison as a consequence of international pressure. The conference discussed the position of women under fascism and the place of the housewife in new theories of planning.268 Networking with co-operative, political, peace, anti-fascist and feminist organisations, Wilkinson celebrated International Women’s Day of 1938 at St Pancras Town Hall. Wilkinson recalled International Women’s Day celebrations in Russia and Spain and paid tribute to Spanish women, reminiscing about Ibárruri’s oratory at the Madrid bullring. For Wilkinson, Ibárruri epitomised an ideal of revolutionary womanhood ‘filled with such courage, ardour and nobility of spirit that she inspired everyone with whom she came in contact, and was loved and revered throughout the country’.269 Making international comparisons of women’s status, she surveyed the situation of American women. She sought to challenge their Cinderella complex, a gendered version of the American dream. In this, US women believed the illusion of the land of opportunity and disregarded the threats of fascism and war. ‘Feminism’ (implying political equality) was a luxury of a stable prosperous state that would be abandoned at a time of economic crisis and preparation for war. She identified similarities with Britain. The slump prompted the male grousing about working women and restrictions of women’s work. While American women were more likely to be in business or in positions of social influence, because of the character of American machine politics and the patronage of male political bosses, the opportunities in politics were fewer.270 The paradox was, in her view, that women were becoming more open to politics. In Germany, in contrast, women had lost everything. In the turbulent 1930s, she glimpsed an optimist future on her travels. When Wilkinson visited a collective farm in Castañar in Spain in the revolutionary summer of 1936, she read a deep significance into the attitude of the women who served them food: The girls seemed to me, as we laughed at each other’s ways, to be the hope of the world, straight-backed, broad-shouldered, they seem to have got quite clear the idea that the farm belonged to the group.
So just as she had talked of the amazing heroism of the working-class women in the caravan colony in her former Middlesbrough constituency, Wilkinson identified with the revolutionary and heroic potential
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson of humble women in Spain.271 This was a leitmotif of her travel writings on India, the USA and France, encountering women in struggle who revealed their transformative potential.272 Wilkinson’s feminist internationalism was reinforced during the 1930s. Her long association with the women’s movement internationally had built up a string of transnational contacts. The Second World War transformed the feminist dimension of her internationalism. With Cabinet responsibility after 1940, she participated in the official process of determining the place of women in the post-war global order, being an assistant delegate to the San Francisco United Nations Treaty Conference of April–June 1945.273 In an interview in San Francisco, she objected to segregating women into ‘women’s organisations’, observing that ‘we are all human beings: we agree and disagree just as men do’.274 At the UN’s first assembly in February 1946, Wilkinson signed an open letter to the women of the world. The letter indicated her view of the UN’s role regarding women and Wilkinson’s adoption of a liberal feminist internationalism. First, the letter noted the progress that women had made during the war, their role in reconstruction and the opportunities and responsibilities that they will face in the post-war world. Secondly, women should prepare their children to understand world affairs, to understand the need for international cooperation as well as domestic affairs. Thirdly, women should not permit themselves to be misled by anti-democratic movements. Finally, the signatories shared the goal of women’s full participation in the life of their countries and the world community.
Conclusion Thus, Wilkinson’s involvement in the women’s movement is crucial to understanding her political trajectory. At the level of her ideas, Wilkinson developed a gendered critique of pre-war British socialism (and around 1915 of old-fashioned trade unionism with her call for ‘industrial unionism for women’). She sought to fuse democratic suffragism and Labour politics. Though she worked for the NUWSS, she was close to suffragette activists at the same time condemning the WPSU’s abandonment of ‘Manchester’ for ‘Mayfair’. With the war, both her socialism and her gender politics radicalised and fused into a Marxist feminism centred around the achievements of the early Soviet state and admiration for Kollontai. As such, she was critical of bourgeois feminism. After quitting the CPGB, these criticisms mellowed but she strongly defended protective legislation against equalitarian feminists. Although she never advocated separatism, she did call for a measure of women’s self- organisation and for better representation within the Labour movement. 104
Feminism and the women’s movement Equally, she collaborated with all manner of women’s organisations. Over the course of the 1920s, she became more focused on women’s reforms rather than revolution and she tended to become complacent about the status of women once suffrage was achieved. Serving on the NEC constrained her gender politics, especially over family allowances and birth control, alienating herself from even Labour women activists over these matters. With the depression, feminism returned as a more frequent marker of her political vocabulary signalling a radicalisation of her gender politics. She became closer to the Time and Tide circle of Bloomsbury feminism. The backlash against women meant for a time her writing emphasised gender difference and sex struggle rather than the tropes of the desire for equality and shared human emancipatory possibility. The transnational dimension introduced anti-fascism into the mix of Wilkinson’s feminism though ultimately a drift and de-radicalisation of her gender politics occurred. This specific loss of radicalism helped to prepare the major threshold in her politics in 1940. Thus, Wilkinson’s gender politics was a distinctive part of her political journey and was actively constitutive of all its phases.
Notes 1 2 3
Time and Tide, 7 March 1936. Daily Herald, 20 August 1928. Observer, 9 February 1947. Plebs, May 1933. Daily Express, 17 January 1934. 4 Karen Hunt, ‘Why Manchester? Why the Pankhursts? Why 1903? Reflections on the Centenary of the WPSU’, Manchester Region History Review, 17, 1 (2003), pp. 2–9. Wilkinson reporting on a debate in the women’s union, Manchester University Magazine, March 1913, p. 136. Debating modern women and marriage, Manchester University Magazine, November 1912, p. 18. 5 NUSC TDWR Helen Wilson, ‘Wilkinson, 1891–1947’, unpublished manuscript, pp. 9–10. 6 NUSC TDWR Wilson, ‘Wilkinson’, p. 22. Manchester City Archives Annot Robinson papers (MCA AR) MISC 718 73 notice for memorial meeting, 11 December [1925]. 7 Women’s Leader, 6 November 1925. 8 Common Cause, 24 November 1910 and 1 December 1910. 9 Stella Davies, ‘The Young Wilkinson’, Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 107, 3 (1964–65), p. 37. 10 Sandra Holton, Feminism and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain 1900–1918, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 76–115. For Wilkinson and the campaign in Accrington, Jill Liddington, The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel: Selina Cooper, 1864–1946, London, 1984, p. 245. 11 Manchester Guardian, 24 January 1924. 105
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 12 Ibid., 27 May 1914. 13 MCA AR MISC 718 168 Manchester and District Federation of Women’s Federation of Women’s Suffrage Societies programme. 14 Christine Collette, ‘Questions of Gender: Labour and Women’, in Brian Brivati and Richard Heffernan (eds), The Labour Party: a Centenary History, Houndmills, 2000, pp. 402–421. Christine Collette, For Labour and Women: the Women’s Labour League, Manchester, 1989, pp. 203 and 216. 15 NUSC TDWR Margaret Corby-Ashby to Reid, 5 June 1974. 16 Labour Leader, 9 October 1913. 17 Ibid., 2 July 1914. 18 Ibid., 23 July 1914. Complaining of masculinism within the ILP regarding the AUCE campaign, Ibid., 11 November 1915. 19 Greater Manchester County Record Office M50 2 8 1 Election Fighting Fund Committee minutes, 14 July 1915. 20 Co-operative Employé, July 1915. 21 Manchester Guardian, 11 December 1914. 22 Margaret Llewelyn Davies (ed.), Life as We Have Known it, by Cooperative Working Women, London, 1977. 23 Manchester Guardian, 14 January 1915. 24 Ibid., 11 August 1915. 25 Helen Ward, A Venture in Goodwill. Being the Story of the Women’s International League, London, 1929, pp. 10 and 35. Jo Vellacott, Pacifists, Patriots and the Vote: The Erosion of Democratic Suffragism in Britain during the First World War, Houndmills, 2007, pp. 121–126. 26 Reid, ‘Wilkinson’, pp. 14–18. 27 Manchester Guardian, 22 February 1916. 28 Co-operative Employé, August 1916. 29 Ibid., October 1916. 30 NUDAW General Secretary’s reports, Wilkinson’s report, 18 October 1917. In September 1917, Wilkinson attended the Women’s International Council of Socialist and Labour Organisations. Report on the executive council, 23 September 1917, AUCE Journal, November 1917. 31 On new and old feminism, Hilda Kean, ‘Searching for the Past in Present Defeat: the Construction of Historical and Political Identity in British Feminism in the 1920s and 1930s’, Women’s History Review, 3, 1 (1994), pp. 57–80. 32 Johanna Alberti, ‘The Turn of the Tide: Sexuality and Politics, 1928–31’, Women’s History Review, 3, 2 (1994), pp. 169–190. 33 Johanna Alberti, Beyond Suffrage: Feminists in War and Peace, 1914–28, Basingstoke, 1989. Cheryl Law, Suffrage and Power: the Women’s Movement, 1918–1928, London, 1997. 34 She was sensitive to criticism of hobnobbing with aristocratic women, denying attending social functions at Rhondda’s, North Eastern Daily Gazette, 19 June 1926. 35 Daily Herald, 27 May 1919. 36 Ward, A Venture in Goodwill, pp. 10 and 35. Deborah Stienstra, Women’s Movements and International Organizations, Houndsmills, 1994, pp. 55–61. 106
Feminism and the women’s movement Arno J. Mayer, Wilson Vs. Lenin: Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918, Cleveland, OH, 1964. 37 Report of the International Women’s Congress, Zurich May 12 to 17 1919, Geneva, 1919, p.78. 38 International Women’s Congress, Zurich, p. 92. 39 Marx Memorial Library, Helen Crawfurd’s unpublished autobiography, pp. 153–154. 40 International Women’s Congress, Zurich, p. 138. 41 NUSC TDRW Lucy Middleton to Reid, 15 June 1971. 42 Manchester Guardian, 22 June 1925. 43 Ellen Wilkinson and Edward Conze, Why War? London, 1934, p. 52. 44 Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936, Cambridge, 1993. 45 Communist Review, November 1921. 46 Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution, pp. 1–3 and 48–57. 47 Bolshevik policy entailed the following principles: sexual relations as a free union; the drawing of women out of the domestic into the public realm through wage labour and socialisation of housework, all of which would lead to the withering away of the family. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution, p. 12. 48 The Listener, 2 April 1930. 49 On Wilkinson’s objection to NEP, Bell, Pioneering Days, pp. 232–233. 50 On foreign visitors in summer 1921, Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, London, 1984, p. 146. 51 Annuaire du Travail: Politique, Économique et Social, Paris, 1923, p. 46. 52 Speech delivered at the Second World Conference of Communist Women, 15 July 1921, www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci–1/ch14.htm, accessed 10 June 2012. 53 Annuaire du Travail, p. 46. 54 Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution, p. 337. 55 Manchester Guardian, 21 November 1923 & 1 November 1924. 56 The Vote, 7 November 1924. 57 Woman’s Leader, 7 November 1924. 58 LPACR, 1925, p.30. 59 The Times, 1 November 1924. 60 Manchester Guardian, 13 November 1924. The meeting took place on 12 November. 61 Ibid., 17 December 1924. 62 Woman’s Leader, 20 December 1924. The Vote, 20 December 1924. 63 Manchester Guardian, 22 May 1925. 64 The Times, 25 November 1930. 65 Universe, 22 May 1926. 66 London Evening Standard, 2 December 1927. 67 Institution of Engineering and Technology Archive (IET), NAEST 93 9 3 International Conference of Women of Women in Science, Industry and Commerce. Manchester Guardian, 8 June 1925. The Times, 15 July 1925. 68 Manchester Guardian, 16 July 1925. South Wales News, 16 July 1925. IET 107
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson NAEST 93 9 2 1 EAW, First Annual Report, November 1924–May 1926, p. 6. 69 The Vote, 2 July 1928. 70 John Grigg, Nancy Astor: Portrait of a Pioneer, London, 1980, p. 89. Lifts home, Sketch, 2 July 1925. 71 New Leader, 29 July 1927, 25 November 1927 and 6 April 1928. 72 Woman’s Leader, 21 November 1924. 73 Manchester Guardian, 9 November 1927. Manchester Guardian, 3 December 1930. 74 Margaret Stansgate, My Exit Visa, London, 1992, p. 64. 75 NUSC TDWR T. Harrison to Reid, 11 May 1975. 76 Reading University Astor Papers (RU AP) Astor’s secretary to Wilkinson, 18 March 1929. 77 RU AP Wilkinson to Miss Irvine, Tuesday, n.d. [1929]. 78 RU AP Wilkinson to Nancy Astor, ‘Sunday’ [postmarked January 1928]. 79 People, 21 June 1926. 80 Claud Cockburn, I, Claud …, Harmondsworth, 1967, pp. 179–182. 81 Maurice Stewart Collis, Nancy Astor: an Informal Biography, London, 1960, p. 189. 82 Mary Agnes Hamilton, ‘Women in politics today’, Political Quarterly, April– June 1932, pp. 226–244. 83 New Leader, 15 November 1929. 84 Estampa, 28 May 1929. Manchester Guardian, 1 July 1927. 85 Daily Herald, 24 January 1928. Clashing over the social set that ran the Women’s Auxiliary Service, Daily Mirror, 16 November 1938. 86 Daily Express, 17 February 1932. 87 Ibid., 19 February 1932. 88 Clarion, 24 March 1934. 89 Manchester Guardian, 15 June 1925. 90 Ibid., 10 July 1925. 91 L’Europe Nouvelle, 15 May 1926. L’Europe Nouvelle, 12 June 1926. 92 IAW, Report of Tenth Congress: Paris, France, 30 May to 6 June 1926, London, 1926, p. 31. 93 The Times, 12 June 1925. 94 Manchester Dispatch, 13 February 1925. 95 Manchester Guardian, 6 May 1930. 96 Ibid., 9 May 1930. 97 Hull History Centre (HHC), Winifred Holtby Collection (WH), Wilkinson to Holtby, n.d. ‘En route north, when stationary – more or less’. 98 IET NAEST 93 Peggy Scott, An Electrical Adventure, n.d., p. 9. 99 Anne-Marie Sohn, ‘Les roles sexuales en France e Inglaterra: una transición suave’, François Thébaud (ed.), Historia de las Mujeres, vol. 5, Madrid, 2000, pp. 109–137. 100 Electrical Age for Women, June 1926. Electrical Age for Women, October 1926. Woman Engineer, June 1925. Manchester Guardian, 12 October 1927. Electrical Age for Women, January 1928. Electrical Age for Women, April 1928. Hull Daily Mail, 14 April 1926. 101 Electrical Age for Women, July 1934. 108
Feminism and the women’s movement 102 Daily Mail, 10 March 1928. Evening News, 12 March 1931. Pearson’s Weekly, 14 March 1931. 103 Liverpool Echo, 13 January 1927. 104 Electrical Age for Women, April 1934, p. 653. 105 Yorkshire Post, 23 October 1937. 106 Chamber of Commerce Journal, 13 February 1930. Manchester Guardian, 17 December 1930. Daily Telegraph, 18 February 1931. 107 HC Deb, 11 July 1928, col. 2313. 108 Pearson’s Weekly, 13 October 1928. 109 The Vote, 12 February 1925. 110 Western Evening News, 18 November 1925. Notts Evening News, 19 November 1925. 111 Time and Tide, 4 December 1925. 112 Louise Jackson, Women Police: Gender, Welfare and Surveillance in the Twentieth Century, Manchester, 2012, pp. 19–20. LPASC NEC minutes, SJC minutes, 10 February 1927. 113 RU AP Wilkinson to Lady Astor, 6 July 1928. Manchester Guardian, 3 August 1928. 114 RU AP Lady Astor to Wilkinson, 17 December 1930; and a circular letter including Wilkinson, 12 December 1930. 115 Notts Journal, 24 November 1925. Reynolds, 29 November 1925. 116 Reynolds News, 17 May 1925. 117 Newcastle Chronicle, 16 July 1925. 118 The Times, 16 July 1925. 119 Newcastle Chronicle, 2 July 1925. 120 Woman’s Leader, 17 July 1925. 121 Graphic, 7 January 1925. 122 The Star, 16 November 1927. 123 The Vote, 20 August 1926. 124 Time and Tide, 29 June 1935. 125 Ibid., 28 September 1935. 126 Manchester Guardian, 31 May 1930. 127 The Vote, 5 August 1927. 128 Morning Post, 16 November 1927. 129 Manchester Guardian, 24 April 1925. 130 New York Telegraph, 11 August 1926. 131 Sketch, 29 December 1926. 132 Daily Express, 28 October 1927. Newcastle Chronicle, 28 October 1927. Newcastle Chronicle, 29 October 1927. Glasgow Record, 29 October 1927. 133 Daily Graphic, 22 June 1925. She had argued as much in 1913, Labour Leader, 31 July 1913. 134 Manchester Guardian, 8 October 1929. 135 The Times, 17 May 1926. 136 NUSC TDWR Thoday-Wilkinson folder, broadcast transcript. 137 NUSC TDWR Thoday-Wilkinson folder, Tom Davies to Thoday, n.d. 138 Manchester Guardian, 8 August 1931. 139 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 8 and 11 August 1931. 109
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 140 Women’s Library 7BSH 5 1 1 11 26 Mrs Oliver Strachey to Mrs L Buse, 30 January 1930. 141 Manchester Guardian, 3 March 1930. 142 Ibid., 25 April 1930. 143 Ibid., 26 February 1929. 144 HC Deb, 31 October 1930, col. 341. 145 New Leader, 28 February 1930. HC Deb, 28 November 1930, cols 1675–1755. 146 Edinburgh Evening Dispatch, 16 March 1931. 147 Referee, 7 February 1925. 148 Glasgow Herald, 29 November 1926. 149 Manchester Evening News, 25 January 1927. 150 Manchester Guardian, 26 January 1927. 151 Ibid., 28 June 1927. 152 Time and Tide, 4 February 1927. 153 Woman’s Leader, 11 February 1927; Manchester Guardian, 2 February 1927. 154 Daily Herald, 22 February 1927. 155 Manchester City News, 25 February 1927. 156 Plebs, May 1933. London Metropolitan University, The Women’s Library 5 ODC D4 Women Workers: ‘Restrictive Legislation and the Industrial Woman Worker’. A reply by Open Door Committee (ODC) to statement by the Standing Joint Committee of Women’s Industrial Organisations, February 1928. 157 Labour Magazine, January 1925. 158 Evening Standard, 12 February 1925. Evening News, 20 February 1925. 159 Wilkinson’s article ‘Vote for the girl of 21’, South Wales News, 19 March 1925. 160 The Vote, 22 January 1926. Glasgow Herald, 25 January 1926. The Times, 4 February 1926. The Times, 11 February 1926. Eastern Evening News, 12 November 1926. South Wales News, 2 December 1926. 161 Daily Telegraph, 27 February 1926. Westminster Gazette, 22 February 1927. Sunday Chronicle, 21 February 1926. 162 At an Actress’ Franchise League meeting for the vote at 21 and for peeresses to enter the Lords. Women’s Leader, 25 June 1926. 163 The Times, 17 June 1926. 164 Harold Smith, The British Women’s Suffrage Campaign, 1866–1928, Harlow, 2007, p. 102. 165 LPASC NEC minutes, SJC minutes, 10 February 1927 and 15 September 1927. 166 Daily Herald, 5 July 1928. Time and Tide, 2 July 1928. Women over the age of 30 renting furnished rooms could not vote. 167 Daily Herald, 1 January 1927. 168 Ibid., 6 April 1927. 169 New Leader, 4 April 1928. 170 Ibid., 20 April 1928. 171 Labour Magazine, May 1929. On parliament see, Newcastle Journal, 9 September 1936 and Yorkshire Post, 9 September 1936. 110
Feminism and the women’s movement 172 Harold Smith, ‘Sex vs. class: British feminists and the Labour movement, 1919–1929’, Historian, 47, 1 (1984) pp. 19–37. 173 LPACR, 1925, p. 72. LPACR, 1926, p. 67. Daily Herald, 10 January 1925. 174 AUCE reports, Wilkinson’s Report of Labour Party Conference of Women, London, 16–18 October 1918. 175 Annie spoke in the debate Labour Woman, 1 June 1921. 176 Labour Woman, 1 June 1922. 177 Sunday Worker, 24 May 1925. Labour Woman, 1 June 1925. 178 The Times, 8 September 1926. 179 Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 8 September 1926. Co-operative News, 18 November 1926. 180 Sunday Worker, 15 & 22 March 1925. 181 Labour Woman, 1 June 1927. 182 New Leader, 22 July 1927. The Times, 22 July 1927. 183 New Leader, 12 October 1928. 184 Plebs, January 1928. When she had urged women’s attendance at an educational meeting for the ILP and men on the local committee had asked about their Sunday dinners, Wilkinson suggested cookery classes for men. Labour Leader, 23 October 1913. 185 LPACR, 1926, pp. 188–9. 186 New Leader, 14 February 1930. 187 LPASC NEC minutes, Meeting of representative on SJC, 14 February 1929. 188 Whose wife, Wilkinson called, one of the ‘last remaining feminists’, The Leader, 27 February 1937. 189 Radio Times, 18 October 1929. 190 Daily Herald, 6 October 1927. Matthew Worley, Labour Inside the Gate: A History of the Labour Party Between the Wars, London, 2005, pp. 11–12. 191 Manchester Guardian, 14 May 1930. 192 Graves, Labour Women, pp. 91–93. Hannam and Hunt, Socialist Women, p. 98. Karen Hunt and June Hannam, ‘Socialist Women, Birth Control and Sexual Politics in Britain in the 1920s’, in P. Pasteur, S. Niederacher, M. Mesner (eds), Sexualität, Unterschichtenmilieus und ArbeiterInnenbewegung. Leipzig, 2003, pp. 177–187. 193 Seeing Wilkinson as inexplicably aloof during the controversy, Vernon, Wilkinson, p. 98. Christine Collette, The Newer Eve: Women, Feminists and the Labour Party, Basingstoke, 2009, p. 76. 194 Labour Woman, 1 June 1925. 195 Daily Herald, 29 May 1925. 196 Labour Woman, 1 July 1925. 197 HC Deb, 9 February 1926, cols 849–857. 198 Reid interviews: Dora Russell. Though she failed to recall Wilkinson’s subsequent opposition. 199 Daily Sketch, 11 October 1926. 200 LPASC NEC minutes, 23 February 1927 and 23 March 1927. 201 NUDAW executive council minutes, 20 February 1927. 202 From press cuttings, Clarion [n.d. c. 23 June 1927]. 203 Labour Woman, 1 June 1927. LPASC NEC minutes, 22 June 1927 and 7 111
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson February 1928. 204 Daily Herald, 6 October 1927. 205 New Leader, 14 October 1927. 206 Report of the National Conference of Labour Women, Portsmouth, 16–17 May 1928, London, 1928, pp. 26–27. 207 Daily Herald, 22 May 1928. 208 Ibid., 24 May 1928. Stephen Brooke, Sexual Politics: Sexuality, Family Planning, and the British Left from the 1880s to the Present Day, Oxford, 2011. 209 Daily Herald, 26 May 1928. 210 Ibid., 28 May 1928. 211 Ibid., 30 May 1928. 212 Ibid., 31 May 1928. 213 Reid Interviews: Amy Wild and Ada Davies. 214 Susan Pedersen, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience, New Haven, CT, 2004, p. 214. 215 With equal representation from the NEC and the TUC, John MacNicol, The Movement for Family Allowances 1918–45: a Study in Social Policy Development, London, 1980, pp. 144–149. 216 MRC TUC Archive MS 292 117 2 letter Ellen Wilkinson to Margaret Bondfield, 21 May 1928. 217 LPASC LP NEC minutes, Joint meeting TUC GC and NEC minutes 26 July 1928. LPASC LP NEC minutes, 4 September 1928. See also Howell, MacDonald’s Party, p. 364. 218 LPASC LP NEC minutes, 29 September 1928. 219 Manchester Guardian, 1 October 1929. 220 Ibid., 2 April 1929. NUDAW executive council minutes, 22 February 1930. 221 Bournemouth Daily Echo, 24 March 1931. 222 Manchester Evening Chronicle, 29 April 1931. Also clashing over the matter at the previous Labour Party Conference, Daily Mail, 7 October 1930. 223 Manchester Guardian, 7 April 1931. 224 Tribune, 8 July 1938. 225 The TUC dropped opposition to family allowances during the war, thereby establishing a consensus in Labour movement. LPASC NEC minutes, 21 February 1941. 226 Daily Herald, 24 April 1928. 227 Ibid., 12 May 1928 & 16 May 1928. 228 Ibid., 7 May 1929. 229 Labour Magazine, May 1929. 230 Daily Herald, 13 May 1929. 231 Manchester Guardian, 2 June 1929. 232 Ibid., 4 June 1929. 233 Ashby presided and Fawcett, Whately and Courtney were present. The Times, 20 July 1929. At a Forum Club dinner with Atholl on 22 April, The Times, 23 April 1929. 234 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 4 June 1930. 235 Pearson’s Weekly, 22 November 1930 to 17 June 1933. 112
Feminism and the women’s movement 236 NUSC TDWR Beryl Hughes to Reid, 9 July 1974. Sometimes unsigned, sometimes as ‘East Wind’, one of the ‘Four Winds’. 237 Muriel Mellown, ‘Lady Rhondda and the Changing Faces of British Feminism’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 9, 2 (1987), pp. 7–13. Shirley M. Eoff, Viscountess Rhondda: Equalitarian Feminist, Columbus, OH, 1991. 238 HHC WH, Wilkinson to Holtby, n.d. ‘Saturday’. 239 Pedersen, Eleanor Rathbone, p. 196. 240 HC Deb, 20 February 1931, cols 1641–1703. Yorkshire Herald, 16 February 1931. 241 Tit Bits, 1 October 1932. Daily Independent, 28 November 1932. 242 Time and Tide, 15 February 1947. 243 Time and Tide, 12 October 1935, p. 1434. 244 HHC WH 3 327 03 Wilkinson to Holtby, Monday, en route to East Fife [February 1933]. 245 Viscountess Rhondda, This Was My World, London, 1933, p. x. 246 Manchester Sunday Chronicle, 24 May 1931. After describing women who remained financially dependent on their husbands as cave-women, Daily Mail, 19 May 1931. 247 Pearson’s Weekly, 11 July 1931. 248 London Opinion, 25 April 1932. Cleveland Standard, 25 April 1931. 249 Action, 18 September 1937 and 12 November 1938. 250 Daily Independent, 28 November 1932. Johanna Alberti, Eleanor Rathbone, London, 1996, pp. 95–96. Time and Tide, 8 May 1937. 251 North East Daily Gazette, 14 March 1931. 252 John Bull, 26 March 1932. 253 The Star, 17 January 1934. 254 Ibid., 19 September 1935. 255 Sunday Chronicle, 6 April 1934. 256 Time and Tide, 12 December 1937. She also objected to the pair’s sympathy for the Third Reich, New York Times, 16 December 1937. 257 Until Agnes Hardie’s election on 8 September 1937, Manchester Guardian, 8 September 1937. 258 Sunday Chronicle, 8 April 34. For equal pay of health inspectors on Manchester council, The Vote, 16 January 1925. Moving equal pay at the Labour Women’s Conference, Manchester Guardian, 5 June 1930. Time and Tide, 2 December 1939. Now opposing the Woman Power Committee headed by Conservative women, TNA LAB 26 59 Wilkinson to Bevin, 3 July 1940. 259 London Metropolitan University, Women’s Library (LMU WL), 6 JCS FL 339, JCW minutes, 30 March 1925; she is also mentioned as a member in 1929, Ibid., 28 October 1929. 260 LMU WL 6 JCS FL 339, JCW public meeting leaflet for 18 March 1936. 261 Harold Smith, ‘British Feminism and the Equal Pay Issue in the 1930s’, Women’s History Review, 5, 1 (1996), pp. 97–110. 262 HC Deb, 1 April 1936, col. 2017; HC Deb, 6 April 1936, cols 2444–2479. 263 Pearson’s Weekly, 18 March 1933. Time and Tide, 15 April 1933. 113
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 264 Focusing on the anti-fascism of Mitchison, Holtby, Rhondda and Woolf, Johanna Alberti, ‘British feminists and anti-fascism in the 1930s’, in Sybil Oldfield (ed.), This Working-day World: Women’s Lives and Culture(s) in Britain, 1914–1945, London, 1994, pp. 112–124. Julie Gottlieb, ‘Varieties of Feminist Responses to Fascism in inter-war Britain’, in Nigel Copsey and Andrzej Olechnowicz (eds), Varieties of Anti-fascism: Britain in the Interwar Period, Basingstoke, 2010. 265 Sunday Referee, 21 May 1933. 266 The Blackshirt, 2–8 March 1934 and 16 April 1936. 267 New Leader, 13 July 1934. Chantecler, 1 July 1934. 268 NUDAW PGSR, 14 October 1934. 269 Co-operative News, 24 March 1938. Daily Worker, 8 March 1938. 270 Independent Woman, March 1935. The Star, 30 April 1935. 271 Paying particular attention to the efforts of anarchist women of mujeres libres and the POUM’s women’s commission, Mary Nash, Rojas: las Mujeres Republicanas en la Guerra Civil, Madrid, 1999. Frances Lannon, ‘Women and Images of Women in the Spanish Civil War’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6, 1 (1991), pp. 213–228. 272 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 4 May 1931. 273 US Department of Labor, International Documents on the Status of Women, Washington, 1947, pp. 69–70. 274 Christian Science Monitor, 12 May 1945.
114
3 The trade union movement
While she did certainly not desist from socialist or suffrage politics, Wilkinson’s principal preoccupation during the First World War was trade unionism.1 Her long association with the shop workers’ union began with a job application. The Co-operative Employé’s May 1915 issue advertised a women’s organiser’s post at £2 5s per week, to reside in Manchester with responsibilities including ‘correspondence, the organisation of trade union movements for women, canvassing for new members, platform speaking’.2 On 18 July 1915, the AUCE executive appointed Wilkinson as a women’s organiser. Her connection with the union lasted until her death. As Deborah Thom has observed, Wilkinson was one of the relatively small number of women trade union organisers drawn from the socialist or the suffrage movement who played a disproportionate role in drawing women into the unions during this period.3 The AUCE was founded in 1895 during the height of new unionism.4 Initially, the AUCE was far from a national organisation being strongly concentrated in the north-west of England. By 1896, it had a paltry 2,414 members and only 60 of them were women.5 Over time, it was able to extend its geographical implantation and by 1915 had accrued 50,000 members. Wilkinson’s new post coincided with AUCE reorganisation and consolidation. Two national organisers were appointed alongside the new women’s organiser post that Wilkinson secured.6
The AUCE and the war Wilkinson started work on 30 August. The union’s journal introduced her as a university graduate, the secretary of the Women’s War Interests Committee in Manchester and a ‘keen suffragist’.7 Her organising experiences and personal qualities had clearly impressed the union’s leadership.
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson The Co-operative Employé carried Wilkinson’s organiser’s reports. Her first one detailed her initiation at a dinner-time meeting at the Irlam soap works. For the remainder of the week, she worked on correspondence, reading reports in the AUCE’s Manchester headquarters as well as dealing with a dismissal case in Crumpsall. The Monday and Tuesday of the following week she spent in Liverpool canvassing for membership in shops, followed by a recruitment meeting. The week also included a conference on Substituted Female Labour (SFL) in Manchester, and campaigning amongst seasonal women workers in Wigan.8 She attended an AUCE mass meeting in Sheffield where, despite opposition from male trade unionists in the Shirt and Jacket Workers’ Union, the AUCE was trying to organise women at the Trippet Lane CWS clothing factory. These activities acquainted Wilkinson not only with the trade union organiser’s hectic routines, but also the specific characteristics of organising women workers. Even at this early stage, she encountered resistance from other unions and male trade unionists. Employers, even within the co-operative movement, substituted male workers with cheaper, often young, women with little experience of work or trade unionism. The AUCE’s policy of equal pay for equal work led to conflict with other unions, especially craft unions organising within the co-operative movement. Unlike some other unions, the AUCE took a progressive stance on women’s employment. For instance, it applauded Sylvia Pankhurst’s campaigning in the East End of London amongst women factory workers; she in turn admired the AUCE’s stance on equal pay.9 Very quickly Wilkinson realised that despite the co-operative movement’s democratic formalities, those delegated to manage it could act like other employers as regards their employees’ pay and conditions. The AUCE consequently had fractious relations with both the co-operative movement and other unions. Indeed, the union believed that the TUC treated it unfairly in adjudications over encroachment with craft unions. This occasioned the AUCE to quit the TUC in April 1915, reinforcing the union’s pugnacity.10 Whereas the craft unions rejected AUCE recruitment of any co-operative employee in their craft, the AUCE espoused the industrial unionist philosophy wherein a union covering all workers in the co-operative societies should confront the employers.11 Sir William Richardson described this moment as the ‘birth’ of shopworkers’ trade unionism.
‘The question of the hour’: Substituted Female Labour (SFL) War brought a climatic change for trade unionism. With men volunteering for the army in their droves in the early war months and then conscription, a sharp labour shortage occurred and this proved 116
The trade union movement conducive to strengthening the unions. With government and employer encouragement, women found new employment opportunities, resulting in an additional 1.3 million women workers.12 In the wholesale and retail trade, by April 1918, there had been a 70% increase in female employment, with the total standing at 850,000. By 1918, there were 1,224,000 female trade unionists, a wartime increase of 160%. For men, the increase had been 45%. Craft unions viewed the replacement of skilled men with the unskilled and women as ‘dilution’ and had always resisted such intrusions into their prerogatives.13 Dilution was not the same as substitution, as the first entailed the replacement of skilled with less skilled labour, while the latter replaced it on the grounds of equivalent skill. Of course, these two notions overlapped given masculine assumptions about the quality of male work and the introduction of inexperienced women. Thus, a similar battery of objections greeted substitution in the Co-operative movement and dilution in engineering. The AUCE’s rival, the National Shop Assistants’ Union, rejected the notion of equal pay for substituted labour instead calling for 75% of male wages.14 There was not even a consensus amongst Labour women. On 28 July 1917, Wilkinson attended the Standing Joint Committee of Women’s Industrial Organisations (SJC, the Labour Party’s advisory body on women, formed in 1916) at Central Hall, Westminster, with Mary MacArthur in the chair. Wilkinson challenged Marion Phillips who had argued that it took three women to do the work of two men. The AUCE women’s organiser could point to the experience of her union in successfully fighting for the principle of equal pay for equal work.15 Wilkinson enlivened the AUCE’s SFL campaign. In 1915, the general secretary described this ‘historical’ policy as occupying a ‘foremost place’ in the AUCE’s work and noted that initially it brought ‘a veritable storm of indignation … and much vituperation’ from the employers.16 Swiftly becoming an expert on the topic, Wilkinson addressed branch meetings and regional conferences and was included in delegations or in negotiations about this matter. Some societies acceded to the AUCE’s demands for equal pay for equivalent work. Others doggedly refused.17 Wilkinson encountered several chauvinistic justifications for women’s low pay. There were, for instance, the claims that women reached their optimum efficiency at the age of 18, implying that junior pay rates were appropriate.18 The union articulated its position in terms of gender harmony and even as a patriotic duty: equal pay would protect the future pay and conditions of the men serving at the front. Wilkinson noted that originally the campaign failed to attract women who believed the union would protect the male monopoly in the grocery shops. That changed when they witnessed the union’s – or specifically Wilkinson’s – determination.19 For her, women’s entry into 117
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson the Co-op’s grocery shops was ‘but one stage of the long and painful march of women to freedom’. Her suffrage days taught her a repertoire of arguments to handle those co-operative societies resistant to change. First, their rationalisations echoed anachronistic bigotry about women’s innate incapacities. Wilkinson reeled off the antecedents: whether women had souls, whether women should be paid wages for their work, whether they were fit to look after their own money, whether they could become doctors because they would faint at the sight of blood. Time had proved such notions ridiculous.20 For her, trade unionism’s future depended on women so the unions needed to embrace equal pay and women’s freedom. Although this matched union policy, it was Wilkinson who articulated it with such verve, wit and energy that the AUCE’s SFL campaign bore her personal imprint. Despite the union’s formal position, this did not always filter down to the ranks. On several occasions, Wilkinson remarked upon the sparse female attendance at meetings on substitution. For instance, Wilkinson reported that at meetings in Eccles, Oldham and Leeds in early November 1915 the masculine view of substitution as a threat to male wage rates prevailed. In such circumstances, she realised that the union was unlikely to enthuse women.21 Moreover, it was no straightforward matter to encourage women workers to take industrial action.22 Barbara Drake noticed that strikes transformed women’s attitudes to unions, as it was through collective action that women ‘lose their fear’.23 Wilkinson observed that during the Pendleton dispute, ‘women seemed to waver before the fight … [but] in the thick of it … were amongst our keenest warriors’.24 Many women were making ‘splendid secretaries’ which was the ‘most useful war work’. She reflected: ‘We women must put silly notions of what we cannot or think we cannot do aside, and seriously tackle the problem of keeping our beloved Union together while the men are away.’25 The SFL campaign’s success encouraged the union to widen its commitment to women’s labour rights. Thus, in 1917, the General Secretary anticipated post-war campaigns to secure equal pay for women in formerly male occupations.26 Wilkinson also identified special women’s grievances over inadequate sanitary facilities for women grocery or laundry workers as well as the ‘male manager problem’, code for chauvinism, misunderstanding and sexual harassment.27 Such language demonstrated contemporary difficulties, as Angela Woollacott has observed, in addressing such problems openly.28 While it was Wilkinson who initially pushed this question, eventually the general secretary published a pamphlet on the public health laws to address sanitary conditions in shops.29
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The trade union movement The AUCE and industrial unionism If the AUCE’s campaign on female substituted labour overlapped with Wilkinson’s militant position on labour and women’s rights, so too did its broader attitude to trade unionism. The 1914 Annual Delegate Meeting (ADM) adopted industrial unionism.30 When the Co-operative Employé’s editor introduced Wilkinson, he remarked that she was a ‘keen industrial unionist’. This creed had come to be the AUCE’s trade union philosophy and organising strategy. Within the leadership, it was associated particularly with Joseph Hallsworth.31 This had its roots in the new unionism of the 1880s but matured with the transnational current of syndicalist ideas that had spread in Britain during the great unrest of 1910–14. Despite the masculine assumptions amongst these currents, both presented possibilities to redress the heavy male preponderance of the trade union movement.32 Syndicalism was controversial within the trade union movement as it rejected craft unionism. As Wilkinson herself observed, right-wing opponents of industrial unionism on trades councils would paint a lurid picture of the AUCE encroachment which would menace even the miners or railworkers’ unions if their industries were in co-operative hands. The AUCE did recruit members from the crafts operating within the co-operative societies. Their bitter rivals the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks proposed AUCE expulsion from trades councils across the country in spring 1916 with limited success.33 Voices within the co-operative press also followed these calls. Although the AUCE was not formally part of the movement, its leadership sympathised with the unconventional and militant approach of the Shop Stewards and Workers’ Committee Movement. The AUCE deemed this to be a model for its own representatives adopting the terminology of shop stewards towards war’s end.34 Launched in December 1917 with a demonstration in Manchester, the AUCE’s charter encouraged the shop stewards’ movement.35 Underlining this affinity, the union journal lauded the South Wales miners, alluding to the South Wales Miners’ Reform Movement and its pamphlet the Miners’ Next Step. This coincided with an official union discourse of member self-activity and less reliance on union full-timers. Wilkinson drew directly and consciously on syndicalist language, using the metaphor of the fiery cross appropriated from James Connolly ‘the hero of my early Socialist days’.36 Given her guild socialism, Wilkinson became a powerful advocate of industrial unionism. It clearly attuned with her aspirations for mass recruitment amongst young, unskilled women workers. While syndicalism had been most influential in male occupations like mining and 119
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson engineering, in February 1916, Wilkinson proposed an ‘industrial unionism for women’. Where traditional trade unionism dismissed these possibilities, industrial unionism for women addressed their precarious position within the labour market and sought a collective organisational answer to their vulnerability. For her, modern industry, with its increasing reliance on women, necessitated such an approach; ‘young and floating labour’ could only be bound together with the permanently employed in a single union based on the ‘principle of unity against one form of capital’. Craft unionism in the co-operative movement would therefore condemn the skilled to being replaced and undermined by those it deemed not worthy of a union card. Indeed, the employers preferred ‘a hundred competing unions than face one strong one’. The AUCE’s successes, Wilkinson argued, illustrated the industrial unionist strategy’s strength.37 It had recruited and raised wage rates amongst the skilled but also the seasonally employed dressmakers and the previously unorganised laundry workers. There were certain ambiguities in Wilkinson’s adoption of industrial unionism. Despite a compelling polemic against the craft unions, she remained silent on encroachment and inter-union disputes that such a strategy might occasion, thereby potentially creating divisions to the employers’ advantage. Industrial unionism’s ambiguity helped accommodate the diversity of opinion with the AUCE, which a stricter understanding of syndicalism would have alienated. The union did not subscribe to the full range of industrial unionist positions. While the AUCE leadership would have no problem embracing direct action (within limits), or opposition to craft unionism, or support for union amalgamation, it had greater difficulty with the rejection of political parties, or revolution, or full-blown rank and filism.38 Ironically, the union had opened its political fund for Labour Party candidates. Perhaps most problematic for Wilkinson and the AUCE was the syndicalist critique of the trade union bureaucracy. They circumnavigated this inconsistency via the polemic against craft unionism as though the trade union movement’s future was simply a matter of conservative craft unions against enlightened industrial unionism.
‘Unreasonable guerrilla warfare’: the strike wave of December 1915–17 Wilkinson participated in the union’s first strike over SFL. This happened in Carlisle from 27 December 1915 to 3 January 1916. It was an impressive success, winning equal pay and vindicating the policy of a single union for co-operative employees. Three months earlier in October, the union submitted wage demands of a four shilling advance 120
The trade union movement for adults and two shilling for juniors in the context of an eight-year wage freeze for certain grades and the galloping inflation.39 The Carlisle South-End Co-operative Society management had said that they would discuss wages at the end of December but rejected equal pay because it was employing women on significantly less than the male rate for the job. On 9 December, with the employers refusing talks, the branch sought the national union’s permission to take industrial action. On 15 December, Hallsworth visited the district committee in Newcastle and Wilkinson, national organiser Scott and district secretary C.R. Flynn addressed a mass meeting of members in Carlisle. On 16 December, 221 strike notices were served on the management, with more workers indicating their willingness to strike. Female participation was strong under branch chair Miss Harrison’s leadership. Eighty new members were recruited, many of them women. When Wilkinson, alongside two AUCE national organisers and Flynn, met with the board on 21 December the latter asked for more time to consider SFL. Despite circular letters from the management to employees stating that their strike would be illegal, 277 took strike action. A strike committee was elected and meetings held every evening. Picketing was effective, closing all the branches and turning away deliveries. An all-night picket blocked the bakery. Solidarity came from the trades council and the rail workers’ union. Wilkinson addressed a special women’s meeting with the local Women’s Co-operative Guild to put the strikers’ case.40 On 3 January, a sizeable crowd surrounded the society’s quarterly meeting. The following evening the co-operative board called in the union for a settlement that conceded their principal demands: new female employees would be paid the same rate as the men, a pay increase (3s for adults of both sexes and 2s for juniors of both sexes) and no victimisations or legal action against the union. Ironically, despite these advances, Miss Harrison noted at the ADM three months later the union’s inconsistency, providing a reduced rate of strike pay to women.41 The AUCE registered another early ‘hands down’ success in the SFL campaign in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, a coal and iron-making town, 10 miles east of Glasgow. On 12 February strike notices were handed in. The co-operative board’s response was to pressure potential strikers and to call their employees to a meeting. Consequently, several members withdrew their intentions to strike. Wilkinson and John Simpson, the Scottish district organiser, persuaded members to meet an hour before the board’s meeting with them. At the AUCE meeting, a delegation was designated to demand the union’s right to reply. This agreed, the 150 employees marched to the hall, singing ‘We’ll win the day.’42 When the employers refused the floor to Simpson, the employees walked out. This unity encouraged those who had wavered to re-sign their strike notices. 121
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Careful preparation strengthened the AUCE’s hand: the union placarded the town and Wilkinson had won over other trade unionists, gaining support from local miners’, railway clerks’ and rail workers’ officials on the trades council. Confronted with the prospect of a solid strike, after four hours’ negotiations, the board conceded.43 In her account of the dispute, Wilkinson observed that the women ‘stuck to the cause like limpets’.44 Although this was a victory for the union, Wilkinson noted that the women had further grievances beyond equal pay. She regretted that she did not have the time to take these up and promised that she would return to deal with them once the pressure of the SFL campaign abated.45 Wilkinson was apparently able to make the union more responsive to the new female membership and transcend the officially sanctioned campaign. Wilkinson repeatedly praised women branch officials. This strategy achieved recognition when, in May 1916, the executive issued a circular encouraging district organising secretaries to make special efforts to find women to become branch officers. Districts should seek Wilkinson’s help in her capacity as national women’s organiser to achieve this. These early battles over SFL drew considerable ire from the co-operative movement. The Co-operative Union Ltd’s parliamentary secretary H.J. May accused the AUCE of ‘unreasonableness’, ‘extraordinary methods’, ‘errors of judgement or worse’ and ‘guerrilla warfare’.46 Denouncing ‘the gang of organisers’ (obviously referring to Wilkinson and Simpson) who were ‘fleecing’ and ‘bleeding’ the co-operative movement, an article in the Scottish Co-operator proposed lock-outs and the use of the Women’s Guild as strike-breakers.47 By early 1916, Wilkinson could state that the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society was in a ‘state of panic’ over SFL.48 The Scottish Co-operator had hit out that women did not perform equal work and thus should not be accorded equal pay, relying on the self-serving formula that it took three women to do the work of two men.49 Despite carrying a large majority of the membership combined with successes in recruitment and in industrial disputes, a nagging minority within the AUCE criticised the union’s militant stance or its relations with craft unions. One AUCE correspondent to the Scottish Co-operator doubted the efficacy of the strikes and the bluff about some of its ‘victories’.50 Nevertheless, in October 1916, a northern conference of co-operative societies in Newcastle agreed to the principle of equal pay for SFL.51 The AUCE’s ADM of 1916 was held in Edinburgh on 23 and 24 April. In many ways, it provided an interesting assessment of the union’s position. The principal matters that preoccupied the conference were industrial unionism and SFL. On these questions and others, the 122
The trade union movement executive won endorsement from delegates. It was also the first AUCE conference with a women’s organiser: ‘a most interesting innovation’, as the report in the union journal put it, ‘adding grace and culture to the permanent staff of the Union, and members of the gentle sex to the Union in gratifying numbers’.52 R.B. Padley’s presidential address set the tone of embattled optimism. The union leadership made considerable play of the union’s growth together with its unpopularity with the co-operative management boards and other unions. With membership standing at 51,399, the union had secured 6,355 new members, almost 2,000 higher than the annual average over the previous seven years.53 On the SFL motion, after speeches from the union leadership, the delegates were divided over the motion. Some recognised the necessity of the executive to make a prompt decision on SFL rather than awaiting consultation with the members. Others were critical. One deemed the executive to have acted unconstitutionally and condemned the idea of equal pay because of the inferiority of women’s performance. Another criticised the executive’s lack of support for some branches and their inconsistency in negotiations. Despite this dissent, a card vote carried the motion by an overwhelming majority of 31,529 to 1,530. This majority in favour of a progressive position regarding women workers was supplemented with the passing of a motion in favour of equal pay for junior staff of both sexes. Wilkinson only contributed to the conference against a revision to union insurance regulations that would end the marriage dowry paid to women on leaving service. She argued that this incentive to join the union was necessary given the special employment patterns of young women and the difficulties of recruiting them to the union. These arguments lost out to the demand for equal treatment and the elimination of this special ‘bait for women’.54 Illustrating growing wartime militancy, 270 unorganised women workers at a Glasgow co-operative underwear factory spontaneously walked out on 11 May over cuts in the piece rate.55 Those in a nearby shirt factory and a mineral water factory took sympathy action. The strikes of the Clyde Workers’ Committee (CWC) and the mass rent strikes had heightened the atmosphere in Glasgow.56 The CWC became a model for rank-and-file militancy in other major industrial cities.57 High rents and poor housing fed into wage demands amongst AUCE members at Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society factories. On being notified of the strike, a delegation of Hallsworth, Lumley and Wilkinson approached the Board of Trade on 15 May. The next day, the same three addressed a mass meeting of 500 employees. This passed a motion both empowering the AUCE to negotiate and, if talks were fruitless, to begin the strike procedure. Rejecting the general wage increase, the factory management agreed to the Board of Trade’s other terms if 123
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson the women resumed work. A mass strike meeting unanimously rejected this. Grievances over supervisors’ attitudes towards the women also emerged. Ultimately, the parties agreed to arbitration over the piece rates.58 The union provided a week’s strike pay on condition of a return to work. On this basis, the women returned after a dozen days on strike. Wilkinson noted the ‘splendid solidarity’ of the Glaswegian strikers who, despite considerable hardship, made no mention of breaking ranks until an agreement had been signed. Manifestly impressed, she concluded: ‘New trade unionists, they have shown the way to the men.’ Wilkinson was involved in a major eleven-week dispute in Plymouth involving both the AUCE’s mainly women shop workers as well as dockers, including a young Ernest Bevin. Strike notices were posted on 2 September and up to 1,000 workers took part in the strike.59 Plymouth CWS was paying below the national minimum and the dockers and AUCE entered into an agreement to defeat the wage rates. The strike was embittered because the shop assistants’ union (and the bakers) instructed members to cross picket lines, seeing the dispute as part of their campaign against the AUCE.60 The local Women’s Co-operative Guild supported the strike. Wilkinson condemned the ‘traitor unions’ in her union’s periodical. The strikers voted enthusiastically for the settlement reached on 20 November 1916.61 The long-running dispute’s result was at best a draw and the local branch was weakened as a result.62 The ramifications of the strike were still being felt in early 1917, when it was clear that the employers were not honouring the back to work agreement.63 From January 1917, Wilkinson began an organising drive in the East of Scotland. Here the scattered settlements, paternalist traditions, the inhospitable climate of the winter months and low population density presented particular problems.64 Grangemouth became the crucial battle in the Falkirk area. Strike notices were issued on 24 February. Despite management bravado that had promised to defeat any dispute in a local Co-op branch, the dispute at Grangemouth was, according to Wilkinson, ‘a short, sharp, and wholly successful strike’.65 She noted that the Falkirk wages board had convinced all local co-operative societies to hold their line on their 15% maximum, occupational exclusions, and denial of AUCE recognition. The settlement at Grangemouth broke the 15% threshold and other local co-operatives followed suit. Grangemouth’s five-day strike disrupted the town’s food supply and the co-operative bakery faced crowds of angry women who blamed the employers. Solidarity from the bakers, tailors and dockers isolated the management and undermined efforts to break the strike. Grangemouth acted as an example to other towns in the Falkirk area, even those that had accepted the 15%. Clearly uplifted by the strike wave, Wilkinson 124
The trade union movement wrote of these ‘stirring times in Scotland’. In Grangemouth, the branch held a victory social and dance. To show their deep appreciation for the two campaign organisers the branch presented gifts to Wilkinson and Simpson. Reflecting upon the campaign, the pair noted very satisfactory wages improvements, considerable union recruitment and the election of energetic new branch officials, many of them women. As the AUCE spread the news of its successes in Falkirk, the impact rippled across Scotland to Perth, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Glasgow.66 Further north in Perth and Aberdeen, the co-operative wages board adopted a similar hard line against the AUCE. There too, union recruitment – often among young inexperienced staff – gathered pace and, even where improvements were not secured, membership remained resilient. In Perth, the union won a 2s a week pay increase.67 The AUCE’s ADM of 1917 took place on Easter Monday, 9 April in St George’s Hall, Liverpool.68 Wilkinson spoke to a radical anti-capitalist motion on the ‘state disposal of capital and land’. This motion contrasted capital’s freedoms with labour’s fetters: That this meeting, having regard to the fact that all males between eighteen and forty-one years of age cannot sell or dispose of their labour but must use it for the defence of the realm, petition the Government to have all land and capital placed at the disposal of the State, every adult having one vote.
Wilkinson pointed out that the compulsion of women workers might follow that of male labour and that influential women hostile to workers’ interests were proposing this. Condemning as window dressing the minor advances in female wages in the munitions industry, she insisted that all women should get the vote (not simply the proposed over-30 year-olds). Furthermore, she complained about the concentration of private wealth during wartime and congratulated the Russian people on their recent revolution, who showed their determination that the wealth of the land should be theirs. Indicating the conference’s left-wing atmosphere, the resolution passed unanimously.
Displacement, the AUCE women’s department, organising the laundries By summer 1917, the SFL’s long-term implications became an unavoidable question. Initially, the union’s discourse asserted that equal pay for female substitutes was a way of guaranteeing that wages and conditions would not deteriorate for returning soldiers. The union’s position was that the union would both insist that veterans would be reabsorbed and women would not be forced back into the sweated industries.69 125
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Wilkinson put this case at the Yorkshire district’s special conference on 17 June 1917. The union journal noted that this led to lengthy discussion without indicating its nature. The union organised eighteen conferences on the subject of post-war reconstruction during 1917 and surveyed the membership on the situation.70 In October 1917, the union’s executive council decided to establish a women’s department, putting Wilkinson in charge. The women’s department initially had two principal activities: first to make itself known to women members, and secondly, a national campaign to recruit women laundry workers.71 A winter campaign of conferences introduced women members to the work of the new women’s department. The first meetings took place in Cardiff, Swansea and Newcastle.72 At these meetings, the general secretary Hallsworth stressed the importance of the struggle to improve working women’s status. Wilkinson outlined the women’s department’s objectives, which were to ‘help and advise women in those matters where their interests were not coincident with men’s, and to encourage women to take a greater share in the work of the Union’. The Newcastle conference held on 26 September attracted 46 female and 140 male branch delegates with 40 other women members present as well as observers from the Women’s Co-operative Guild and the Newcastle Labour Representation Committee. Further meetings were announced for sixteen other localities. In the AUCE Journal, Wilkinson presented a fuller rationale of her department’s role in the union premised upon her modernist vision of young womanhood: The typical Girl of To-day is the well-dressed, capable, independent worker, whose keynote is keenness. She is keen about her work, about her sport, about life. And she is very new. The world that before the war confined her to a few channels, and opposed all her efforts to break through into new work, has thrown open every door, and stands urging her to undertake responsibilities that would have caused her protecting parents to shudder.73
Here Wilkinson was adapting the ‘new woman’ to her audience of young working-class women. Woollacott finds no evidence of such conceptions in the cultural consumption of munitions workers and suggests that such ideas were confined to middle-class women with greater educational and social opportunities. This makes Wilkinson’s approach all the more audacious.74 A revolution, Wilkinson declared, had taken place in women’s roles during the war. When other unions worried about women as a threat to wages, employment and union prerogatives, Wilkinson argued that women themselves had remained silent. Others – trade union leaders, middle-class and university women – had spoken
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The trade union movement for them. Wilkinson sought to address their sense of impermanence as well as their desire not to return to the sweated and monotonous work that they had done before the war. Her message was one of self-activity: just as the Labour movement needed more women officials, speakers and councillors, so the AUCE needed more women activists. Wilkinson wanted to ‘harness the keenness of the modern woman to the great trade union wagon’.75 This campaign to enlist the support of women volunteers for the special work of the department secured 120 respondents.76 The women’s department sought to follow up on this success with the ‘all-in’ movement, seeking to boost women membership and a second wave of activists to achieve this. The women’s department also organised a district conference at the Burt Hall, Newcastle with 107 delegates from 46 branches over the employers’ failure to pay female substitutes war bonuses.77 The department’s creation did not eliminate male chauvinism from the union. Wilkinson complained about branch officials’ complacent attitude to female recruitment.78 A letter to the AUCE Journal also bemoaned saleswomen who were ‘less ready, less heady, and less steady’ than men. Factory and workshop women were prone to ‘bad workmanship, bad timekeeping, bad management’ and the only work that they were enthusiastic about was entertaining wounded soldiers.79 The ‘RAK gang’ on behalf of women war workers wrote a prompt rebuttal, pointing out that it was experience rather than gender that initially set female and male workers apart and asked whether the shells of women munitions workers were any less destructive.80 All this coincided with a wider debate within the trade union movement that took place at a series of conferences. In September 1917, Wilkinson attended the SJC conference on reconstruction.81 The conference drew together some of the most prominent women Labour movement activists. Wilkinson argued for ‘equal work for equal pay’, despite opposition from Mary MacArthur and Dr Marion Phillips, WLL secretary. On 19 December 1917, Wilkinson chaired the Organisation of Women in Trade Unions Conference. This conference assessed alternate strategies for organising women workers. Miss Smith-Rose of the Association of Women Post-office Sorters favoured separatist women-only unions like her own. Miss Manican of the Worker’s Union advocated mixed branches, observing that women refined the masculine culture of the public house, coarse language and hyperbole. Miss Talbot of the Shop Assistants’ Union (NAUSA) talked of her union’s women’s councils: these had educated women members but the union leadership had withdrawn resources fearing the formation of women’s branches. Wilkinson relayed the AUCE’s precedent of establishing a women’s department. Its purpose was to overcome the double trap of separatism and the failure to address women’s specific interests when men have 127
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson greater time and trade union experience.82 Overall, the consensus of the conference favoured work in mixed branches rather than separatism. At a conference on women in the unions attended by some hundred or so delegates on 17 October 1918, Wilkinson again made the case for equal pay. With greater numbers of women likely to be in industry after the war, equal pay was essential if pay rates were to be defended. To the family wage argument, she ingeniously countered that because working women’s work did not stop on returning home, they needed money for help with the housework. Equal remuneration was also necessary to prevent resentment between colleagues and to end the fundamental injustice of women being paid less for the same work.83 Another task of the women’s department was to unionise the laundries. This built on successes in recruiting women workers in the laundries of the co-operative movement, but marked a major attempt to break into the private sector. In a sense, the laundry workers held a strategic position between the co-operative and private sectors whereby the AUCE could consolidate both on its expanded female membership and use its successes in collective bargaining in one sector to try to raise wages and conditions in the other. Work in this sphere would open wider possibilities in private retail. The organising campaign entailed recruitment drives, conferences and the creation of shop stewards, mainly in Yorkshire and Lancashire. The union made a breakthrough with private laundries in Bradford after a strike threat. As a result of the campaign, by early 1918, the AUCE participated in national collective bargaining with the National Federation of Co-operative Laundries and established a regional agreement with the National Federation of Laundry Associations.84 By 4 October 1918, Wilkinson could report considerable progress in both branch organisation and pay for laundry workers.85
The Lincoln dispute, the ‘Big CWS strike’ and Wilkinson’s dismissal In summer 1918, a bitter dispute with the local CWS broke out in Lincoln. In circumstances of AUCE de-recognition and refusal to negotiate over the wage claim, the local AUCE tendered strike notices, gaining support for their case from the Lincoln Trades Council, the National Union of General Workers and the local shop stewards’ movement. The local food control committee forced the employers, the Ministry of Labour and the union into arbitration.86 The dispute in Lincoln marked what was perhaps the low point of the acerbic relations with the Shop Assistants’ Union. Wilkinson scathingly condemned their wire-pulling.87 Lincoln connected Wilkinson and the shop stewards’ movement who had recently won an illegal local strike.88 That the Lincoln shop stewards’ movement believed any union de-recognition, including that of 128
The trade union movement the AUCE, to be their prerogative mightily impressed Wilkinson.89 At dinnertime meetings at munitions factories, Wilkinson tapped into the ‘ferment’ over dilution and was emboldened by the vitality of the shop stewards who were ‘not too enamoured with the orthodox trade unionism’ (as she put it).90 An engineering shop stewards committee special meeting offered its full support to Wilkinson and Jagger whom it had invited specially. For Wilkinson, the atmosphere during their thirty-two meetings in Lincoln ‘brought the refreshing memory of the old suffrage campaigns’. These culminated with syndicalist veteran Tom Mann’s appearance at a ‘huge demonstration’ at the Cornhill.91 Though this was ultimately unsuccessful, the AUCE used the co-operative movement’s democratic channels (quarterly meetings, elections and AGM) rather than industrial action.92 Crucially, the union campaigned to elect sympathetic delegates onto the board of the society at the Annual General Meeting in August 1918. With the AGM, the union’s strategy floundered – in AUCE’s account of events – on the committee’s lack of democratic scruples. To an ‘incredulous’ audience of 1,500 – according to Wilkinson – the officers announced a 900 to 570 defeat for the trades council/ AUCE slate. This ended the six-month dispute between the AUCE and the Lincoln Co-operative Society.93 From the leaders of the Lincoln Co-operative Society’s perspective, they had received a mandate based upon the ample dividends that they had furnished the shareholders and their stance of not recognising a non-TUC affiliated union.94 George Harris, the Lincoln Co-operative Society secretary, bitterly attacked Wilkinson for falsehood, denying her ballot-rigging charge.95 In a letter to the Co-operative News, the rival shopworkers’ union secretary W.H. Neale accused her of trying to bluff the workers. Another correspondent described the AUCE as a ‘continual menace to the cooperative movement’.96 A strike that ultimately led to Wilkinson’s dismissal had its origins in disputes amongst CWS printers in Pelaw and Longsight. Longsight printers were locked out on 30 July. With this news, Warrington AUCE printers walked out, though other unions sought to cross picket lines. On 26 August the strike ignited again, spreading to Crumpsall, Irlam, Pelaw, Silvertown, Leman Street (London), Sowerby Bridge, Warrington, Dunston, Longsight, Sun Millers, Slaithwaite, Halifax, Middleton, Star Millers and Trafford Wharf.97 At its height, nearly 10,000 AUCE members were on strike.98 The CWS appealed to the TUC, which called a conference in Derby, at which the AUCE was roundly condemned. Yet it was Board of Trade arbitrators Sir George Askwith and Isaac Mitchell, using the provisions of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), who instructed the AUCE general secretary at a meeting on 7 September to terminate the strike.99 The dispute’s failure led to recriminations inside the union; 129
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson not least, over its £15,000 cost. The executive received complaints about Wilkinson’s conduct and her expenses during the strike. Apparently, she had issued strike instructions without the executive’s permission.100 On 19 October, the executive decided to summon Wilkinson to their next meeting. A Special Delegate Meeting in Leeds on 20 October about union amalgamation aired dissatisfaction focused upon permanent union officials and ‘alleged delays in action, non-consultation of those vitally concerned, changes in policy’.101 Long Eaton and Longsight delegates successfully moved a motion for an inquiry. The union’s historian believed dissatisfaction stemmed from the strike being extended too far and too fast.102 The executive now had to deal with a Special Inquiry Committee. Wilkinson, who failed to attend the executive meeting on 3 November, was instructed to appear before them on the following Sunday.103 At that meeting, Wilkinson explained herself. It seems that both Wilkinson and the executive were playing for time as it was not until their next full meeting that they decided to dismiss Wilkinson. Her notice was to run to 8 February and the executive planned to advertise for a replacement.104 However, as Wilkinson returned the disputed expenses, the way was cleared for her reinstatement. Wilkinson was able to draw on support from such places as Coatbridge and Gillingham for her reinstatement. Her supporters called a Special Delegate Meeting on 2 February, challenging the dismissal because the report of the Committee of Inquiry had not gone before the membership at an ADM.105 Consequently, a special executive meeting on 9 February, the day after her dismissal, reinstated her.106 While this episode remains rather obscure, it was revealing. Unlike some unions after the war, the women’s organiser post was not in question. It is clear that the expenses question aside, Wilkinson antagonised a section of the union at the lay level, probably for her radicalism and her emphasis on women’s recruitment, though she was able to mobilise support from within the union ranks in her defence. Facing institutional discipline, she initially evaded authority, and then acted in a contrite manner rather than quitting on principle. This pattern of behaviour recurred in the face of disciplinary threats from both the Labour Party and the House of Commons. Finally, it shows a left trade union official’s difficulties, in the aftermath of a defeat, facing hostility from the membership.
After the war The 1920s were quieter and more difficult for the union, dealing with retreats, pay cuts, lock outs, high unemployment and deflation. During the decade, the union’s women’s membership halved. Wright Robinson, 130
The trade union movement an ILP member, Manchester Councillor and NUDAW official, highlighted the tension inside the organisation over industrial strategy, Communist influence within the Labour movement and the selection of parliamentary candidates between Jagger and Wilkinson on the one hand, who were both until 1924 members of the CPGB and Hallsworth and R.J. Davies on the other.107 Jagger’s sympathy for ‘Bloomsbury, Ellen and Communism’ alienated Robinson.108 In early 1924, Robinson recorded his private hostility to Wilkinson as he believed Jagger to be ‘in the clutches of a little vulgar clever and unscrupulous woman’.109 After the war, there were occasionally significant industrial disputes. The most important strike for the union took place in 1923. This dispute resulted from wage cuts imposed in September 1922. The 1923 CWS strike began on 21 April 1923 over pay cuts in Silvertown (East London) and Pelaw (South Tyneside). By May, these local disputes were pushing the union and employers towards a national dispute, the first since September 1918 when the Cabinet had used DORA regulations to frustrate the union.110 The national executive called an all-out national strike and a boycott of the CWS on Saturday 9 June. At its height roughly 6,700 workers were on strike. The union faced hostility in the press and the co-operative movement. Wilkinson wrote a bitter letter to the Co-operative News about its partisan coverage.111 Symptomatic of a right-wing criticism of a militant trade union strategy, Wright Robinson was disparaging in his diary of the ‘free hand’ in publicity during the dispute that Jagger gave to ‘vixenish’ Wilkinson.112 Robinson went so far as to assert that they ‘were leading the rank and file blindfold to Communism’.113 Yet again, as she had during the war, Wilkinson brought a sense of the emotional intensity in her report on the strike as well as identifying the bravery of Miss Marks, ‘the little heroine’, who was the single striker in her department and was threatened with victimisation until the ‘news spread like wildfire’ and the manager had to back down.114 Wilkinson explained to the press that rather than the strike being the work of a few hotheads, it resulted from the deadlock of negotiation with the CWS. Indeed, those negotiating with its directors needed the patience of Job and the skin of a rhinoceros.115 At a union rally in Manchester, Wilkinson condemned the CWS for dragging the banners of the Labour movement through the mud.116 In the negotiations, Wilkinson put the case against wage reductions for women. She compared the employers’ proposals to sweated industries that provoked a national scandal prior to the war. She calculated that women’s pay did not meet Rowntree’s ‘human needs of labour’ standard.117 Jagger declared that the CWS’s decision to go to Joint Committee of Trade Unionists and Co-operators (JCTUC) arbitration was a clear victory.118
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson With the promise of arbitration, strikers returned to work on 4 July, ending the ‘great strike in the CWS’. The JCTUC’s ruling on 18 July, however, proved Jagger’s optimism misplaced.119 While the co-operative press praised the CWS’s concessions, NUDAW complained that the resulting reductions forced workers back to pre-war standards and the CWS acting as badly as the capitalists.120 Joseph Hallsworth, NUDAW Joint General Secretary, described it as a ‘vicious attack’ and a ‘dastardly outrage’. Putting a brave face on the outcome, Wilkinson argued that it benefited several localities where disputes had festered for months if not years.121 Silverton and Pelaw CWS had thus forced through significant wage reductions in September 1922 and April 1923.122 Such defensive disputes occurred episodically, as with the strike in March 1925 and a lockout in Preston in that August.123
Trade boards and the Cave Committee One of the responses of the Ministry of Labour to the industrial militancy of the period from 1910 was the greater use of the formal apparatus of conciliation, arbitration and negotiation. One aspect of this was the trade boards. In the post-war period, membership of various trade boards entailed a significant part of Wilkinson’s union responsibilities. She sat on the Dressmaking and Women’s Light Clothing Board, the Laundries Board and the Hat, Cap and Millinery Board.124 She noted that the trade boards – which set the wages of around two million women – tended to establish a meagre 7d an hour as the norm, despite the elevated cost of living since 1914. By March 1923, the downward pressure on wages was such that those women workers covered by the trade boards were faring better than those outside at the mercy of the ‘caprice of the employer’, such as engineering, where women’s wages had been scandalously cut, or cinema café staff. In these circumstances, the employers’ organisation the Federation of British Industries wanted the abolition or weakening of the trade boards. Wilkinson maintained that while only strong trade unionism could guarantee good wages in the long run, the trade boards acted as ‘ambulances’ and should be defended.125 In the conditions of retreat, Wilkinson was evidently uncomfortable about having to negotiate cuts to the rates on Dressmaking and Women’s Light Clothing Boards.126 At an ILO conference in London, Wilkinson dissented from the praise for trade boards from experts such as William Beveridge. She argued that trade unions were necessary for a spirit of self-respect and independence among workers, in particular women workers, and that trade boards were simply providing the barest minimum for wages and were a mark of shame for those covered by them.127
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The trade union movement As a consequence of these responsibilities, Wilkinson gave evidence on NUDAW’s behalf at the Committee of Enquiry into the Working and Effects of the Trade Board Acts, otherwise known as the Cave Committee.128 She submitted a memorandum about the Laundry Trade Board, describing it as a ‘national disgrace’. Giving evidence on 22 December 1921 and 10 January 1922, she addressed a range of questions: the need for women’s pay to be sufficient to provide an independent livelihood, the distributive trade, the laundry trade and drapery.129 Wright Robinson described her ‘piquant, quite decided’ performance, deploying her careful ‘university manner’ that elicited great respect.130
TUC Congresses The union executive nominated Wilkinson for a variety of positions within the movement. She was delegated to the Annual Trades Unions Congresses of 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925 and 1926. In 1923, NUDAW unsuccessfully proposed Wilkinson for one of the two women’s seats on the General Council of the TUC.131 At the Plymouth Congress of 1923, Wilkinson made several lively contributions. She supported the call for a women’s TUC conference.132 She also contributed to the debate on the TUC’s ‘Back to the unions’ campaign, which responded to the collapse in union membership after the peak of 1920 and the miners’ and engineers’ defeats. Wilkinson congratulated the TUC for funding the initiative but regretted its lack of a programme. Having spoken at several of the campaign’s public meetings, she recalled the inevitable questions from the floor: which union to join? or what was the General Council doing about unemployment? The mere cry ‘Back to the unions’ was not enough.133 Wilkinson intervened in the motion that called for trade unions in laundries to be transferred across to membership of the Laundry Worker’s Association.134 Finally, she challenged the General Purposes Committee about NUWCM affiliation.135 Wilkinson attended the Annual Trades Union Congress in Hull in September 1924. She believed the atmosphere to be a ‘resurrection’ after the ‘deathliness’ of Plymouth the year before. She observed that the existence of a Labour government had thankfully kept the ‘wet blankets’ away. However, she complained that the effect of the Standing Orders Committee taking the unemployment debate in three instalments was to minimise the impact of Wal Hannington’s magnificent speech. Consequently, NUDAW’s motion for NUWM affiliation that Wilkinson moved was defeated. She was unhappy as well that the TUC did not give full support to the NCLC.136 In New Dawn, she picked out impressive female speakers, but regretted that there were only fifteen women out of a thousand delegates. 133
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson ‘Ten days that shook the Cabinet’: Wilkinson and the General Strike Participation in the General Strike profoundly affected Wilkinson. Not only did she have access to the Commons and the TUC’s Eccleston Square headquarters, but she also left London for two long tours with J.F. (Frank) Horrabin witnessing the strike in the provinces. The conflict’s passionate intensity and its significance to British politics and industrial relations prompted her to write several articles, a historical account and a novel, The Clash (1929). Over a year prior to the dispute, Wilkinson commented on the coming coal conflict in her journalism, predicting a clash between the employers and the unions.137 Her experiences in the strike waves during the First World War and her sympathy for industrial unionism provided the framework for her understanding of the approaching crisis. War conditions created – as she put it – a ‘penny-in-the-slot’ wage militancy. While craft chauvinism and sectional conflict persisted, they did not fit the times of full employment and rising prices when new and unskilled workers flocked to unions. The grassroots responded with shop stewards’ organisation, wage militancy and union growth. As she explained: Shop stewards elected on the spot, backed by threats of a lightning strike, were often able to settle with the employer in minutes matters which the cumbrous machinery of overlapping unions could not settle in as many weeks.138
Such an environment favoured ‘ideas of workers’ control, industrial unionism, and, above all, the feeling of class solidarity’. The years 1919 and 1920 were, for Wilkinson, the missed opportunity for a decisive struggle, regretting that it was only the miners who demanded nationalisation. The union executives could not see past wage increases and ‘only nibbled at the fringes of power’. Circumstances altered radically when mass unemployment arrived in 1921 and the government relinquished its wartime controls after the Sankey Commission into coal, freeing the owners to enforce wage cuts. Miners’, rail workers’ and transport workers’ unions had formed the Triple Alliance so that they could take joint strike action in just such an eventuality but failed to act on ‘Black Friday’. Wilkinson rejected betrayal as explanation for Black Friday, despite the NUDAW representative voting against the climbdown. Rather the failure to enact the Triple Alliance was a matter of timing and of understanding: workers needed to think in terms of class struggle and not ‘dreary demarcation disputes and petty wage struggles’. In this new conjuncture, victimisation was smashing the shop stewards movement, many of whom ‘soon reappeared with heroic energy as the 134
The trade union movement founders of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement’. By early 1925, she identified hopeful pointers to further battles: union schemes of independent working-class education, union amalgamations, the changed role of the TUC General Council, an improving atmosphere at Trades Union Congresses. Black Friday (15 April 1921) and Red Friday (31 July 1925) punctuated and redrew the rules of British industrial relations. Wilkinson and Horrabin provided the account of the period between Red Friday and the General Strike in A Workers’ History of the Strike for Plebs. Their narrative began with Baldwin’s ‘dramatic climb-down’ on Red Friday. They deployed the military metaphors befitting their rejection of class collaboration. Thus, the subsidy and the Royal Commission were a temporary ‘truce’, during which the ‘enemy’ conducted its careful preparations for the coming ‘struggle’ and the union leaders’ aspiration of ‘peace’ negotiations failed. On the side of the government and the owners, preparations were afoot. Coal stocks were built up, a strike-breaking force – the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) – as well as special constables were recruited. On the union side, three fatal flaws emerged during the nine months before the strike. First, the right became more influential on the General Council as the chair passed from Alonzo Swales to Arthur Pugh. Secondly, July’s ‘all-too-easy victory’ encouraged the left leaders to believe that the struggle was over. Consequently, serious preparations did not take place. It was not until January that the General Council’s special committee considered arrangements with the Co-operative Wholesale Society, the largest commercial enterprise in food and many other consumer goods, which could therefore exercise control over vital supplies during a dispute. Even then, these matters remained unresolved. Published on 10 March, the coal commission’s recommendations for a major reorganisation of the coal industry seduced the General Council, which consequently pressured the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) to negotiate with the coal owners and accept wage reductions. On 16 April, lock-out notices with a two-week deadline were posted at pitheads. With coal reserves high, the government insisted on wage reductions as a precondition to its intervention to reorganise the coal mines. The General Council (against the MFGB’s wishes) accepted the principle of wage reductions but was not willing to accept the scale of reductions that the government and employers wanted. The General Council negotiated in vain right up to the last minute hoping to avoid the dispute. To demonstrate the fallacy of the collaborationist approach, Wilkinson cited the railway workers’ leader J.H. Thomas both in her novel and in the Plebs book:
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson In all my long experience and I have conducted many negotiations, I have never begged and pleaded like I have begged and pleaded all day to-day. … But we have failed … We have striven, we have pleaded, we have begged for peace, because we want peace. We still want peace. The nation wants peace. Those who want war must take the responsibility.139
Meanwhile, the government secured royal approval for emergency measures including the appointment of civil commissioners across the country. A special conference of trade union executives voted in an overwhelming majority to launch the strike.140 The strike call was for selective groups of workers rather than being all out: initially, transport (rail, the docks, etc.), print and certain productive industries were to stop work. Wilkinson and Horrabin printed the General Council’s instructions to underline just how ambiguous the wording was and how open to misinterpretation or confusion. Elsewhere, Wilkinson described the TUC circular as a ‘monument of vagueness, and open to a dozen interpretations’.141
Wilkinson’s speaking tours during the General Strike The strike spanned nine days from Tuesday 4 May to midday on Wednesday 12 May. Wilkinson became an accredited propagandist for the General Council during the dispute. This latter body was responsible for the running of the dispute. Alongside Horrabin, she embarked upon two speaking tours addressing 47 mass meetings.142 Moreover, Wilkinson was having an affair with Horrabin upon whom she modelled Tony Dacre in her novel. Their friendship had begun through the NCLC as she mixed with the London members of the Plebs League executive. On their journey, they travelled 2,000 miles and the average audience was 2,000. It was a demanding schedule and they did not usually get any rest until 1.30am. Confidential TUC instructions indicate that these tours were to provide Transport House with information about the extent of the strike, troop movements, strike-breaking, food supply, disturbances and public opinion.143 Her first tour took her through Oxford, Banbury, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Stafford, Crewe, Northwich, Wrexham, Shrewsbury, Hereford and Worcester.144 Each leg of her journey provided a surprise. In Oxford, the couple parked discreetly in a backstreet, fearing an unwelcoming reception from Oxford’s fascists. Instead, G.D.H. Cole had assembled a large crowd at St Giles, including a considerable number of students. According to Wilkinson, despite its reactionary reputation, Oxford was ‘solid’ and its surrounding villages ‘stood up manfully to squire and parson’. Thirty miles north, ‘old world’ Banbury 136
The trade union movement ‘rubbed its eyes to find itself as solid a strike centre as any in the country’. She spoke to a huge meeting in the CWS garage where determined strikers were hungry for news. She telegrammed Arthur Greenwood at Eccleston Square that the position in Banbury was solid with practically everybody out.145 The next stop was twelve miles away. At half an hour’s notice, the entire population of Woodford, the railway junction, flocked to hear Wilkinson’s speech. Of the 650 railway workers only five ‘top-notchers’ were working. She approvingly noted how one youthful striker had sabotaged his engine to prevent its use in strike-breaking. In Coventry, Wilkinson addressed a big open-air meeting of many thousands of engineers. Coventry Trades Council noted that Wilkinson’s meeting was ‘excellent’.146 They were not on strike but pleaded their case to be so: transport workers were on strike, they built motor cars, therefore, they too should be called out on strike. Wilkinson later wrote that Coventry was known as a ‘blackspot’ at TUC headquarters because of the nuisance of the city’s workers’ repeated requests to be called out. At the time, noting the ‘very good spirit’, she telegrammed headquarters that engineers were demanding to come out on strike and that vehicle builders, sheet metal workers and other engineers were already out.147 Coventry rail workers called for an extension of their strike asking for only foodstuffs to be exempted. Engineers at Singer Motor Company went on strike on their own initiative and Dunlop workers launched a stay-in strike.148 It was a paradoxical situation, she observed, when thousands of non-union members were on strike, but trade unionists impatiently stayed at work waiting for the opportunity to strike.149 Wilkinson and Horrabin spent the night in Coventry, which she rather dramatically described as being in the hands of the ‘local soviet’, that is, its strike committee. The following day, she went to Wolverhampton where local strikers demanded a meeting. In the market place, in pouring rain, she spoke to a big crowd. In Walsall, the engineers had thrown themselves into the struggle and the deputy mayor led the strike committee. There, Wilkinson addressed a huge meeting, including many miners from Cannock Chase. Witnessing this meeting, future Labour MP Florence Paton indicated the lasting impression upon her of ‘Ellen’s tiny figure and her splendid voice that carry well in a large open air meeting’.150 Wolverhampton and Walsall were similar to Coventry. In the motor industry, engineers wanted to be on strike, and were using their own initiative in the absence of strike instructions.151 Like many other places, she noted that the strike in Cannock was working well, spirits were high but there was a great thirst for news.152 A diarist recorded how rumour drew the crowd to the meeting in Cannock and ‘the little lady on the bandstand … spoke very briefly but very much to the point’.153 In 137
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson a village between Stafford and Crewe, the strike committee chair told Wilkinson, ‘We do not know if anyone is on strike besides us. The wireless says everyone is going back. But we are out till the TUC tell us to go back, if it’s six months.’ In Crewe, a large contingent greeted and marched alongside Wilkinson’s baby Austin car into the town behind someone carrying the red flag. The procession was a mile long and completely filled the football stadium. The trades council reported to the TUC that she received a ‘great reception’ from 10,000 people at her mass meeting in Crewe.154 She observed that local public opinion was against the government.155 On Saturday, at Northwich, the chemical plant was working but everyone else was on strike.156 The local boilermakers’ secretary complained that he had not received official strike instructions. Another large chemical factory was working in Runcorn and this had a ‘depressing effect’ for local people. From there, Wilkinson and Horrabin headed for Wales.157 They spoke at a huge miners’ demonstration at Wrexham racecourse. People had walked 15 miles through awful rain to attend and stood around for hours in the cold. After S.O. Davies had made a rousing speech, the whole assembly sang ‘Cwm Rhondda’. From Wales, Wilkinson and Horrabin drove back into England visiting Shrewsbury, Hereford and Worcester which all had enthusiastic and efficient strike committees. She reported back that everyone in the town was saying ‘Nothing like this could have been imagined in Shrewsbury.’158 In ‘ultraTory’ Hereford, the Labour Party women’s section marched in front of their car and strikers marched behind. In Worcester, she spoke at the theatre that was full to overflowing and where everything was solid, despite some strike-breakers being secured for the trams.159 Back in London, Wilkinson reported to Eccleston Square. The contrast between the country and the atmosphere at the General Council disheartened her. The ill-prepared strike headquarters was alive with frantic improvisation, a hub of information, news, bulletins, speakers, and the site of the TUC publication The British Worker. The atmosphere was ‘inconceivable’, ‘heart breaking’, one of ‘terrific pressure’. Wilkinson recalled: ‘One hour in those crowded offices made me more physically and nervously tired than all the work on the road.’160 She contrasted the singing miners in Wrexham with the TUC’s ‘constitution-mongering antics’ and quoted a miner who received an enormous cheer for saying: ‘If the British Constitution makes a miner work underground for less than £2 a week, it is about time that constitution was challenged!’161 After reporting their experiences, Egerton Wake, the Labour Party’s National Agent, sent the pair out on another tour. Wilkinson and Horrabin’s second journey spanned Peterborough, Grantham, Newark, Retford, Worksop, Rotherham, Hull, York, 138
The trade union movement Darlington, Stockton, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough. Their first four meetings were in Peterborough, where Horrabin was to be parliamentary candidate.162 The Corn Exchange was packed with the audience displaying great sympathy for the miners. A similar situation was found in three market towns of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire: Grantham, Newark and Retford. In Worksop, in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, the news arrived that the General Strike was to end. Wilkinson was at a huge meeting of miners and rail workers. There was general disbelief. As she wrote for an American audience: What has been the effect of the Strike and the manner of its ending on the British Working Class, is what every foreign observer wants to know. Well, I should say that the temporary effect is very confused and the final effect cannot be judged until the dust of the Coal Strike has settled. I was in Worksop, a mining and railway centre on the Great North Road, when the news of the call-off came through. It is significant that even the capitalists’ blackleg sheets printed the Samuel Memorandum as ‘terms’. They could not believe that the General Council had actually surrendered.163
At Rotherham, they received the details of the Samuel Memorandum, which elicited ‘immense meetings … hysterical with joy’. In Hull, she addressed a gathering of 3,000. More information filtered through on Thursday morning, the day after the strike was officially called off. In Exhibition Square in York, Wilkinson faced general bewilderment. The same mood existed across the eleven meetings conducted in York, Darlington, Stockton, the Hartlepools, Middlesbrough, taking in Wilkinson’s own constituency, where the mood was in her words ‘A1’.164 She encountered everywhere the same sentiment: ‘We were winning. What has the TUC done?’
Wilkinson’s analysis of the strike For Wilkinson, careful analysis of the General Strike was crucial to the British Labour movement’s future. Within a few weeks of the strike, she believed it ‘will prove to be the dress rehearsal of “next time” as did Russia’s 1905’. By September 1926 in a prevailing ‘atmosphere of defeatism’, the General Strike still constituted a dress rehearsal for ‘something bigger’. She wanted Plebs tutors to carry the class struggle analysis into ‘every corner of the trade union movement’. While the print strike had silenced the capitalist press and ‘masters and men were on equal terms as regards the printed word’, she and Horrabin described the BBC as a ‘blackleg propaganda weapon’.165 She noted how BBC officials saw it as their duty to side with the government during the General Strike and how the institution was a ‘mighty engine of propaganda, to be used 139
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson openly against the workers in time of crisis, and more subtly in “normal” periods’.166 She was critical of the General Council on several counts. Firstly, J.H. Thomas, Walter Citrine and Ramsay MacDonald’s extreme reluctance and ill-preparedness for the dispute contrasted with the meticulous combative organisation on the government and employers’ part.167 At the TUC of September 1926, Pugh in the chair rebuked Wilkinson for straying from the motion and asking why the General Council did not prepare for the General Strike.168 Secondly, the General Council should not have tried to press the miners into compromise. Thirdly, while the membership displayed great loyalty and eagerness, the General Council vacillated and ‘did not know their own mind’.169 They accepted the government’s terms of debate pointing to the constitution and public opinion to justify their failings: Public opinion, like the constitution, the flag, the crown and other state fitments, are part of the necessary paraphernalia of a modern capitalist State: useful bogies to be used by the government class when it suits them, and hastily hid away, as in the incidents of the Curragh or the recent letter of the King when these gadgets become a little inconvenient.170
Finally, rejecting as impolitic trope of betrayal, Wilkinson indicated that despite the great success of ‘the strike, as a strike’, the General Council undid that achievement because its nerve broke. To call the end of the strike a betrayal would have been problematic for her union, to which she owed her place in parliament as well as to the National Council of Labour Colleges/Plebs that relied on trade union funding. As Wilkinson epigrammatically mused, ‘why, given the solidarity, came the surrender?’171 On 6 June at an open air meeting in Middlesbrough, Wilkinson argued that the decision to call off the General Strike was a ‘tragedy’ and that had the leaders stayed firm they would have won. She was still optimistic that the miners would win.172 Joan, in The Clash, reflected that while a germ of revolution existed in the unions amongst the young, the strike was in the hands of the old leaders.173
Solidarity and the lock-out The miners were left to fight on alone after the end of the General Strike. It was a bitter dispute that effectively lasted until the end of November. Though she did not represent a mining constituency, Wilkinson identified strongly with the miners’ cause in the Commons. She sparked controversy about pay and conditions in the mines over legislation to extend the working day to eight hours. In an article in Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, she had annoyed the Conservatives and the mine owners when 140
The trade union movement she exposed the practice of Somerset miners being harnessed with a ‘guss’ when the passages to the coalface were too narrow for a pit pony. Geoffrey Peto, the Conservative MP for Frome, angrily rebutted these accusations in the House in Wilkinson’s absence. She later took the opportunity to substantiate her assertions dramatically materialising one of these harnesses and the pay cheques.174 She revealed that A.J. Cook, the MFGB leader who was in the gallery had worn one as a youth himself and bore the scars of this contraption. She observed: ‘Perhaps the right hon. Members might think of that when they accuse Mr A.J. Cook of being an extremist.’175 The fascist periodical The Patriot tried to refute her evidence about these coalfield practices, branding her as a Communist.176 She also satirised the evasive Colonel Fox Lane, Baldwin’s Minister of Mines, ‘one of the well-connected people who simply has to be found a job’ who ‘has a vague notion that coal is not sold in chemists’ shops, and that there is too much of it anyway’.177 The following year, she also clashed with Joynson-Hicks (‘Jix’) over the heavy-handed policing at the Trafalgar Square rally of the South Wales miners on their hunger march in 1927.178 On 19 May 1926, Cook approached Marion Phillips, the Labour Party’s chief woman officer, and asked her about the possibility of a women’s committee to relieve the distress in the mining districts.179 Wilkinson chaired the first meeting. The parameters of the committee’s activities were discussed with Cook. Those assembled agreed – taking Mary MacArthur’s campaign for milk and bread for the Bermondsey strikers of 1911 as its inspiration – that they would collect provisions rather than money for the wives and children in the coalfields.180 The meeting established sub-committees for house-to-house collections, flag days and entertainment. The newly formed committee launched an appeal straightaway with Wilkinson’s name the first on the list.181 Wilkinson thus became the Chair of the Women’s Relief Committee for Miners’ Wives and Children. It was eventually wound up on 1 December 1927 having raised £350,000.182 As Wilkinson put it in Plebs: ‘The cry of the starving is not only a call to charity. It must be a call to action.’183 Wilkinson played a highly visible part in its fundraising activities. She organised a rally at the Albert Hall on 29 May, speaking alongside Lansbury, Cynthia Mosley, Cook, Marion Phillips and J.P. Gardiner, collecting over £1000 worth of donated goods.184 In less grand fashion, she spoke at St George’s Hall on the Old Kent Road, raising £10 from an audience of modest means. She ventured into the coalfields themselves with tours of Notts and Somerset in May and June. The ILP organised some relief meetings where she spoke in Bedford on 9 June at the Scala Cinema, Sheffield on 17 October and in Woodford on 26 November.185 In a scenario that anticipated a passage in her novel The Clash, she chaired 141
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson a performance of Upton Sinclair’s play The Singing Birds for miners’ relief, but overcome with emotion, had to rush out and was unable to close the event.186 Wilkinson received criticism in the press for her support for the miners during the lock-out. The Middlesbrough Standard deemed her a ‘busy nobody’ for her complaints about the BBC. After a relief fund meeting in Bedford, a letter to the local press complained about her ‘snob stuff’ about the miners while thousands have been laid off as a result of coal shortages and a letter to the Middlesbrough press stated that while miners were holidaying, steelworkers were without work and Wilkinson was pleading for the ‘poor starving miners’.187 In August, ‘great pressure’ was exerted upon Wilkinson to go on a trip to the United States, with TUC sanction, on behalf of the committee. Ultimately, despite her ‘very great need of a rest’, she consented to go. Cook had pushed for the trip as nearly £10,000 had been raised there already, mainly through the United Ladies’ Garment Workers and the Jewish organisation Forward. TUC bona fides opened the door to American Federation of Labour (AFL) cooperation. Wilkinson accompanied Ben Tillett, a leader of the dock strikes of 1889 and 1911–12 and former president of the International Transport Federation. The delegation arrived on Friday 6 August (embarking on the return journey on 26 August).188 Their campaign opened at a public meeting organised by the Forward Association in New York. The delegates then met with William Green and Frank Morrison, president and secretary of the AFL in Washington on 9 August to organise the funds drive. Green pledged the AFL’s support for the British miners’ cause. Two days later an International Workers’ Aid meeting, auctioning replica miners’ lamps only managed to raise $200. The Women’s Committee for the Relief of the British Miners’ Wives and Children set up an office on Fifth Avenue, New York with philanthropist Evelyn Preston of the League of Women Shoppers acting as its US Treasurer.189 Wilkinson had special responsibility for New York and Pennsylvania.190 On 11 August, she was guest of honour at a meeting of women prominent in public life in New York. The most impressive meeting was that of 4,000 striking textile workers of Passaic, New Jersey, arranged by strike leader Albert Weisbord. This historic Communist-led strike won union recognition for 16,000 wool and silk workers.191 The large crowd, who were in their twenty-eighth week on strike, assembled in Belmont Park to hear Wilkinson, who told them that they and the miners were in the front rank ‘fighting for humanity’.192 In like fashion, she told the New York Civic Club at a meeting on 25 August that modern capitalism had made the world small, and that there was a need for unity amongst workers of all parts of the globe.193 Their visit evidently embarrassed the government as Baldwin publicly stated that there was no starvation in the mining districts. 142
The trade union movement Wilkinson received a letter of support from Labour leader MacDonald who stated ‘Starvation is pushing us back, and further help is urgently needed to prevent this great fight from becoming an abiding tragedy for the miners’ wives and little ones.’194 Mine owner Lord Londonderry complained to The Times about ‘unfair and calumnious mis-statements’ and invited MacDonald to Seaham to verify whether there was actual starvation.195 A further letter to the same newspaper complained about the steelworkers who were out of work due to the shortage of coal for the furnaces.196 On her return, Wilkinson said that the Baldwin letter, MacDonald’s reply and David Lloyd George’s comments had all been essential to provide much needed publicity for their trip. The matter was raised at Labour Party Conference. MacDonald explained that he had declined Marion Phillips’s request to send a letter drafted for him because it engaged in a personal spat with Baldwin but instead hastily wrote one himself.197 Wilkinson had to admit she found the tour itself – though raising reasonable sums – rather disappointing with regard to attendance at meetings. She noted the hostility of rich Americans to labour, but claimed that there was rarely a meeting of US workers where they did not raise $1000.198 She reflected that the visit was ill-timed, being at the height of summer when indoor meetings were intolerable and many escaped from the humidity of New York. Outside the great port, insufficient preparation had gone into ensuring good attendances. On the positive side, Wilkinson noted the ‘very valuable friends’ she had discovered in the American trade union movement.199 In recognition of her work for the miners, Wilkinson was invited to speak at the following year’s Durham Miners’ Gala. Having made such an impression among the Durham miners during the dispute, she was second in the ballot of speakers after Cook.200 There she spoke in front of the thousands of miners with their banners draped in black crêpe.201 She said that if the mine owners continued as they were, they would soon be paying miners in ju-jubes rather than money and attacked non-political unionism as ‘Havelock Wilson’s comic opera circus’.202 In an article in The Miner, she reflected on the self-assurance and the spirit of the Durham women and that the miners ‘were neither defeated nor down-hearted … they mean to go on with the fight’.203 She also spoke alongside Cook at the Cleveland Miners and Quarrymen’s Association Gala on 6 July 1927.204 Her association with the miners continued. The Jarrow constituency included the Follonsby and Wardley pits. She had the honour of speaking at the biggest date in the miners’ calendar – the Durham Miners’ Gala – in 1927, 1929, 1934 and 1937 and regularly attended as a Durham MP.205 Her The Town That Was Murdered
143
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson (1939) recorded the heroic nineteenth-century battles of the Jarrow and Durham miners. During the lock-out itself, she returned repeatedly to the key battleground of Nottinghamshire where the effort to maintain the strike was most difficult and where defeat was most damaging to trade unionism. Speaking in Hucknall, on 1 June, she argued that the General Strike was only a rehearsal of what was to come and that they had all learned their lessons for the future battle.206 After attending the IWSA conference in Paris, she returned to the East Midlands pit villages, visiting a demonstration in Ilkeston on Saturday 5 June. After her trip to the USA, on 5 September, she addressed a Nottingham Trades Council demonstration on the Forest saying that the miners’ struggle was the fight of every worker and that no worker could afford the miners to be defeated.207 When speaking of the return to work in Nottinghamshire, she talked of the logic of pit versus pit competition in terms of more accidents, deaths and undernourishment.208 Writing in The Miner in December, the consequences of the miners being forced back to work could be seen in the Factories Bill through which all the prophesies of a return to nineteenth-century conditions for women and children were materialising.209 Moreover, she bitterly replied to Conservative MPs who disparaged the miners in the Commons.210 As regards the repercussions of the miners’ defeat, she catalogued victimisations, the Trades Disputes Act and the collaborationist drift of the TUC, epitomised by the Mond-Turner Talks.211 The Trades Disputes Act was a ‘blackleg’s charter’ outlawing general strikes. It restricted picketing ‘to please the Federation of British Industries’ and attacked Labour Party funding via the political levy. The Conservatives were again rigging the electoral process: it ‘forged letters one election, loaded dice the next’.212 Industrial militancy was another casualty of the miners’ defeat and 1926 signalled the last major wave of British industrial struggle that Wilkinson was involved in. She sought to come to terms with the defeat in her novel The Clash.
Conclusion Any discussion of Wilkinson’s trade unionism needs to understand its connection to her politics and vice versa. NUDAW provided crucial help to Wilkinson’s parliamentary career. Wilkinson relied on the union for her expenses and an agent. Yet the relationship was not always straightforward. NUDAW had to justify the cost of its parliamentary work to the membership.213 Its Political General Secretary intervened into constituencies to address problems of local Labour Party organisation. Friction also surfaced over her commitments. The union handled requests for
144
The trade union movement speaking engagements for Wilkinson from NUDAW branches, local Labour Party branches and the NCLC.214 Many requests had to be turned down. As a NUDAW-sponsored MP, she was fortunate that the Political General Secretary gave permission for her travels.215 On occasion, Wright Robinson reminded Wilkinson of her obligations to the union but generally understood the heavy schedule that Wilkinson maintained. After Wilkinson had cancelled a speaking commitment in Bingley in order to attend a reconvened meeting of the LAI executive in Brussels, she faced serious complaints that resulted in an investigation on the part of NUDAW’s Political General Secretary.216 Wilkinson had to account for her time to the union, provide lists of her commitments, register sick and ask for leave for holidays or foreign travel.217 On one occasion, she had to explain how a sun ray treatment that apparently had her commercial endorsement resulted from a misunderstanding.218 Wilkinson’s relationship with the Political General Secretary was strained at times. Thus, Wilkinson complained when she was not nominated from the union to the SJC after nineteen years’ service.219 This left-wing union allowed Wilkinson considerable latitude for her politics and campaigning in line with union policy. Indeed, Kingsley Martin observed in 1940, after two occasions when Wilkinson might have been expelled from the Labour Party (December 1934 and January 1939) that she was a ‘rebel leader who was yet the representative of a big trade union, and who could not be purged when other rebels were turned out for their association with Communists’.220 After her visit to the Asturias, the Industrial General Secretary took disciplinary action against Wilkinson instructing her, if she had not already done so, to cease all connection with proscribed organisations.221 NUDAW’s sponsorship of Wilkinson was not restricted to selection as a parliamentary candidate. It nominated her to the Labour Party NEC as early as 1924 and she had two spells serving on that body (1927 to 1929 and 1937 to her death).222 Years later, Wilkinson observed that trade union organising during the war made life as an MP seem like child’s play, saying: ‘When people talk to me of hard work, I tell them that they ought to know what it is to work for a trade-union organisation!’223 Although she did not set the policy, Wilkinson made a significant contribution to the AUCE’s recruitment of women workers. The union recognised as much. A biographical portrait in New Dawn observed: Miss Wilkinson soon found she had joined a fighting regiment, and she threw herself into the Union’s battles with all the daring of youth, and it would be true to say that there has scarcely ever been a fight either in the old AUCE days or since the birth of the NUDAW in which she has not taken a prominent part.224 145
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Jagger went even further: She came to us in the early days of the Great War, and threw herself with unbounded energy into the militant struggle we were waging between 1915 and 1923, so much so that I am inclined to wonder whether a great deal of the militancy was not of her creating.225
Whereas at the end of 1915, AUCE female membership stood at 9,587, by the end of 1918 it had nearly quadrupled to 36,422.226 By the end of 1917, half of the union’s civilian membership was female. The union could feel that its attitude to ‘female substitutes’ had been vindicated by events in circumstances where other unions had attempted to exclude women from union membership and craft occupations.227 Indeed, Wilkinson’s work gathered a momentum of its own, with the creation of the women’s department and decisions to organise laundry women and then dressmakers beyond the AUCE’s co-operative sector remit. The relations between men and women within the union were being reordered. While a progressively minded executive created the women’s organiser post and it clearly served their institutional interests, Wilkinson and the new women recruits to the union helped to shape the AUCE’s agenda, transcending equal pay. Wilkinson started to take on board women’s grievances that male trade union leaders had not anticipated, particularly ‘feminine hygiene’ or washrooms. With her ‘industrial unionism for women’, she gendered the union’s philosophy. In disputes, Wilkinson mobilised beyond the AUCE ranks, seeking solidarity from trades councils and local union branches but also women’s movements, especially the Women’s Co-operative Guild.228 In this regard, Wilkinson drew on a repertoire learnt in Manchester’s labour and suffrage movements. Yet, there were limits to the equality achieved within the union. The union’s leadership and its national executive remained exclusively male. Cathy Hunt’s study of Alice Arnold, the Workers’ Union women’s organiser, found that Arnold was ‘undermined by a male leadership that displayed intermittent insincere commitment towards the recruitment of women’.229 The AUCE’s turn towards female recruitment might likewise be considered a temporary wartime expedient in its battles with the craft unions. Unlike Arnold, however, Wilkinson did not lose her union job as post-war conditions turned against the unions and indeed her union provided indispensable backing in her political career. Though for her to say otherwise would be difficult, Wilkinson later praised the union’s atmosphere of gender equality.230 Objections within the union to the pro-women policy suggests that nostalgia may have coloured her comments, yet there is nothing to suggest that the union’s commitment to women members’ advances was purely instrumental. Despite Wilkinson’s claim that the union was a paragon of equality, she 146
The trade union movement did encounter reactionary attitudes. Given her politics, she regularly rowed with the right within the union with her clashes with R.J. Davies MP becoming a hardy perennial at NUDAW ADMs.231 His tone could be highly condescending and anti-feminist.232 In an article to New Leader, he sniped that she was a conceited intellectual and wasted time discussing German police women’s uniforms.233 Wilkinson’s intellectual development bore hallmarks of her wartime experiences. The AUCE’s adoption of industrial unionism with its emphasis upon militant grassroots activity reinforced Wilkinson’s commitment to extra-parliamentary politics. With Wilkinson, however, hers was the paradoxical industrial unionism of the left trade union official. As an employee of the union, her fortunes were entangled with its institutional interests and there were limits to the criticisms that she could make of it (and the TUC). Her encounter with syndicalism, industrial unionism and the Shop Stewards and Workers’ Committee Movement is significant in that her trade union practices and her heady wartime experiences of struggle radicalised her political engagement. During the years 1917–20, she shared the journey with many others from industrial unionism or syndicalism to Bolshevism.234 Wilkinson’s ‘industrial unionism’ ran in parallel with her guild socialism. While most of her guild socialist comrades came from university activism, she straddled this milieu and the terrain of trade unionism. She was speaking two languages to two different audiences. Rather than force these ideas into synthesis, Wilkinson found an overlap between these two theories with their commitment to workers’ control and militant action.
Notes 1
Barbara Drake, Women in the Trade Unions, London, 1984 (first published 1920), pp. 168–170. Co-operative Employé, August 1916. AUCE Executive Council, 18 July 2 1915. 3 Deborah Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls: Women Workers in World War I, London, 1998, p. 28. 4 P.C. Hoffman, They Also Serve: the Story of the Shop, London, 1949. Sir William Richardson, A Union of Many Trades: The History of USDAW, Manchester, 1979, p. 16. 5 Arthur Marsh and John B. Smethurst, Historical Directory of Trade Unions, vol. 5, Aldershot, 2006, pp. 100–104. 6 Scottish Co-operator, 22 January 1915. 7 Co-operative Employé, July 1915. Ibid., October 1915. 8 Ibid., October 1916. 9 Interview with Pankhurst, Co-operative Employé, September 1915. 10 A. Hewitt, AUCE: Why It has Withdrawn from the Trades Union Congress, 147
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 1915. Scottish Co-operator, 13 April 1915. Richardson, A Union of Many Trades, pp. 58–64. 11 Co-operative Employé, September 1915. 12 Irene Osgood Andrews and Margaret A. Hobbs, Economic Effects of the World War upon Women and Children in Great Britain, New York, 1921. 13 Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls, p. 39. 14 Scottish Co-operator, 12 May 1916. 15 NUDAW General Secretary’s reports, Wilkinson’s report, 3 August 1917. 16 USDAW archive, AUCE General Secretary’s 24th Annual Report 1915, p. 9. 17 Co-operative Employé, January 1916. 18 Ibid., December 1915. 19 Ibid., January 1916. 20 Ibid., January 1916. 21 Ibid., December 1915. 22 Angela Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend: Munitions Workers in the Great War, Berkeley, CA, 1994, pp. 104–105. 23 Barbara Drake, Women in the Engineering Trades: a Problem, a Solution, and some Criticisms, London, 1917, p. 50. 24 Co-operative Employé, April 1916. For the terms, Scottish Co-operator, 17 March 1916. 25 Co-operative Employé, June 1916. 26 USDAW archive, AUCE General Secretary’s 26th Annual Report 1917, p. 7. 27 Co-operative Employé, October 1915. AUCE Special circular from Wilkinson, 14 January 1918. 28 Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend, pp. 99 and 202. 29 AUCE Journal, February 1918. 30 Scottish Co-operator, 22 January 1915. Scottish Co-operator, 19 March 1915. A motion for industrial unionism at 1915 ADM: 24,572 for and 2,252 against, Scottish Co-operator, 16 April 1915. 31 Richardson, A Union of Many Trades, p. 59. 32 Francis Shor, ‘Gender and Labour/Working Class History in Comparative Perspective: the Syndicalist and Wobbly Experience in the USA, Australia, and New Zealand’, Left History, 11 (2006), pp. 118–136. 33 Co-operative Employé, June 1916. Scottish Co-operator, 6 August 1916. 34 Ibid., January 1918. 35 Ibid., 22 December 1917. 36 Time and Tide, 14 December 1935. 37 Co-operative Employé, February 1916. 38 Ralph Darlington, Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism: an International Comparative Analysis, Aldershot, 2008, pp. 4–7. 39 Co-operative Employé, January 1916. 40 Leek AUCE official and Women’s Co-operative Guild activist Harriet Kidd; Margaret Llewelyn Davies (ed.), Life as We have Known it, by Cooperative Working Women, London, 1977, pp. 73–80. 41 Of 20s a day for men and 10s a day for women, Co-operative Employé, May 1916. 42 Co-operative Employé, March 1916. 148
The trade union movement 43 44 45 46
Scottish Co-operator, 25 February 1916. Co-operative Employé, March 1916. Ibid., March 1916. Ibid., March 1916. A. Hewitt, general secretary 1891–1916, handing over to Hallsworth. 47 Scottish Co-operator, 18 March 1916. 48 Co-operative Employé, April 1916. 49 Ibid., May 1916. Scottish Co-operator, 18 March 1916. 50 A letter from ‘a member’, Scottish Co-operator, 30 June 1916. 51 Co-operative News, 14 October 1916. 52 Co-operative Employé, May 1916. 53 Padley reported that in 1908 membership stood at 17,396 prior to which membership increased at an annual rate of 1,456, and for 1908–15 it grew at an annual rate of 4,520, Co-operative Employé, May 1916, pp. 252. 54 Co-operative Employé, May 1916. 55 Ibid., June 1916. 56 Joan Smith, ‘Labour Tradition in Glasgow and Liverpool’, History Workshop Journal, 17, 1 (1984), pp. 32–56. Joseph Melling, ‘Whatever Happened to Red Clydeside? Industrial Conflict and the Politics of Skill in the First World War’, International Review of Social History, 35 (1990), pp. 3–32. 57 Milton Moses, ‘Compulsory Arbitration in Great Britain during the War’, Journal of Political Economy, 26, 9 (1918), pp. 882–900. 58 Scottish Co-operator, 26 May 1916. 59 Co-operative News, 16 September 1916 and 23 September 1916. The Times, 23 November 1916. 60 Labour Leader, 21 September and 5 October 1916. 61 Co-operative News, 25 November 1916 and 2 December 1916. 62 Richardson, A Union of Many Trades, pp. 71–72. 63 Co-operative Employé, January 1917. 64 Ibid., March 1917. Ibid., February 1917. 65 Ibid., April 1917. 66 Ibid., May 1917. 67 This works struck later that year, TNA CAB 24 26 Report from the Ministry of Labour on the Labour Situation for the week ending 12th September, 1917. 68 Co-operative Employé, May 1917. 69 AUCE Journal, July 1917. 70 USDAW archive, AUCE General Secretary’s 25th Annual Report 1916, p. 1. Hallsworth penned a pamphlet Labour after the War. USDAW archive, AUCE General Secretary’s 26th Annual Report 1917, p. 10. 71 USDAW archive, AUCE General Secretary’s 26th Annual Report 1917, p. 11. 72 AUCE Journal, October 1917. 73 Ibid., November 1917. 74 Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend, p. 204. 75 AUCE Journal, November 1917. 76 USDAW archive, AUCE General Secretary’s 26th Annual Report 1917, p. 11. 149
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 77 78 79 80 81
AUCE Journal, December 1917. Ibid., January 1918. Ibid., December 1917. Ibid., January 1918. Ibid., September 1917. Wilkinson represented AUCE/NUDAW on the SJC 1917–36, NUDAW Industrial General Secretary’s reports, 11 October 1936. 82 AUCE Journal, January 1918. AUCE General Secretary’s reports, Wilkinson’s report, 31 December 1917. 83 LRD 1 I 03 Joint Committee of Enquiry into Women in the Trade Unions, 17 October 1918. In May 1918 the Fabian Research Department organised another conference over the working of arbitration and the need for more trained women organisers. AUCE Journal, June 1918. 84 AUCE Journal, January 1918. AUCE Journal, February 1918. AUCE Journal, March 1918. AUCE General Secretary’s reports, Hallsworth’s report, 9 January 1918. 85 AUCE General Secretary’s reports, Wilkinson’s report, 4 October 1918. 86 Co-operative Employé, August 1916. AUCE Journal, April 1918. 87 Ibid., June 1918. 88 Milton Moses, ‘Compulsory Arbitration in Great Britain during the War’, Journal of Political Economy, 26, 9 (November 1918), p. 891. 89 AUCE Journal, April 1918. 90 Ibid., August 1918. 91 Lincoln Gazette and Lincolnshire Times, 17 August 1918. 92 AUCE Journal, June 1918. 93 Ibid., September 1918. 94 Lincoln Gazette and Lincolnshire Times, 17 August 1918. 95 Co-operative News, 31 August 1918 96 Ibid. 97 AUCE Journal, September 1918. 98 Co-operative News, 7 September 1918. 99 Trade union department executive meeting (TUDE) minutes, 8 September 1919, AUCE Journal, September 1918. New Dawn, 7 July 1923. 100 Reid interviews: Amy Mitchell, née Wild. 101 AUCE Journal, November 1918. 102 Richardson, A Union of Many Trades, p. 84. 103 TUDE minutes, 3 November 1918, AUCE Journal, December 1918. 104 TUDE minutes, 15 December 1918, AUCE Journal, January 1919. TUDE minutes, 5 January 1919, AUCE Journal, February 1919. 105 AUCE notice and resolution, Special Delegate Meeting, 2 February 1919. 106 General Secretary’s Report of the Special Meeting, 9 February 1919. Being officially reinstated on 2 March, TUDE minutes, 2 March 1919, AUCE Journal, April 1919. 107 Manchester Central Library (MCL), M284 Wright Robinson, Diary 1921– 26, p. 195. 108 MCL Wright Robinson, M284 casual notes, 20 November 1941. 109 MCL M284 Wright Robinson, Diary 1921–26, 2 February 1924, p. 162. 110 Wilkinson’s reflections on the dispute, New Dawn, 7 July 1923. 150
The trade union movement 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120
Co-operative News, 23 June 1923. MCL M284 Wright Robinson, Diary 1921–26, 12 August 1923, pp. 111–112. Ibid., 24 May 1923, p. 110. New Dawn, 7 July 1923, p. 9. Manchester Guardian, 11 June 1923. Ibid., 18 June 1923. Ibid., 28 June 1923. New Dawn, 7 July 1923. New Dawn, 4 August 1923. NUDAW, Memorandum on the Dispute with the CWS and the Decisions of the JCTUC Therein, August 1923. Co-operative News, 7 July 1923. Manchester Evening News, 24 July 1923. Manchester Guardian, 25 July 1923. Daily Herald, 26 July 1923. Daily Dispatch, 26 July 1923. 121 New Dawn, 10 November 1923. 122 Manchester Guardian, 26 July 1923. 123 The Times, 1 April 1925. Co-operative News, 11 August 1925. 124 TNA LAB 2 693; LAB 35 96; LAB 35 140; LAB 35 169. 125 All Power, March 1923, p. 6. 126 New Dawn, 21 June 1922, p. 21. 127 Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 2 January 1927. 128 NUDAW, Memorandum of Evidence Submitted to the Committee of Enquiry into the Working and Effects of the Trade Board Acts, 22 December 1921. 129 Minutes of Evidence, Committee of Enquiry into the Working and Effects of the Trade Board Acts, London, 1922, pp. 552–572. 130 MCL M284 Wright Robinson, Diary 1921–26, 28 December 1921 about 16 December, p. 40. 131 Fifty-Fifth Annual Trades Union Congress (Plymouth), 3 to 8 September 1932, London, 1923, p. 415. 132 Woman’s Leader, 14 September 1923. 133 Fifty-Fifth Annual Trades Union Congress, p.264 134 Ibid., p. 307. 135 Ibid., pp. 297–298. 136 New Dawn, 27 September 1924. 137 Plebs, January 1925. 138 Ibid. 139 R.W. Postgate, Ellen Wilkinson, and J.F. Horrabin, A Workers’ History of the Great Strike, London, 1927, p. 16; Wilkinson, The Clash, p. 47. 140 3,653,529 to 49,911, Postgate et al., A Workers’ History of the Great Strike, p. 17. 141 Plebs, June 1926. R.I. Hills, The General Strike in York, York, 1980, pp. 17–18. 142 Wilkinson, ‘Introduction’, in Scott Nearing, The British General Strike, New York, 1926, p. xi. Scott Nearing was a member of the US Communist Party, from early 1927 until his expulsion in 1930, Scott Nearing, The Making of a Radical: a Political Autobiography, New York, 1972, pp. 146–152. 143 TUC Library (TUC) HD5366 TUC Intelligence Committee, Instructions to Speakers, n.d. 151
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 144 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 22 May 1926. 145 TUC HD5366 Telegram, Wilkinson to Arthur Greenwood (Banbury), 6 May 1926. 146 TUC HD5366 Coventry TLC, 6pm Thursday, 13 May 1926. At which point 99% of engineers were out, including an astonishing number of non-unionists. 147 TUC HD5366 Wilkinson and Horrabin telegram (Coventry) to TUC, 6 May 1926. 148 TUC HD5366 Coventry TLC, 11 May 1926. 149 Wilkinson, ‘Introduction’, p. xv. 150 NUSC TDWR Florence Paton to Reid, 27 June 1972. 151 TUC HD5366 Wilkinson and Horrabin telegram (Wolverhampton) to TUC, 7 May 1926. Wilkinson and Horrabin telegram (Walsall) to TUC, 7 May 1926. 152 TUC HD5366 Wilkinson and Horrabin telegram (Cannock) to TUC, 7 May 1926. 153 NUSC TDWR S. Hiedersley to Reid, 28 June 1974. 154 TUC HD5366 Crewe Trade Council Strike Committee, date stamped 8 May 1926. Crewe Central Telegram, 8 May 1926. 155 TUC HD5366 Wilkinson and Horrabin telegram to TUC, 7 May 1926. 156 TUC HD5366 Wilkinson and Horrabin telegram (Northwich) to TUC, 8 May 1926. 157 TUC HD5366 Wilkinson and Horrabin telegram (Wrexham) to TUC, 8 May 1926. 158 TUC HD5366 Wilkinson and Horrabin telegram (Shrewsbury) to TUC, 8 May 1926. 159 TUC HD5366 Wilkinson and Horrabin telegram (Worcester) to TUC, 9 May 1926. 160 Wilkinson, ‘Introduction’, p. xviii. 161 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 22 May 1926, p. 8. 162 Believing her influence secured Horrabin the Labour candidacy for Peterborough, NUSC Reid Collection J.P.M. Millar to Reid, 17 June 1971. 163 Wilkinson, ‘Introduction’, p. xix. 164 TUC HD5366 undated note. 165 Wilkinson, ‘Introduction’, p. xiv. Postgate et al., A Workers’ History of the Great Strike, p. 57. Wilkinson, The Clash, p. 103. 166 Plebs, March 1929. 167 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 22 May 1926. Wilkinson, The Clash, p. 59. 168 Standard, 8 September 1926. 169 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 22 May 1926. Wilkinson, ‘Introduction’, p. xiv. 170 Plebs, June 1926. 171 Ibid. Wilkinson, ‘Introduction’, p. xviii. 172 Northern Echo, 7 June 1926. 173 Wilkinson, The Clash, p. 58. 174 Notts Evening News, 30 June 1926. 175 HC Deb, 29 June 1926, cols 993–1115. 176 The Patriot, 17 June 1926. Ibid., 1 April 1926. 152
The trade union movement 177 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 16 July 1927. 178 HC Deb, 24 November 1927, col. 2044. 179 Marion Phillips, Women and the Miners’ Lock-out: the Story of the Women’s Committee for the Relief of the Miners’ Wives and Children, London: Labour, 1927. 180 See Wilkinson’s obituary of MacArthur in New Dawn, 5 March 1921. 181 Phillips, Women and the Miners’ Lock-out, p. 13. 182 Manchester Guardian, 2 December 1927. South Wales Echo, 2 December 1927. 183 Plebs, July 1926. 184 Yorkshire Post, 31 May 1926. 185 Bedford Times, 11 June 1926. Leytonstone Express, 27 November 1926. 186 Glasgow Times, 5 July 1928. Because a society girl interjected that nobody starved in Britain, Wilkinson, The Clash, pp. 306–307. 187 Middlesbrough Standard, 12 June 1926. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 31 May, 23 September, 11 November 1926, 17 and 20 January 1927. 188 The Times, 9 August 1926. Manchester Guardian, 26 August 1926. 189 Indiana State University Eugene V. Debs Papers Wilkinson to Theodore Debs, 23 August 1926. 190 Manchester Guardian, 10 August 1926. 191 Albert Weisbord, Passaic: the Story of a Struggle against Starvation Wages and the Right to Organize, New York, 1976. David J. Goldberg, A Tale of Three Cities: Labor Organization and Protest in Paterson, Passaic and Lawrence, 1916–1921, New Brunswick, 1989. 192 Passaic New Journal, 21 August 1926. New York Sun, 20 August 1926. 193 Chicago Worker, 27 August 1926. 194 The Times, 17 August 1926. Manchester Guardian, 17 August 1926. 195 The Times, 20 August 1926. Daily Herald, 17 August 1926. 196 The Times, 23 August 1926. 197 LPACR, 1926, p. 274. 198 Manchester Guardian, 1 September 1926. 199 Phillips, Women and the Miners’ Lock-out, p. 91. Plebs, October 1926. She would have met Debs had he not been ill. Indiana State University Eugene V. Debs Papers Wilkinson to Theodore Debs, 23 August 1926. 200 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 4 August 1927. 201 The Times, 15 August 1927. 202 Manchester Guardian, 15 August 1927. 203 The Miner, 20 August 1927. 204 Middlesbrough Standard, 8 July 1927. Newcastle Chronicle, 7 July 1927. 205 Wilkinson on the gala, Tribune, 16 July 1937. Reid interviews: Sir William Lowther. 206 Notts Evening News, 2 June 1926. 207 Notts Evening Post, 6 September 1926. Manchester Guardian, 6 September 1926. 208 Middlesex Advertiser, 18 November 1926. 209 The Miner, 11 December 1926. 210 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 4 December 1926. 153
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 211 New Leader, 30 December 1927. 212 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 9 April 1927 and 21 May 1927. 213 NUDAW, Our Work in Parliament, n.d. 214 On her failure to attend a trade union meeting in Ipswich. NUDAW executive council minutes, 20 October 1929. 215 For USA visit, USDAW PGSR, 15 August 1926. AUCE executive council, 15 August 1926. For India visit, NUDAW executive council minutes, 10 July 1932. For further USA visit, NUDAW executive council minutes, 13 December 1936. 216 USDAW PGSR, 8 January 1928. 217 NUDAW executive council minutes, 19 February 1928. 218 Ibid., 15 July 1928 and 12 August 1928. 219 NUDAW Industrial General Secretary’s reports, 11 October 1936. 220 Kingsley Martin, ‘Left meets right’, Living Age, September 1940, p. 43. 221 NUDAW executive council minutes, 16 December 1934. Scrutinising her duties, NUDAW executive council minutes, 13 January, 14 April and 5 May 1935. 222 New Dawn, 5 July, p. 22. 223 Ethel Mannin, Confessions and Impressions, London, n.d., p. 169. 224 New Dawn, 28 April 1923. 225 Ibid., 2 September 1939. 226 USDAW archive, AUCE General Secretary’s 24th Annual Report 1915, p. 5; AUCE General Secretary’s 25th Annual Report 1916, p. 5; AUCE General Secretary’s 26th Annual Report 1917, p. 10; AUCE General Secretary’s 25th Annual Report 1918, p. 6. Female membership grew as follows: end of 1915: 9587; end of 1916: 16,047; end of 1917: 26,909; end of 1918: 36,422. 227 While in the 1915 annual report the general secretary hoped for support from the membership on the question, the report of the following year believed that the leadership had been ‘fully justified by the course of events’ through ‘remarkable … success’, USDAW archive, AUCE General Secretary’s 24th Annual Report 1915, p. 9; AUCE General Secretary’s 25th Annual Report 1916, p. 8. 228 Barbara J. Blaszak, The Matriarchs of England’s Cooperative Movement: a Study in Gender Politics and Female Leadership, 1883–1921, Westport, CT, 2000. Gillian Scott, Feminism and the Politics of Working Women: the Women’s Co-operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War, London, 1998. 229 Cathy Hunt, ‘Her heart and soul were with the labour movement: Using a Local Study to Highlight the Work of Women Organizers Employed by the Workers’ Union in Britain from the First World War to 1931’, Labour History Review, 72, 2 (2003), pp. 167–184. 230 New Dawn, 19 October 1935. 231 The two had been friends as activists in Manchester. NUSC TDWR Helen Wilson, Wilkinson, 1891–1947, unpublished manuscript, p. 17. 232 New Dawn, 29 April 1922. 233 New Leader, 24 August 1928. 234 Ralph Darlington, Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism: an International Comparative Analysis, Aldershot, 2008, pp. 277–288. 154
4 Against imperialism and war
Wilkinson’s anti-imperialism involved domestic campaigning, attendance at international conferences, travel to the sites of colonial repression and a network of anti-colonial activist acquaintances. Until 1939, Wilkinson linked war and imperialism, participating in both antiwar and anti-imperialist campaigns. Her work within the movements was not easily compartmentalised, sometimes occurring through the vehicle of the women’s or the Labour movement. Movements merged, separated out, transcended their old boundaries, each with their own organisational trajectories and protest cycles. After 1918, the British Empire, at its historic zenith, faced threats from rival imperialist powers and colonial nationalism. Thus, Irish independence began the process of decolonisation. The response of successive British governments was to turn to counter-insurgency and to the new technology of aerial power. While a section of imperial die-hards wanted to fight to maintain British power, opinion was beginning to shift from the Empire’s Victorian popular heyday. On India, the Labour Party vocally sympathised with the nationalist cause and criticised repression. Yet, the Labour Party’s anti-imperialism disappointed Indian nationalists and their British supporters. During the debate on the 1919 Government of India Bill, the PLP deemed Indians unready for independence, favouring stages towards self-government within the Empire.1 The Congress’s response to the new constitutional arrangements led to the Non-Cooperation Movement marked by civil disobedience. While the Labour left supported the campaign, the Labour leadership condemned it. When in office in 1924, MacDonald disregarded Indian claims and the infamous Bengal ordinance, which allowed detention without trial, was promulgated. The Labour Party and Labour and Socialist International (LSI) had an ambiguous approach to Empire. Their orientation on the European working class and conception of European imperialism as a historically progressive force meant that they generally failed to support anti-colonial nationalisms and
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson labelled colonial peoples backward. The LSI advocated socialism and trade unionism in the colonies but retained a paternalistic outlook that shared much with the imperial mindset. Likewise, British Fabians generally viewed Empire as a civilising force. Even some British Marxists like Hyndman had held pro-imperialist views. In the women’s movement too, both before and after the First World War, the majority opinion supported imperialism because of the need for ‘civilised’ standards of the treatment of women.2 In contrast, Lenin’s views gained influence in the aftermath of 1917, advocating support for nationalist movements against imperialism and identifying imperialism as an advanced stage of capitalist development causing global military tensions and world war. The question of imperialism is crucial to understanding Wilkinson’s intellectual trajectory and her political activism. Won to Lenin’s position after 1917, which was a minority view within the British left, it was not until the late 1930s that she abandoned it. Partha Sarathi Gupta challenged the view that this weakness of metropolitan anti-imperialism stemmed from a labour aristocracy benefiting from imperial profits, proposing that Labour’s desire to govern, the advice of ex-colonial administrators and the lack of a theory of imperialism caused these apparent failings.3 Conversely, Edward Said attributed such absence to an orientalist consensus wherein normative assumptions, stereotypes, conventions, symbolic representations and discourses reproduced western domination, subsuming within it even those who appeared to criticise Empire.4 For Owen, the British left’s support for Nehru rather than Gandhi stemmed from cultural assumptions of metropolitan superiority.5 While praising Gandhi’s courage and indispensable contribution to building a mass movement, Wilkinson certainly inclined towards Nehru in this way. But such culturalist approaches, stressing the mutual comprehensibility, the prejudices and assumption of superiority underplay the micro-level complexity of transnational contentious politics. Her support for Nehru was strategic both on cultural grounds (being most comprehensible to her British audience) but also political ones believing – rightly or wrongly – that his politics was more suited to contesting a global capitalist order. Even the security services admitted her exceptional talent for popularising the Indian cause with British audiences. Speculating about the possibility of a renewal of an international revolutionary cycle, she suggested that India’s revolutionary movement might be a trigger.6 More sympathetic to such efforts, Kumari Jayawardena surveyed the interactions between western women and South Asia under colonial rule.7 She recovered the contribution of women revolutionaries who challenged British rule and raised class and gender in an Indian context. Demonised by the authorities, their local reception was contradictory. When they identified with 156
Against imperialism and war the Indian cause, they were viewed as ‘goddesses’. When they criticised South Asian culture on the grounds of gender or tradition, they were viewed as ‘devils’. Anti-imperialism is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and neglected dimensions of Wilkinson’s career. Thus, her novel The Clash has been criticised for displaying no awareness of colonialism and her use of the phrase ‘nigger in the woodpile’ is seen as evidence of Wilkinson’s casual racism.8 In contrast to this text-based approach, Wilkinson’s involvement in the cause of colonial liberation and anti-racism was long-standing. More generally, Wilkinson investigated and sought to expose to the world the brutalities of colonial rule in Ireland and India.
Visit to Ireland in October 1920 This examination of Wilkinson’s anti-war and anti-imperialist campaigning begins with her Irish visit in 1920.9 The WILPF’s Manchester branch decided in autumn 1920 to investigate the war of independence.10 Wilkinson spoke of her affinity with small nations ‘being half-Irish myself’.11 In Easter 1916, a republican insurrection in Dublin failed to achieve Irish self-determination. Led amongst others by James Connolly, the Easter rising was put down by British troops and its leaders were executed. Wilkinson had seen Connolly speak, counting him amongst her political heroes. When the Left Theatre staged the play Easter 1916, she gave an impassioned speech about Connolly.12 She also mentioned Connolly after a disconcerting conversation with Sir Park Goff who had communicated Connolly’s execution orders and whose name he could not even remember.13 As regards her attitude to the post-1921 settlement, she described Ulster as an artificially created unit maintained because of Conservative vanity and condemned the division of Ireland.14 Motivated by humanitarianism and political sympathy, the WILPF’s ten-woman commission toured Ireland in the first fortnight of October.15 Irish WILPF members praised Wilkinson and Annot Robinson’s ‘brave and vigorous campaign for Irish interests’ at the WILPF’s Vienna congress.16 While Robinson visited Belfast and Lisburn, Wilkinson and two Quaker members travelled to Dublin, Limerick, Galway and Tuam, journeying on to County Clare’s West Coast, Ennistymon, Cork and Mallow. Wilkinson’s itinerary coincided with a wave of arson as collective punishment of the rebels. She also witnessed a violent incident (‘scrap’) in Cork. Robinson’s daughter recalled that they ‘had a wonderful time being shot at as they rode through Dublin in a car’.17 The Commission sought to question witnesses on the ground. Wilkinson interviewed the
157
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson widowed mother of Republican leader Michael Brennan, whose two sons were in hiding. British army officers had set fire to the Brennan’s farmhouse and barn.18 Wilkinson spoke to James O’Mara MP for Kilkenny South, a Limerick factory owner, suffering because of government-imposed economic restrictions and to the English Protestant manager of a co-operative creamery in Limerick whom British troops had beaten for being a co-operator. In Limerick, she witnessed the Black and Tans’ destruction of a large bakery and a tannery. Wilkinson returned to England on 17 October. As a result of the tour, the WILPF national council took a strong position on Irish self-determination, organising more than 100 public meetings, at several of which Wilkinson and Robinson spoke.19 The Manchester Free Trade Hall meeting was ‘packed to the roof with Southern Irish’.20 Robinson’s Irish experiences were ‘strange’ and ‘painful’, struggling to believe that such things were possible. The public meetings were ‘wonderful’, and she hoped that they had done ‘something to influence public opinion’.21 Wilkinson argued that the Irish war was instructive as to how the state would respond to revolution in Britain. She suggested that the CPGB executive arrange a tour for those retaining ‘a touching faith in the power of majorities and the impossibility of armed repression in a land of universal suffrage’.22 Having been invited by Jane Addams of the US WILPF, on 8 December 1920, Wilkinson and Robinson left for Washington where they gave evidence to the Federal Commission inquiring into the Irish situation.23 Wilkinson delivered her statement on 21 December. She addressed the economic blockade; the raids, lootings and sackings; the southern unionists; and military operations in the south of Ireland. First, she indicated how the British government was purposely disrupting the Irish economy, noting how the Black and Tans had destroyed roughly half the creameries in Ireland. She reported that this had reversed Ireland’s recent industrial renaissance. She then touched on Irish labour’s sufferings during the war, especially the rail workers who were sacked if they refused to transport British troops or arms. Mill workers were also particularly affected as the demand for clothing dried up. She stressed the caprice of British repression, citing examples of innocent – even Protestant or English – victims. Wilkinson explained why British army withdrawal was a precondition for a peaceful settlement. Her analysis was historically situated. From the seventeenth century with the Ulster land clearances and Scottish Presbyterians’ settlement, British governments had used divide and rule. Thus, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) from the north were sent to the south and vice versa. Even so, a wave of RIC resignations had prompted the Black and Tans’ creation. She described the latter 158
Against imperialism and war as an irregular force, combining the police’s and the army’s defects. In addition, she noted how the government used spies and special agents to hunt down Republicans. Added to this was the manipulation of popular understandings of the conflict. The press applied a double standard, categorising police deaths as murder but ignoring Republican ones or implying them to be retaliation. That this was a war was denied as well. She felt it ironic that the British press had justified a world war for poor little Belgium, while supporting the subjection of ‘a small nation right at her own doors’. Popular indignation was lacking but opinion was beginning to turn. This was despite disbelief that ‘our own boys’ could commit the atrocities that she had uncovered.24 The government had fomented a ‘war psychology’, publicising Sinn Fein’s crimes among troops as, in Wilkinson’s view, a calculated incitement to violence.25 She thus encountered the ‘undiluted militarism’ of one British soldier who chillingly described what he would do in Athlone if given the chance, despite his fiancée being Irish. Nevertheless, she retained sympathy for British troops who were ‘mere boys’, unlike the Black and Tans who possessed a different psychological profile entirely, being ‘black sheep’, thrill-seekers and mercenaries. Blaming Carson and Lloyd George, she unpicked the government’s euphemisms that exculpated outrages as ‘breaches of discipline’. Finally, Wilkinson assessed anti-Irish hostility in England, which combined anti-immigrant sentiment with anti-Catholicism. Such attitudes were fluid, being most intense during the war at the time of the Easter Rising. Since then, views had mellowed with the growth of anti-militarism.26 Wilkinson impressed her American audience, especially Republican sympathisers. The Home Office bristled about the ‘extraordinary statements’ in an American pamphlet based on Wilkinson’s ‘hysterics’.27 Back in Britain, Wilkinson continued to support Irish independence, raising it at the Labour Women’s Conference of May 1921. She complained about the ‘incredible apathy’ about something ‘only seven hours from where they were sitting comfortably’. She compared British repression to Turkish massacres in Armenia and German cruelties in Belgium. She described the plight of Irish women, who were subjected to arbitrary arrest, spending six or seven weeks without trial in men’s barracks without any women attendants. Consequently, Britain’s reputation was deteriorating across the world, especially the USA. Furthermore, she conjured the spectre – if social unrest intensified in Britain – of the Black and Tan militias repressing the workers’ movement. Her fiery speech was met with cheers and her motion – calling for the withdrawal of British troops, elections and an all-Ireland constituent assembly – was passed unanimously.28 159
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson British imperialism beyond Ireland Between the wars, in parliament and in her journalism, Wilkinson articulated her contempt for imperialism. She flew to Paris in March 1925 to attend a Ligue des Droits de l’Homme meeting, protesting at Indian Communist Roy’s expulsion from France at the British government’s request.29 She condemned the Minister for Air Sir Samuel Hoare’s callous description of bombing Iraq (a ‘very interesting experiment’).30 She criticised the use of British troops in China and chided the under-secretary’s excuses after they had fired on unarmed Chinese student protesters in Shanghai. In October 1926, she celebrated the Chinese Republic’s fifteenth anniversary at a dinner with the Koumintang’s British Section.31 She had little doubt about the Conservative government’s motives in China, for whom ‘maintaining law and order’ was a cipher for: ‘the right of every sordid, corrupt international money-grubber to fasten like leeches on the helpless body of this old peaceful civilisation and suck the blood of her children’.32 Speaking at a Preston ILP meeting on 23 January 1927, Wilkinson described British troops in China as ‘a little debt collecting expedition for British bankers’.33 Shortly after, she spoke in Gateshead, complaining that ‘defenceless’ British women and children were being used as a pretext for intervention in China. She recalled the Royal Navy’s prior victories over the Chinese in the defence of Christianity and opium. Eliciting local press criticism, she inverted the received wisdom on the Boxer rebellion, doubting heroic European missionaries and explaining that the violence resulted from the seizure of the starving peasant’s last handful of rice.34 On 2 February, she addressed the women’s section of the Portsmouth Labour Party with nearly 2,000 attending. She combined a Marxist explanation of war with – unusually for her – a maternalist pacifism (of especially working women). Most mothers could see that the taking of life was not a solution for any problem.35 She intervened in parliament on Indian and Chinese nationalists’ behalf and was put on a secret blacklist to deny entry visas to India.36 She scolded socialists when they overlooked the character of imperialism and the role of ‘plunder in the East and the pillage of India’ in British capitalism’s development.37 Yet, Wilkinson stressed the agency as well as the suffering of those in the colonies. Writing at the time of the first Round Table Conference of 1930, Wilkinson imagined that global inspiration for revolution was germinating in places such as India: ‘other parts of that answer have to be sought in more remote places – in the frightened hearts of the Indian and English gentlemen now sitting in St. James’ Palace, for example, wondering what is really happening in the India that matters’.38 160
Against imperialism and war The League against Imperialism (LAI) From 1926, Willi Münzenberg sought to build a broad anti-imperialist campaign.39 Despite scepticism in Moscow, and hostility amongst KPD leaders, Münzenberg pursued this in his own pragmatic manner.40 On 2 December 1926, Wilkinson attended a meeting in the Commons to discuss a delegation from the UK to the LAI’s founding conference.41 An international provisional committee issued invitations on 15 December 1926. This body included an impressive mixture of figures of the European and American left, encompassing Communists and left socialists, as well as leading figures from anti-colonial and anti-racist movements.42 The project’s most notable supporters beyond the European left were the Congress Party of India, the Koumintang and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).43 By 5 February, Reginald Bridgeman, a wealthy former diplomat, confirmed that the Belgian government had granted permission for the conference and that Lansbury, S.O. Davies, A.J. Cook, Wilkinson and Crawfurd would attend.44 The conference took place in the Egmont Palace, Brussels, between 10 and 15 February. Wilkinson was part of the British delegation which comprised of ILP, Communist Party and Labour lefts.45 Many participants registered the conference’s inspirational character, quite different from the customary humdrum of political conferences.46 For Wilkinson, it was simply ‘the most dramatic conference I was ever at’.47 The congress surveyed the global situation – as Wilkinson put it ‘a picture of the ramifications of World Imperialism’ – and addressed the oppression of black people, highlighting racism’s historical roots in the slave trade and its part in amassing European wealth and power.48 Making her argument comprehensible to British trade unionists, Wilkinson reflected: The white workers have been content to see brown and yellow and black men butchered or enslaved in the name of ‘hope and glory’, and to procure markets for the goods the white man made. With terrible force, the result of their complaisance is coming home to them, in the severity of the competition of ill-paid labour of the East.49
The conference also criticised pacifism’s inadequacy in preventing future war; only the combined action of workers in capitalist countries and struggles for anti-colonial emancipation could halt war. The congress manifesto confirmed and deepened Wilkinson’s own view of the world. Intellectually, it was rooted in a Leninist comprehension of imperialism. Thus, centuries of colonial oppression had 161
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson culminated in imperialism as an all-encompassing policy. This stemmed from the concentration of finance capital and the instrument of the State’s military power to prise open markets and gain access to raw materials. It had thus led to the oppression of colonised peoples and world war because of intensified military competition and no chance of uncontested territorial expansion. This ‘inexcusable logic’ continued to threaten the world with war. The congress had three specific concerns: imperialist intrigue in China, mass opposition to British rule in India, and the war threat against the USSR. Its manifesto also considered imperialism’s cultural dimension with Christianity and racial ideology as well as ‘prestige’ as ciphers for projecting European power. Contesting imperialism’s civilising discourse, the manifesto argued that those claiming cultural and Christian superiority committed the ‘most inhuman atrocities and barbarous acts of revenge’.50 Moreover, the colonial emancipation would open new ‘possibilities for the material and spiritual culture of mankind’. Wilkinson alongside British, Indian and Chinese delegates drafted a joint declaration ‘against the suppression and intervention in colonial countries’.51 It outlined the labour movement’s tasks in imperialist countries: support for anti-colonial nationalist movements, opposition to colonial repression, parliamentary opposition to military credits, exposure of both the horrors of imperialism as well as the connection between anti-imperialism and working-class emancipation. It also involved a statement on the Chinese situation, calling for solidarity action, such as strikes, against imperialist intervention. The declaration was to be cabled to the Indian National Congress and the Cantonese government in Hankow.52 She recalled an evening in the hotel lounge socialising with ‘two young Chinese generals, a brilliant young Syrian (since executed), Negroes, Egyptians, Indians, all of them educated young men and women’. Motilal Nehru and his son Jawaharlal impressed her most, of the latter she observed that he was: ‘a slight young man, … whose finely-cut pale face would have been almost too good-looking if it had not been for his large, brilliant defiant eyes’. Educated at Harrow and Trinity, he was ‘an aristocrat soaked in English culture’.53 Significantly, there was no explicit criticism of the Labour Party. The conference was upbeat and optimistic, proclaiming its own historic nature, as Nehru underlined in an interview.54 Other anti-colonial leaders such as Hadj-Ahmed Messali, of Étoile Nord Africaine, and KMT spokespersons were equally positive. The congress provided the platform from which to launch the LAI. Adding a note of realism, Wilkinson sided with Edo Fimmen, the international transport union leader, who warned that a motion for a general strike of transport workers to oppose troops being sent to China would be a futile gesture, given the lack of 162
Against imperialism and war funds and preparation.55 Nonetheless, this conference translated her theory into real human experiences. When speaking about Indian independence, Wilkinson could speak of personal acquaintances. She paid tribute to Nehru, ‘a wise and highly educated leader’, as well as another from the Indian delegation who she described affectionately as ‘an amusing Hindu, whose name it would not be fair to give, who seemed to have caused British Imperialism about as much trouble in all parts of the East as one man well could’.56 She wrote of meeting so many interesting people: Henri Barbusse, Ernst Toller, Fimmen, and J.W. Brown of the Amsterdam International. Back in Britain, Wilkinson decried the Foreign Secretary’s hypocrisy when presenting intervention in China as selfless, local hostility as ingratitude and ‘John Bull in the East … a stained-glass window saint’.57 Describing the conference, she accorded first place to an unknown (and exotic) activist. He was a black delegate from French North Africa: ‘tall, jet black, a body as graceful as a premier danseur, gave in perfect French, a description of France’s little ways in her African colonies. A handsome chap, whose exploits in defence of his people read like a romance of the Crusaders.’ She also saluted the Korean delegate in the ‘clutches’ of Japanese imperialism, and Nicaraguans and Mexicans ‘feeling the heel of American imperialism’. For her, a highlight that epitomised the conference was the spontaneous and theatrical moment when the Chinese nationalist general Lu embraced Lansbury after the latter spoke passionately against Europeans in China. After Brussels, Wilkinson continued to address imperialism, international diplomacy and war in the Commons and in her journalism. She routinely connected imperialism and domestic class politics or the global and the local. Hence, Wilkinson condemned the Conservative Party’s indifference to naval disarmament at the talks in Geneva in the summer of 1927 whose ‘[i]nexorable imperialistic appetites take their toll not only in the mangled corpses of the battlefield but in the starved and stunted bodies of the children of the poor’.58 For Wilkinson, Baldwin’s pro-imperialist policy benefited ‘rich-man-ity’ not humanity; his deflationary stance depressed wages, boosted unemployment, forced cuts in educational budgets and child welfare.59 In early 1928, Wilkinson complained about the Kenya Commission and the ‘control of the rapacious planters’. Ormsby-Gore proposed federation with the surrounding territories of Uganda, Tanganyka and Nyasaland and self-government or ‘government of two and a half million natives by the few white planters’.60 When a War Office tank exhibition became a high society event, Wilkinson contrasted the tank’s armour with unprotected urban populations facing aerial bombing and gas attacks.61 She criticised the Kellogg Pact, whereby the major powers formally renounced war, as a sham and 163
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson a ‘sop to war weary peoples to make them believe Governments mean peace’. Ultimately, capitalism bred war and ‘until we end capitalism we cannot end war’.62 At the WILPF conference held in Prague on 24–29 August 1929, she explained that the Pact was peace on finance capital’s terms. She envisaged both revolutionary and reformist paths to dispossessing finance capital but in both scenarios trade union power would be necessary.63 Events undid the LAI. First, the Communist–KMT alliance broke down in 1927. After a failed Communist insurrection against the local KMT government in Canton, the KMT’s continued cooperation with the League became impossible. Moreover, the polite dialogue between the Communists and those from the European Socialist Parties at Brussels did not last.64 Institutional pressures came to bear, forcing successive figures – Lansbury and Brockway – to relinquish their responsibilities with the LAI. In these reshuffles, Wilkinson joined the executive of the British section.65 On 2 September 1927, the LSI executive designated the LAI as a Communist front. This led the Labour Party to deem LAI incompatible with membership in 1929. Finally, during what the Comintern called the Third Period, it sought to emphasise its differences with the reformists with whom Münzenberg had constructed the campaign. Behind the scenes as late as early 1930, Münzenberg was trying to oppose Moscow’s control over the LAI and its insistence on denouncing reformist or nationalist allies.66 Yet, by July 1930, Münzenberg’s attack on the ‘disgraceful betrayal’ of ‘Lansbury and his group’ was circulated to British Communists.67 In its early months, Wilkinson played a significant role in the international organisation. For a time, she was a member of its international executive, attending a tense General Council meeting in Brussels from 9 to 11 December 1927.68 When a Persian delegate raised British capitalist exploitation of his country, Bridgeman pointed to Wilkinson’s creditable Commons record.69 For her part, she had to explain her attitude concerning the Simon Commission: she personally objected to Congress non-representation in the Commons and she and others were defeated when proposing Labour withdrawal from the Commission at the Blackpool party congress.70 Wilkinson did indeed campaign for a Labour boycott of the Simon Commission with the news of lack of Indian participation, saying ‘after all, it is their country’.71 Wilkinson reminded the Secretary of State about the loss of the American colonies and suggested Sir John Simon had represented the ‘most privileged and reactionary sections of the Indian nation’ (the Indian princes) at the Privy Council.72 Fearing libel, she had to withdraw this last allegation, praising Simon’s perfect charm about the incident. Wilkinson believed that the party needed to restore Indian 164
Against imperialism and war goodwill after the Bengal ordinances had been issued under a Labour government. When MacDonald condemned pro-Congress critics, Wilkinson cited as her authority Keir Hardie as he regarded ‘coloured men as equals’.73 Ultimately, however, by then on the NEC, she defended the Labour Party’s decision to participate in the Commission despite being against it personally.74 In the UK, the LAI’s activity was confined initially to the Commons, with meetings on 8 April and 16 June 1927.75 Supporters of the LAI questioned the conduct of British imperialism from the floor of the Commons. On British intervention in Nanking, Wilkinson pithily observed that Sir Austen Chamberlain’s refusal of an impartial inquiry showed he ‘appears to think that it is better to discover the truth from the business end of a naval gun’.76 The LAI’s first British conference in Essex Hall occurred on 7 July 1928. Its most significant feature was the heavy criticism levelled at LAI-supporting Labour MPs.77 In a continuing atmosphere of abuse, Wilkinson followed other Labour MPs (John Beckett, Malone, Brockway and Ernest Thurtle) who quit the LAI, resigning from the executive at its December 1928 meeting.78 Nonetheless, her solidarity with the oppressed in the colonies continued. In February 1929, she was pressing the government over its inaction over mui tsai (‘little sister’) slavery in British-controlled Hong Kong, a practice whereby families gave over daughters as slaves before marriage, usually to be domestic servants but also sometimes as prostitutes.79
From Mother India to the Condition of India Wilkinson participated in the controversy about Katherine Mayo’s Mother India that broke in late 1927. During a Commons debate on the Commission to determine India’s future, Wilkinson condemned Mayo’s sensationalist account of Indian women.80 Mother India viewed Hindu culture as irredeemably misogynist and self-rule therefore a folly.81 The book focused upon the practice of young brides, where marriage was often shortly after puberty, the purdah, the treatment of widows, and the exploitation of women. Mayo invoked Western rationality and claimed to be exclusively concerned for Indian women and children. The book also explicitly contested Congress’ discourse of the nation as ‘Mother India’. Anti-nationalist and racist assumptions underpinned the book.82 Its publication occasioned controversy, pitting sympathisers of Indian nationalism and Hindu culture against imperialists and many British feminists.83 During the powerful feminist backlash that the book created, Wilkinson did not forsake the cause of Indian independence. Wilkinson attended a meeting of women’s organisations in Caxton Hall on 21 165
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson November 1927 where voices putting Labour or pro-nationalist positions were hissed.84 Even, the Daily Herald’s first review was glowing, although critical ones followed.85 In the Commons, she argued the book served the interests of her Conservative die-hard adversaries and the imperial authorities, insinuating ‘a great deal of official encouragement’ for the book and that all Labour MPs had mysteriously been sent a copy.86 As the principal speaker at an India League protest meeting on 29 November 1927, she intimated that Mother India sought to rationalise the government’s failure to include Indian nationalist representation on the Simon Commission.87 With the Mother India controversy, Wilkinson’s causes – anti-colonialism, gender equality, labour – were manifestly entwined in complex ways. Notably, it showed both her periodic alienation from elitist variants of feminism and that she did not perceive the cause of women to be autonomous of global structures of empire and capital. Thus, she rejected Eleanor Rathbone’s initiative for a survey of NUSEC members on the issue.88 Having said that, the women’s organisation to which Wilkinson was closest – the WILPF – produced a pamphlet connecting emergent Indian women’s organisations with nationalist consciousness, also highlighting what the nationalist movement had done to ‘bring women to the fore’.89 No doubt encouraged by CPGB criticisms, the second Labour government’s action antagonised Indian audiences within the anti-imperialist movement. On 27 November 1930, a Commonwealth of India League meeting in Central Hall, Westminster, revealed the anger at the actions of the Labour government among the large contingent of Indians in the audience. Fights broke out in the stalls, Marley was attacked and replaced as chairman. When Wilkinson tried to calm the situation, she was interrupted, called a ‘renegade’, had to sit back down, got her coat and left.90 Shortly afterwards, she commented to an American audience that the Indians in London were divided into two hostile camps (Commonwealth of India League and the Young India group), complicating the campaign.91 Nevertheless, on her return from the USA, she addressed the Middlesbrough branch of the Commonwealth of India League alongside Menon on 14 February 1931.92 From Gandhi and Malaviya’s visit to London in early 1932, Wilkinson became more involved with the India League alongside Horrabin, the Plebs expert on imperialism.93 As she put it, she and a small group of MPs ‘stage-managed’ the Commons appearance of their two India guests and met in Horrabin’s Bloomsbury flat.94 As regards Gandhi, Wilkinson admired his leadership qualities, his courage and his ‘uncanny understanding of those he led’ but she ‘could never feel too awe-inspired’. Malaviya was a different matter and his sense of holiness and fairness 166
Against imperialism and war greatly impressed Wilkinson. She also praised Sarojini Naidu, a suffrage veteran and founder of the Women’s Indian Association, who was now a ‘handful of trouble’ for the authorities over Indian independence.95 Wilkinson helped to arrange the Commons meeting for Naidu. Around this time, Wilkinson’s commitment to the Indian cause stimulated Time and Tide’s letters page.96 One correspondent complained that the MP allowed her heart to rule her head over India, war and socialist planning.97 Wilkinson curtly responded that her head not her heart told her that it was impossible to rule 400 million people against their will, jail tens of thousands of political activists, or arrest their leaders on technicalities.98 In autumn 1932, Wilkinson travelled to India along with Monica Whately, Leonard Matters and Krishna Menon on the India League’s behalf.99 The trip’s rationale was to secure ‘reliable witnesses’ to inform British public opinion of the ‘truth about India’.100 The Congress’s civil disobedience campaign and the British colonial government’s repressive ordinances shaped the background. Originally, the intention was to send a group of four including two MPs. The organisers were ‘specially anxious’ to persuade Wilkinson who had already secured permission for unpaid leave from her union duties, because of her talent for publicity and her press contacts in Britain and the USA.101 Whately persuaded Wilkinson to go.102 Wilkinson asked Leonard Elmhirst to contribute to an appeal launched by the India League to raise money for the trip. In the Fabian mould of progressive imperial improvement, Elmhirst had, during late 1929 and 1930, solicited Wilkinson’s political influence for a scheme to irrigate Bengal, hoping to circumvent the Indian civil service’s intransigence.103 Also, having been asked by ‘someone whose opinion really matters but who is anxious that their name should not be mentioned’, she invited Elmhirst to comment on the Simon report.104 He even-handedly criticised the hysterical tone of nationalist propaganda and the ‘unimaginative bureaucracy responsible to nobody’.105 Wilkinson revealed to him that Malaviya had requested the trip, which would be a ‘worthwhile piece of work to bring back something like an honest account of the position’. She stressed the necessity of raising English money so as to be ‘as independent as possible’ and not ‘to be tied up to the Hindus entirely’.106 British and Indian authorities were aware of Malaviya’s involvement in the trip, intercepting letters between organisers.107 Behind the scenes, the India Office realised that ‘in view of the names suggested … it is … hardly possible to prevent the tour’.108 Under-Secretary of State for India Lord Lothian and Whately met before the tour. Whately unsuccessfully asked for a document indicating official permission to investigate.109 167
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Lothian warned of the dangers of being compromised by her friends in the Indian National Congress and being drawn into illegal activity. He urged the delegation to keep in touch with government officials and promised to write to officials and prominent people that they could interview.110 The intention was to ‘put them in touch with reliable people who might counteract the Congress virus’. The authorities also hoped to prevent Wilkinson and Whately from visiting political prisoners.111 Shortly before her Indian visit, Wilkinson addressed a Birmingham audience about the Meerut prisoners who had been arrested in March 1929 for conspiracy after involvement in the great textile strikes in Bombay and were prominent within the Girni Kamgar Union, the Bombay textile union. They were in jail, she said, because they did not think that Indians should work for two or four annas a day.112 The visit occurred at a delicate moment in the Indian struggle. The Simon Commission had reported in May 1929, rejecting independence. Congress launched a campaign of civil disobedience (1930–31). A first Round Table Conference of British and Indian representatives (though not Congress) on constitutional reform took place in London (November–January 1930–31). A second Round Table Conference (September-December 1931) included Gandhi and resulted in suspension of civil disobedience but failed to reach agreement. Shortly after his return to India, Gandhi was imprisoned. Consequently, civil disobedience and repression resumed. The government was gauging reaction to the ‘communal decision’ that reorganised the electoral system according ethnic-religious constituencies to manipulate the composition of provincial legislatures. Gandhi’s fasting compensated for the decline of the protest cycle of disobedience. A third Round Table Conference was to occur in November–December 1932 but was boycotted by both Congress and the Labour Party. Wilkinson and her party arrived in Bombay (Mumbai) on 17 August 1932. The trip covered enormous distances. They journeyed from Bombay to Madras via Pune, spending a fortnight in the Madras Presidency with a week in Madras city. On this leg of their visit, they ventured as far south as Calicut. They then took in Orissa, Bengal, Assam, the United Provinces, the Punjab and the North-West Frontier. They returned to Bombay via Delhi, the Sind (including Karachi) and Gujarat. They stressed that they interviewed all shades of opinion, not only Congress activists but government officials, other political organisations, trade union leaders, employers and women’s organisations. The official records and Wilkinson’s journalism provide an intermittent record of the delegation’s time in India. On the day after their arrival in Bombay, Whately and Wilkinson interviewed P.A. Kelly, of Bombay Police Head Office. He quizzed them about receiving Congress money 168
Against imperialism and war and denied them access to political prisoners. Kelly did admit the use of whips for jail discipline, on pickets and communal disturbances. He advised them that they would only hear truthful accounts from government officials.113 The intelligence report on their first week in India insinuated that Congress had attempted to ‘stage a lathi [5ft cane baton] charge for the delegation’s edification’.114 Pressing to see Naidu, Wilkinson gained permission to enter Yerwada jail (in Pune, Maharashtra), accompanying Naidu’s daughter.115 This access allowed them to visit Gandhi who was fasting over Untouchability. He had telegrammed to see Wilkinson. They discussed Congress’s cotton boycott and the poverty of the Indian peasant who depended on extra income from hand-weaving.116 She believed that jailing Gandhi was folly as no lasting settlement could be agreed without him. Only strengthening peasant devotion for him, the government might be forced to deal with the less moderate Nehru. The Congress leader’s courage clearly impressed Wilkinson as his fast had visibly sapped his physical powers. Despite her criticisms of his political judgement, he had the power to ‘grab one by the heart’.117 Wilkinson met him a second time after his release when he, the poet Tagore, the Congress leader of the United Provinces Rajendra Prasad (later the first President of the Indian republic) and the lawyer Rajagopalachari were planning the Untouchables campaign. Wilkinson cabled the Daily Herald condemning separate electorates as Untouchables perceived this policy as perpetuating their status, as well as relaying a message from Gandhi.118 In the British press, she praised the unnoticed work of women activists who challenged Untouchability in the temples and at the wells.119 After Yerwada, the India League delegation spent a fortnight in the Madras Presidency. Two prominent Congress activists Jayaprakash Naryan and Rajagopalachari assisted them. Congress also provided guides and interpreters. On 25 August the delegates arrived in Madras where they stayed briefly and then split into two groups (one travelling to the west coast and the other going south). They met up again in Madras and proceeded northwards into the Telugu area. Police officials sought to undermine their findings in Madras, highlighting to their superiors that opinion was stage-managed, that interviewees were coached, as well as the visit’s brevity and superficiality. They even cast doubt on lathi scars shown to the delegates.120 In contrast to this image that the authorities sought to create of the visit, Wilkinson permitted a dialogue between British and Indian workers through her journalism. In Madras, she met Shiva Rao who she had first encountered at the Brussels conference. He took her into the working-class quarter of Perambur, with its appalling housing conditions. She was then taken to an outdoor meeting of the railway workers’ union. Challenging the 169
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson assumptions about India amongst her readership and playing to their domestic ones, she reflected that the ‘ability to read the Daily Mail is not the only test of human intelligence’.121 These railworkers were about to take strike action, which was ultimately defeated. She spoke to a young union executive member who ran a Labour college class and read Plebs. These shared experiences with her readers contrasted with his 7s 6d weekly wage and having to support his three unemployed brothers. He spoke three languages – Tamil, English and Telugu – and was acting as Wilkinson’s interpreter. She then visited a textile mill, where pay and conditions were yet worse. Again exploring prejudices, she observed, ‘These textile workers seemed poor and therefore less intelligent than the railwaymen. I expect that was simply because they were half-starved. The wages were scandalous …’. She reflected that the inefficiency of ‘native’ workers (her own quotation marks) had its roots in overwork and poor pay. At the textile mill, Wilkinson witnessed the Indian women workers’ plight. Nearly all married, they had their children with them, bearing the twin burdens of childcare and wage-earning. No wonder they lacked the ‘kick and spirit of the railwaymen’. Wilkinson sought through these cameos to contest the preconceptions about colonial women and workers. Her support for Indian nationalism was inflected with class and gender politics and sought to overcome the cultural distance between British and Indian workers. The Meerut prisoners – she reflected – were trying to organise precisely such textile workers. The fact that the Meerut prisoners were Communists was a smokescreen and appealed to NUDAW branches for support. She had seen what time in an Indian jail would mean and could only shudder at the prospect of transportation. She concluded, ‘We, as British workers, cannot afford to regard Indian labour conditions as having nothing to do with us.’ On 5 September, a police official in the Guntur district told them nonchalantly of the beatings routinely used to disperse non-violent demonstrators.122 On 7 September, the delegates left the Madras presidency, arriving two days later in Bengal, proceeding to visit Dacca, Nadia and Chittagong. Wilkinson – who knew Sir John Anderson, the Governor of Bengal, personally – stayed the weekend at Government House in Darjeeling. Despite the danger of a terrorist attack upon him, Anderson accompanied Wilkinson to the bazaar, whose act of courage impressed her greatly.123 That weekend, she wrote to Middleton to explain that she would not return in time for the Labour Party conference despite being nominated for the NEC. She talked of the ‘mass feeling that is hard to exaggerate’ in support of Gandhi and wished that Labour would take a stronger line against the repression.124 The Bengal secretariat of the Government of India complained that the investigators saw the area 170
Against imperialism and war ‘largely through Congress spectacles’. Despite the authorities’ intention to prevent visits to prisons, they were allowed to visit an officially ‘selected jail … Hooly’ [sic Hooghly]. Wilkinson regaled Daily Herald readers with her cunning in gaining prison access, despite the authorities’ determination to prevent this. When told a men’s prison was no place for an Englishwoman, she countered that if it was not fit for a woman to see, it was not fit to keep a man in and that she would tell the world this. She gained access to eight jails including the ‘beating jail’ of Rae Bareli (meeting children of eight given six-month sentences for distributing leaflets and pulling a train’s communication cord).125 On 11 September, Wilkinson and her colleagues witnessed the police ruthlessly disperse a student demonstration in Calcutta with beatings, which was just one of several incidents that they witnessed.126 Wilkinson and Menon accompanied Dr Indra Narayan Sen Gupta to Chittagong on 12 September. At the station, a welcome committee ‘including one ex-detenu, two civil disobedience ex-convicts, several political suspects and the editor of an extremist local newspaper the Panchanjanya’ awaited them. Having also spoken to the Superintendent of Police but avoided other officials, Wilkinson interviewed people about the riot after Khan Bahdur Ahsanullah’s murder. A handwritten comment in the confidential official correspondence noted: ‘I am afraid we may have trouble over this, which will be a pity as the Govt of Bengal have got away with it so easily.’127 In Assam, Wilkinson and Menon investigated the evictions in the Bhanubil villages after agrarian unrest between Hindu peasants and zemindars (Muslim absentee landlords). They arrived at Bhanugach railway station on 13 September, hearing how the police had enforced the evictions with punitive sanctions, including house demolition.128 Arriving in Patna on 20 September, Wilkinson, Matters and Whately stayed with Hasan Imam and visited more sites of police violence – Amhara (Dinapur) and Pirabahore (Bankipore) – where they were shown evidence of punitive seizures of doors and windows. On the second day of their stay in Patna, Hasan Imam hosted a dinner party at which, to their obvious discomfort, government officials vied with Congress activists for the delegates’ attention.129 The Police Assistant Superintendent complained that the guests were fed false claims of local police brutality. The delegation’s tour of the Punjab began on 5 October when all four arrived in Lahore. It appears that they engaged in subterfuge in order to avoid surveillance, arriving unexpectedly early in Lahore. They attended a tea party at the Congress supporter Lal Harkishan Lal’s house. Guests discussed the separate electorates, a recent lathi charge on women in Lahore (that the police report claimed to be invented) and communal riots which a pro-Congress Muslim leader blamed on press incitement 171
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson and government divide and rule. The delegation then visited the railway workshops in Moghalpura. Their guides – ‘labour agitators’ Chamman Lal and Dr Shujja Ullah – addressed a meeting of railworkers. After seeing the local sights, the delegates interviewed Tara Singh, a pro- Congress Sikh leader at Shahdara. On 7 October, they visited Amritsar, seeing Jallianwala Bagh, the narrow alleyway where in April 1919 British troops fired into crowds for ten minutes killing at the very least 379. A substantial part of the investigation was concerned with the contested claims about incidents when the authorities fired into crowds. Official figures for 1932, which did not include all incidents, admitted 29 occasions of the police or army firing into the crowds with 80 fatalities and 308 injured.130 The commission investigated such events in Kohat (North West Frontier Province, NWFP), Benares, Tarapore (Bihar and Orissa), Tehatta (Bengal), Hashanbad and Musaffarpur.131 On their return to Lahore, a Muslim deputation explained their support for the separate electorate system. The mission then met the Deputy Commissioner over political prisoners’ conditions in the Punjab. After that, at the Tribune’s premises, journalists explained the restrictive press laws and described police excesses at Hanman in 1930. To substantiate these claims, the delegates were taken to Hanman where ‘they were regaled with tales of the atrocities’.132 They also encountered anti-Congress opinion: a loyalist student in Hanman told of Congress intimidation and boycott of loyalists. Returning to Lahore, Wilkinson and her colleagues then met Untouchable representatives. She also spoke with the lawyer Sham Lal. He had represented the renowned communist revolutionary Bhagat Singh who was executed after the Lahore conspiracy trial.133 Singh had assassinated a police officer in retaliation for the death at police hands of Lala Lajpat Rai on a non-violent protest against the Simon Commission. On 8 October, Wilkinson and Menon left for Peshawar, spending 9 to 15 October in the turbulent North West Frontier Province (NWFP). During their trip through the NWFP, they visited the Khyber Pass, the Kohat Pass, Mohamand Border, Gorkhatri and Peshawar city. It was the NWPF that gave the most profound sense of repression. Wilkinson often referred to her experiences there when arguing that fascism was possible in Britain. Opposition to British rule took the form of the non-violent Khudai Khidmatgars (KK, the Servants of God) or the Red Shirts as they became known. The KK were a pro-Congress Muslim mass organisation of Pathan ethnicity led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the ‘Frontier Gandhi’. Peshawar had been the site of the Kissa Khani Bazaar massacre (on 23 April 1930) at which the British used armoured cars and machine guns against a non-violent crowd protesting against the arrest of the KK 172
Against imperialism and war leader. The Red Shirt sympathisers refused to disperse and after four hours of shooting 200 were dead. It took four days to end the protests and this event transformed the KK into a mass movement.134 Wilkinson and Menon interviewed the Governor of the NWFP, the Inspector General of Police, Deputy Police Commissioner and the Publicity Officer. They also spent time with the English wife and son of Dr Khan Sahib (Ghaffar Khan’s brother) who was a political prisoner in Hazaribagh central jail. Despite the authorities desiring to keep them ‘on the leash’, the delegation managed to interview activists without government officials being present. John Khan Sahib accompanied them to Charsadda, Utmanzi, Urmar, Mardan and Takkar. To underline the nature of British rule in the NWFP, Sahib produced KK witnesses for the visit.135 Wilkinson interviewed Red Shirts about police injuries, several providing medical certificates and evidence of the fines imposed on them for their part in civil disobedience. She quizzed witnesses about Hindu–Muslim relations, the Sikh question and Afghanistan. Sahib presented Wilkinson with a Peshawar district police lathi as a gift. On 12 October, Wilkinson saw the legislative council at work, observing a sitting select committee. The following day, Wilkinson spoke to state prisoners in Peshawar jail as well as with Mohammed Ramzan Khan and political leaders from Dera Ismail Khan. On 14 October, they visited Mardan, Takkar and Gujar Garhi. Trouble in Takkar had begun in late May 1930 when, trying to prevent KK arrests, villagers killed a British police officer. In retaliation, the police attacked Takkar with perhaps seventy villagers killed and 150 wounded. The most vivid experience of British repression that Wilkinson saw herself was in Mardan. On 13 October 1932, about 700 ‘ex-Redshirts’ assembled near Mardan, mainly from the Katland and Baizai areas, to see Abdul Ghaffar Khan and a commission to examine their grievances. Most returned home the same day. The following day, Wilkinson and Menon reached Mohammed Amir Khan’s guest house. Wilkinson interviewed witnesses about May 1930, asking the police who were accompanying her to leave while she did so. Police roughly beat the crowd that assembled outside with lathis and rifle butts.136 Wilkinson witnessed it all from the guest house’s first floor veranda. Even their chauffeur was surrounded by armed police and threatened. While downplaying this, local police reports admitted the use of force. Not forewarned of the delegation’s presence, the local police were arresting those leaving the guest house, believing a KK meeting to be inside. A plain clothes police officer rescued the situation, bringing orders for the armed reserve to withdraw. Later on, Wilkinson complained to Mardan’s Joint Deputy Commissioner that a man was beaten with his hands tied behind his back. 173
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson The next day, Wilkinson and Menon visited senior Peshawar police officials, upset by events the day before. After the Mardan incident, the authorities withdrew permission to visit Haripur Central Prison. Reporting on the visit to NWFP, local officials congratulated themselves that – the Mardan incident notwithstanding – little occurred that could not be denied. They had provided Wilkinson with government officials and loyalists to talk to and she had enjoyed the ‘social and sight-seeing side of her visit’, with the result that the visit ‘has probably done more good than harm from the Government’s point of view’.137 However, official investigations into the Mardan incident confidentially stated, despite local police denials, that Wilkinson’s accusations ‘must be accepted as true.’ Despite this, the authorities thought the police behaviour to be entirely legitimate given the ban on the Red Shirts and dismissed the violence as a calculated provocation.138 On the evening of 15 October, the pair left for Lahore on the Bombay express. Wilkinson and Menon arrived in Delhi on 17 October. Their interview with the Deputy Commissioner focused upon sanitation and government repression. Wilkinson stressed their independence from Congress, but the Deputy Commissioner believed that she was ‘primed with views and opinions of the pro-Congress press’.139 On 21 September, they witnessed another vivid scene of repression in Bochasan (Gujarat). The police charged a village procession of 30 or 40 people. The villagers squatted down and were beaten around the shoulders and heads with 5ft lathis. The commission’s report observed that ‘It was a ruthless performance, savage in the fury with which the police delivered the blows.’140 In addition, Wilkinson and Menon met Delhi University’s ViceChancellor as well as deputations from Hindu Mahasabha and Jamait-ul-Ulema, a Muslim organisation allied to Congress. The following day, Wilkinson spoke to 125 students in Hindu College Hall.141 Combining humour, internationalism and sympathy for the Indian cause, she stressed how much India and Britain had in common, and that she hoped for future peace between the two countries, working together for the common good. She observed – to considerable laughter – that the only people more commission-ridden than Indian people were the British miners: if only one could live on commissions both would be the best-fed people in the world. ‘An iron curtain’ separated the Indian and British peoples since the ordinances and accurate news of India could not get through. Their tour’s object was to overcome this barrier. She articulated a powerful internationalism: ‘I shall be ashamed of my country if when we go back and tell them what we have seen, something is not done.’ She remarked that Indians would win independence themselves and she believed India to possess immense possibilities. She would challenge the anti-Indian stereotype absorbed in religion and 174
Against imperialism and war incapable of handling machinery, observing that the ‘stage Irish’ disappeared from the music halls once Ireland had achieved statehood. Telling how a government official had said that he hoped that she would meet the best Indians, she noted that 99% of the best Indians seemed to be in jail. The meeting’s chair – Chiranji Lal Paliwal – had recently served a six-month prison sentence for being in possession of unauthorised literature.142 She concluded that she hoped that the repression would soon be over. With the tour drawing to a close, in two interviews with police officials on 30 and 31 October, Wilkinson encountered the official formula of the ‘possibility of occasional abuses’ after Congress ‘provocation’. When she remarked on the widespread anti-government discontent, this was blamed on ‘lying and poisonous propaganda’.143 After nearly seven weeks, the delegation’s tour of India ended in Bombay on 7 November. Official impressions of Wilkinson throughout the trip were relatively favourable, certainly more so than her colleagues: she appeared to be broad-minded, though not making any pretence to impartiality and behaved sensibly. Clearly, she charmed official opinion and thus secured access to several prisons, despite the initial hope that this might be avoided. At the same time, official correspondence explored strategies to undermine the delegation. Officials dismissively reported that Wilkinson ‘does not know very much about India, but wants to become popular with Indians and wishes to identify herself with Indian aspirations’.144 Such observations fuelled efforts to discredit the investigation as Indian nationalist propaganda.145 In the Commons, Hoare argued that Congress was manipulating the visitors: ‘scenes were stage-managed for this delegation and … from start to finish they saw this carefully arranged side of the picture.’146 Hoare had briefed the Cabinet on Wilkinson’s visit, during which he alleged ‘demonstrations were staged to entice the police into making lathi charges’.147 Privately, officials singled Wilkinson out as an effective advocate for the Indian cause due to her careful reasoning, eloquence and media contacts. Thus, rather than deny the practices she exposed, they lay the responsibility with the victims. The trip certainly concerned the authorities. Hoare’s office primed the Cabinet, providing a point-by-point official refutation.148 Hoare publicly dismissed Wilkinson’s investigation as a Potemkin tour.149 She responded that he intended this ‘perfect excuse of the ages’ to deflect her charges of police brutality and the loss of consent for British rule.150 Had they adopted the procedures of official commissions, they would not have ascertained a realistic idea of the Indian situation. Admitting Congress (and non-Congress) assistance, they remarked that some who had helped them had consequently been arrested and official obstruction necessitated reliance on such help. 175
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson While true that Wilkinson occasionally idealised Indian spirituality, conforming to a common stereotype, her anti-imperialist propaganda and movement-building should not be taken for her private analysis. Wilkinson deployed devices to establish for a transnational audience a shared purpose, a mutual comprehensibility and frames that could build transnational movements. She thus proposed identifications of universal resonance: heroes, youth, trade unionists, women and class. She subverted difference to make common cause, for instance describing herself when in India as an Untouchable in England for being a trade unionist. She acknowledged her own prejudices about cultural practices such as bathing, or using cow dung as polish, or the lack of chemist shops and criticised the ‘fussy’ luxury of Europeans in India.151 She also took some pleasure in challenging Indian attitudes as well, sporting bangles in colours associated with the depressed classes and being seen in a marketplace with Indian men who were friends rather than servants. On 21 November, on their return, the delegation briefed the press about their experiences. Wilkinson praised the ‘mental ability, philosophic outlook, and grasp of political affairs’ that she found in Indian villages. In contrast, the communal award sought to reinforce old cleavages and discredit Indian claims to nationhood. Despite this, she argued, British repression was generating Hindu–Muslim unity.152 The India League organised a conference held in Kingsway Hall on 26 November.153 Jagger welcomed the 475 delegates. The conference called for an immediate end to repression and an amnesty as a preliminary step to transferring power to the Indian people. The police report noted that Wilkinson’s speeches were ‘a totally different calibre’ to those of other speakers with an ‘undeniable’ appeal, ‘and it may be said that if she and Bertrand Russell toured the country on behalf of the India League, without the collaboration of the other members, they would gain many converts to their point of view, even from among the sceptical’. In her afternoon speech, she tackled the myths of Britain’s civilising mission and Indian nationalist ingratitude. Britain was an alien power that had broken indigenous economic and social structures. India – as its great monuments attested – was not a backward country (as ideological justifications of imperial rule suggested) but a ruined one.154 For all the talk of European progress, it was now an overwhelmingly agricultural country that could not feed itself and the signs of development such as roads and rail were for European car owners and maintaining imperial rule. She regarded Gandhi’s movement as the nation’s future. The government had no right to strangle this in the name of the British people. She catalogued the follies of the British rule: jailing 20,000 leaders of a progressive movement, closing down ashrams, destroying handlooms 176
Against imperialism and war and failing to eliminate leprosy. She envied India’s magnificent leaders and the unvanquished spirit of her masses. For her, India was a great country and had a philosophical depth that England lacked. She concluded that India, if set free, would make a valuable contribution to world culture. In her evening speech, she analysed Congress, which was multi-religious and thus a potential instrument of national freedom. She recounted ‘in moving language’ her interview with Gandhi during his fast. She explained Gandhi’s achievement in breaking down Untouchability: his fast and Indian women’s activism was bringing about a social revolution. Believing the government to be acting in crass and unforgiveable stupidity rather than deliberate cruelty, hope for the future lay with the nationalist movement. The India League organised a Manchester meeting a fortnight later, at which Wilkinson challenged Hoare’s claims of Congress’s stage-management. There was no denying that she had witnessed police outrages with her own eyes. Indeed, a district commissioner told her: ‘Oh well, after all we have so many people in prison. It is much better to give them a thorough beating and send them away.’ She also observed that while the ordinances remained, the boycott of British imported textiles would continue with Lancashire suffering as a consequence. Questioned about the Labour government’s record, she said that the beatings and ordinance rule were shameful. The solution lay with Gandhi’s release and a negotiated settlement with Congress.155 Wilkinson spoke on her Indian experiences on other occasions. She evoked strong emotion, particularly when talking of the beatings perpetrated there.156 She took the Indian question to Soroptimist Clubs, WILPF branches, Methodist Church events, Labour and nationalist organisations in Manchester, Birmingham, Brighton and London.157 On 5 January 1933, she blended the exotic and the political to intrigue her audience at the Felling Labour Club, telling of her elephant ride and the government’s policy of repression against Congress.158 Although targeting the current government, Wilkinson did criticise the Labour government’s record on India at the Labour Women’s Conference.159 Tailoring her case for the women’s movement, she talked about the ‘new women’ of India who were challenging age-old convention while retaining their own cultural sense of femininity.160 Wilkinson wrote about the arbitrary ordinance rule, unaccountable police powers and special non-jury courts.161 With 18,000 officially in jail, she contended in the Manchester Guardian that a negotiated lasting settlement in India necessitated an amnesty for political prisoners. Their conditions were atrocious, visibly breaking the health of Nehru and others that she knew. India’s prisons signified monotonous food, overcrowding, beatings and the ‘standing handcuffs’ torture (hung by 177
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson their wrists from a beam above their heads).162 The revelations about this torture technique caused angry letters to the Foreign Office and some embarrassment as the authorities could not deny its use.163 After her visit, she was preparing a book, The Indian Parade, which was never completed and no manuscript remains.164 Press coverage indicated that it would be published in April 1933 and that it would ‘cause a stir’.165 Precisely why it did not see the light of day is unclear. She did contribute to the mission’s 534-page report, Condition of India (1933), which outlined the contradictions of the government’s policy of reform and repression.166 It catalogued the repressive government ordinances that suspended civil liberties and examined the methods of police rule, even used against women and children, which included shooting unarmed demonstrators or charging with lathis, mass arrests and awful prison conditions.167 It exposed the government’s mendacity and the widespread support that existed across different social classes and religious communities for self-rule and for Congress. The Indian authorities recommended its prohibition to the Secretary of State for India as a ‘very dangerous’ text that would ‘have a considerable sale in India and do much mischief’.168 Periodically, she returned to Indian matters. She sat on the Meerut Prisoners’ Release Committee after their sentencing in January 1933. The constitutional process also occasioned revivals in protest. The White Paper concerning the new constitution was one such occasion, with Wilkinson speaking alongside Brockway at Southport Labour Party on 4 October 1934 and at a poorly attended India League meeting in Essex Hall on 20 October. She condemned the vested conservative interests shaping Indian policy.169 With the Government of India Bill of 1935, Wilkinson chaired an India League public meeting in the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, on 16 March.170 According to Special Branch, 250 were present, half of whom were Indians. Wilkinson introduced the session and proposed the withdrawal of the reactionary bill, which breached the pledges made to India. The motion reasserted the principle of self-determination and full self-government for India. With the new constitution, she spoke at the India League conference on 7 May 1936.171 Two hundred and fifty attended the meeting of whom fifty were Indian. A resolution was sent to the Secretary of State for India, condemning the abuses of civil liberties and signalling the universal dissatisfaction with the new constitution. Wilkinson praised Nehru’s unique leadership for openly embracing international socialism, unlike other Congress leaders. His views indicated, she believed, a profound change in Indian thought, symbolising the great awakening to class consciousness throughout Asia.
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Against imperialism and war She assisted Indian nationalist leaders in a variety of ways. She wrote a ‘human interest’ story about Nehru’s wife Kamala for the Star. As she explained apologetically in the letter to Nehru, dressing Kamala in ‘the Fairy Princess outfit’ was the only way to publish a piece about her imprisonment given the ‘boycott’ of Indian news in the press.172 She advised Nehru about the publication of his memoirs and promoted them in the Sunday Referee, Time and Tide and at an India League meeting in March 1936.173 Moreover, Wilkinson facilitated Congress leaders’ visits to the UK. William Henderson, PPS to the Secretary of State for India (1929–31), met Gandhi at a reception in Wilkinson’s flat.174 Conze recollected encountering Nehru at her flat on several occasions.175 Wilkinson was part of the reception committee which greeted Nehru on 29 October 1935 at Victoria Station.176 When otherwise engaged, Wilkinson asked her secretary Diana Hubback to assist with the arrangements for another visit in January 1936.177 Wryly complaining to Nehru of Menon’s ‘hail of telegrams’, Wilkinson helped to prepare his ‘idolised leader’s’ visit to London.178 Wilkinson used her contacts in order to further Nehru’s cause, lining up a dinner party at her ‘great friend’ Rhondda’s house and an all-party meeting of MPs in the Commons.179 During the visit between 26 January and 7 February 1936, Wilkinson spoke at a Caxton Hall reception with 450 attending, hosted a private reception at her flat and chaired a public meeting that attracted 750.180 Two years later, Wilkinson attended a large public meeting on 27 June 1938 during Nehru’s next visit. More than 2,000 attended the Kingsway Hall event. Owing to lack of time, Wilkinson did not speak but declared the meeting closed with the singing of the International.181 Wilkinson also contributed to other anti-colonial and anti-racist campaigns during the 1930s when the occasion arose. Thus, she argued in favour of racially mixed relationships in the context of world citizenship, accusing opponents of being 50 years behind the times.182 When the League of Coloured Peoples held its inaugural meeting on 5 June 1931, she was on the platform alongside Paul Robeson.183 She signed a resolution to the US embassy calling for an inquiry into the ‘Scotsboro boys’ case.184 While rejecting the idea of sanctions on Italy over the invasion of Abyssinia for which she was condemned as pro-fascist by the CPGB and the Labour right, she applauded the unseating of Hoare because he pursued the logic of British imperialism.185 After the shootings of strikers in the copper mines of Northern Rhodesia, she and Holtby campaigned over the matter. She recommended as a Christmas gift the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Disturbances in the Copperbelt, Northern Rhodesia because it was a breathtaking revelation of the British official mind that could dispassionately detail horrific brutalities performed in the interests of the British planters and industrialists.186 With George 179
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Padmore as chair and Jomo Kenyatta as vice-chair, she became an associate member and sponsor of the anti-colonialist International African Service Bureau.187 Regarding the flight from oppression, Wilkinson raised the unpopular cause of the refugees when they were deemed un-newsworthy. By the summer of 1938, her desk was filled with letters from Zurich, Vienna and Paris of those seeking sanctuary in the UK. While ‘thin lipped men’ in Westminster ask what ‘they’ have to do with ‘us’, she did not ‘think of humanity divided by high walls of frontiers’.188 Even trade unions worried about the effects of refugees on the labour market. In the face of the mood of xenophobia, she observed that refugees could be a real asset to the country. Wilkinson also supported campaigns against anti-Semitism. After a visit to Poland, she spoke at an ‘at home’ in aid of the United Appeal for Jews in Poland in May 1938. She argued that the plight of the Jews was an issue for non-Jews as well, highlighting the extreme hardship of and discrimination against Poland’s Jewish population. Given that Jewish immigration had contributed significantly to British society, she objected to the common slur, ‘go back to Poland’. Such sentiments, she observed, were indicative of the actual menace that fascism posed in Britain.189 In these circumstances, she publicly flattered the Aliens Branch of the Home Office and its head Geoffrey Lloyd who acted sympathetically within the narrow limits imposed upon him. She had had dealings on behalf of several refugees and foreign visitors.190 Despite the shifting focus of her politics, Wilkinson remained committed to Indian independence well into the war. Thus, even as late as February 1940, she seconded Laski’s call on the Labour Party NEC for full dominion status within three years of the end of the war, losing by four votes to nine.191 From this point, Wilkinson’s views on India’s future changed. She did not live to see Indian independence, which occurred in August 1947, seven months after her death. India provides a gauge of the political transformation that Wilkinson underwent in 1940. She sat on the Cabinet’s India and Burma Committee that Attlee himself chaired.192 The matter was of key importance during her time in the post-war Labour Cabinet, particularly after the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy in Bombay harbour on 18 February 1946. When India was raised in the Cabinet, Wilkinson had exchanged her former rejection of imperialism for a concern to manage British foreign influence.193 She was amongst those in the Cabinet (Bevin, Morrison and Shinwell) who favoured repression despite the Cabinet Mission and the Viceroy deeming such a policy futile. On 8 March 1946, she worried about the effects of concessions to Indian nationalists on sterling balances.194 On other occasions, seeing former allies as opponents, she asked about the military capacity of Congress and the possibility of a split in its ranks.195 In a discussion 180
Against imperialism and war in May 1946 on the Constitution of India, she wanted the inclusion of a comment on British rule and was concerned once again about the ‘safeguarding of B. [British] interests’.196 In years past, she would have interpreted such a phrase as code for the interests of British capital. Her lack of sympathy towards Congress grew with its rejection of the Labour government’s offer. In such circumstances, she speculated that the army would remain loyal and proposed repression of Congress, including ‘the arrest of Gandhi, etc.’, in order to avoid circumstances ‘suggesting we’re being stoned out’.197 This clearly implied that she was concerned with the future of the British Empire, if India provided a precedent to other anti-colonial movements. Not only did such a stance reverse those that she had taken throughout the 1920s and 1930s, it also put in new light her role in presenting the Second World War as a people’s war and not an imperialist one to those with hesitations about such a war.
Why War? In July 1934, the Plebs League published a short anti-war book that Wilkinson authored jointly with German refugee Edward Conze. It was an explicitly Marxist account of capitalism’s connection to war. Why War?’s fatalistic sub-title – a Handbook for Those who Will Take Part in the Second World War – proved controversial.198 Richard Overy has stressed that its fatalism was symptomatic of a wider intellectual climate.199 Wilkinson’s contribution to this and to Why Fascism? written shortly after is open to question. Dismissive of her ‘fairly negligible … blotting paper’ mind, Conze claimed (after her death) to have been the primary author, indicating that her thought lacked any consistency or independence. Millar also suspected as much.200 Conze also asserted that he ‘imposed on her the idea’ that the coming war would be an imperialist one that socialists had no interest in supporting. 201 As she had held such a view since 1918, this is plainly incorrect. A close reading of Why War? points towards roughly equal authorship. Passages draw on Wilkinson’s experience, or her prior arguments or bear her distinctive turn of phrase. For instance, she had visited Geneva as part of an official delegation in September 1930 returning to describe it as a group of bewildered men and women trying to patch together peace but who could be ignored by the great powers.202 Both books resulted from a dialogue about new circumstances with which both Conze and Wilkinson were coming to terms. If Conze downplayed Wilkinson’s contribution, its publicity did the reverse for obvious reasons. Why War?’s timing was significant. Peace became a matter of intense public debate. Indeed, Why War?’s opening referenced the Oxford Union debate that resolved not to ‘fight for King and Country’, which Wilkinson 181
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson had called shortly afterwards a ‘hopeful omen’.203 Although antipathy to war prevailed, the authors warned of the real threat of military conflict. Government and press could easily contrive an excuse for hostilities, deploying psychology and propaganda to generate war fever. Only clarity about the war’s causes could ‘prevent a nation losing its head at such a moment’.204 Propaganda against arms manufacturers attacked only a symptom, not systemic cause. ‘Sentimental’ pacifism that viewed all war as evil was also inadequate. Influential within the Labour Party, this led to such ‘embarrassing dilemmas’ as ‘what if Hitler invaded?’ The tactical implications for activists – illustrated by Dr Maude Royden standing between the Japanese and Chinese armies at Chapei – could only cause momentary delay on the part of the belligerents. The authors then categorised war. Nationalist wars were those wars conducted as a consequence of the rising bourgeoisie establishing modern nation states against the remains of feudal dynastic structures. The Dutch revolt, the wars of German and Italian unification, the Polish revolt, revolutionary nationalist movements in India and Ireland fell into this category. Wilkinson and Conze then discussed imperialist war. Imperialism constituted a stage of mature capitalism with permanent high arms expenditure and continuous wars moving from the periphery to the system’s core, ultimately generating world war. Imperialism constituted, for the authors, the white man’s burden that the black man bears. Finally, they discussed civil wars. Attitudes to these divided even those who called themselves Marxists. Citing Marx, revolutions – such as the English Civil War and the French Revolution of 1789 – were the locomotive of history. Failing to comprehend this, German Social Democrats sought refuge in the Weimar constitution. Conversely, German Communists, who believed civil war necessary, misunderstood conditions for workers’ success. Despite this, the authors believed that the Austrian workers’ military rising in February 1934 in response to a fascist takeover was preferable to accepting tyranny tamely as had happened in Berlin. Why War? then sought to explain the causes of imperialist war. The authors identified the causal link between imperialism – a stage in the development of capitalism from 1890 onwards – and war.205 Crucial to this process was finance capital; namely, the interpenetration of industry and finance in conditions of growing units of production. This entangled big capital with modern nation states, thereby expanding the capacity for war. Consequently, the imperialist powers divided the world into empires, within which they could sell their goods, find raw materials and escape crises of overproduction through foreign investment. Imperialism’s nature led sequentially from ‘little war to teach the natives who’s who’ to world war.206 182
Against imperialism and war Why War? drew the diabolical balance sheet of the ‘last war’: thirteen million lost their lives and ten million were forced into flight. A doomed generation had to repair the devastation, repay the war debts and suffer its psychological scars. The authors unpicked the comforting assumptions of the day that had allowed a sense of normality to return. Thus, British readers – outraged at the brutal repression of Noske or Hitler – were reminded of the Black and Tans, Connolly’s execution, the torture of Kevin Barry, the suppression of the Red Shirts in the NWFP. Moreover, nationalist propaganda presented each nation’s soldiers as ‘noble knights’ facing an enemy of ‘sadistic brutes’.207 This concealed the ‘hidden horror’ that few soldier-writers could confront: the brutalisation and moral degradation of the war and the consequent cruelties and atrocities committed on all sides. The damage that war did to individuals persisted and found expression in the post-war world’s political violence and gangsterism. Why War? then contemplated the next war. The old boundaries – between combatants and non-combatants, between military and non-military production and between the theatre of war and the zone of civilian safety – would disappear. The avowed military objective was now to destroy industrial centres so as to incapacitate the modern army in the field. Aerial bombardment and poison gas threatened civilian populations. The authors were unconvinced by a senior chemist at ICI’s reassurances that taking a hot bath while smoking a pipe would safeguard against a poison gas attack. Outlining what such an attack would mean, governments were neglecting the proper preparations for civilian protection. Examining the ‘forces making for war’, the statesmen of some countries (Britain, France, the USA and the USSR) expressed the ‘appropriate gesture of love to all mankind’, while others (Germany, Italy and Japan) wanted war ‘and everyone but the more determinedly blind type of pacifist knows it’.208 Despite the smug belief that the former were ‘more reasonable, intelligent and peace-loving’, the real distinction was between states satisfied with the existing territorial divisions and those not. Germany illustrated the principle. War and economic ruin had humiliated the German middle class who, consequently, looked to Hitler. Despite the apparent distinction between aggressive and defensive imperialist powers, the ‘unanimity of the verbal worship of peace is most comforting to the people who in all countries like to look on the “bright side of things”.’209 The final chapter deliberated the moral imperative to avert war. It first considered revolution as antidote to war. The logic was impeccable: capitalism was responsible for war and only revolution could root out this threat. Yet the problem was that the British worker supported 183
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson imperialism, effectively ruling out this possibility. That the 1924 Labour government’s bombing of Iraq had little impact on its working-class support indicated this. Moreover, the left had not surmounted the defeats that fascism had inflicted on the working-class movement internationally, ignoring fascism’s potential appeal among the workers. The middle class also posed a strategic question that the left was largely ignoring. The authors then dismissed the League of Nations as guarantor of the peace. With the League’s influence diminishing as imperialist tensions increased, the only vital forces remaining in it were Britain and France. Remaining faithful to the League, moderate socialists and liberals falsely supposed that accident, misunderstanding or malice caused war. Indeed, the League’s only successes occurred when major imperialist interests were not at stake. On other occasions, the League was humbled. The League thus did more harm than good, veiling great power politics and misleading public opinion while politicians were paying ‘rhetorical compliments to the League idea at critical moments’.210 Neither was there an answer in ‘educating the imperialists’ or attempts by Norman Angell, the WILPF or the Society of Friends to persuade world opinion of the folly of war. If neither revolution nor pacifism could prevent war, then what of the general strike? This proved to be another cul-de-sac given pro-war propaganda conducted amongst the population. The general strike required serious preparation and the capacity to conduct it on the part of all labour movements. Unless this was the case, a general strike would leave the trade unions open to the charge of leaving the country defenceless; some states had already taken the precaution of turning fascist. Moreover, both socialist and Communist parties had prepared the way for war in a variety of ways. In their conclusion, Wilkinson and Conze bluntly eschewed the peace movement’s ‘canned optimism’. Faced with the German and Japanese threat, British and French politicians responded in a schizophrenic manner. Sections of the French elite desired a preventative war against Germany to defend the Versailles settlement. Conversely, British imperial strategy sought to concede without war what could only be defended by war. Hitler – now presenting himself as a man of peace – easily exploited this situation. Given such circumstances, nothing could prevent war. The real question became how to ‘destroy’ capitalism during the coming war. The task was to connect socialism to the daily struggles of the working class, broadly defined. To achieve this, parliamentary power was insufficient, requiring backing from a revolutionary movement in the workplaces. They ended with a Rosa Luxemburg quote, ‘Only in the factories, where the workers are fettered to capitalism can their chains be broken.’ Revolution born out of the next war was the only hope. 184
Against imperialism and war Anti-war movements of the 1930s Despite a theoretical position that might have isolated her, Wilkinson contributed episodically to a variety of pacifist and anti-war campaigns during the 1930s and wove this question into her work for the Labour Party. With the LAI falling victim to the Third Period, Münzenberg launched a similarly broad anti-war campaign in summer 1932. Wilkinson was an initial signatory to a British public statement in support.211 The Labour Party’s International Secretary drew up a list of sponsors. Having recently been selected as prospective parliamentary candidate for Jarrow, Wilkinson’s name was second and marked with a cross, signalling the NEC’s increasing scrutiny of her campaigning activities.212 Although Wilkinson could not attend because she was in India, the World Anti-War Congress took place in Amsterdam on 27–29 August 1932 and she was associated with the network it established. On 30 July 1933 at the British Anti-War Movement’s Hyde Park demonstration to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, Wilkinson emphasised the need for workers’ unity after German events.213 Its platform of speakers – including Racamond of the Confédération Générale du Travail Unitaire, Mann, Bevan, Strachey, Sylvia Pankhurst and Saklatvala – signalled CPGB participation and the hostility of the Labour right. She then collaborated with local Communists, speaking at a Kilburn anti-war meeting on 10 November 1933, alongside Ernie Brown and John Gollan.214 Wilkinson also worked with non- Communist anti-war groups. Leslie Paul recalled an antiwar rally in Holborn Hall. Wilkinson was speaking and when a Young Communist League member stormed the platform, she intervened so that Paul did not physically remove him, thereby allowing him to speak. With the passage of time, Paul realised that her actions had probably prevented a brawl.215 Operating also within officially acceptable bounds, she addressed disarmament at a Labour gala in Lincoln on 23 June 1934. She argued that pacifism without socialism was sentimental and had to be challenged. With the ‘tragic farce’ and ‘smokescreen’ of the international disarmament conference, a powerful Labour movement was needed to prevent both war and fascism in Britain.216 In September 1935, she made a statement in the ILP’s newspaper arguing against support for a purportedly anti-fascist war because it would in effect be imperialist, being tantamount to old arguments that the First World War was anti-Czarist (in Germany) or against Prussian militarism (in Britain).217 If Wilkinson worked alongside Communists and inside the Labour movement against war, she also collaborated with pacifists, despite her misgivings about their outlook.218 Dick Sheppard drew on Wilkinson’s 185
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson support when he launched the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) in the summer of 1936. The PPU sought one million signatures for a petition renouncing war. Aldous Huxley, Storm Jameson, Lansbury and Siegfried Sassoon were amongst its early sponsors. PPU had captured the international imagination with its peace ballot, which had half a million volunteers collecting eleven million signatures. By the time of Sheppard’s death in October 1937, the PPU had 100,000 members. At a PPU rally on 5 September 1936, which assembled in Bradford’s Lister Park despite a council ban, Wilkinson criticised the British government’s failure to enforce non-intervention in Spain.219 Explaining that her private conversation had been reported after an interview, she apologised to Sheppard about discourteous comments that had been attributed to her.220 Continuing, she explained that she realised that there was an inconsistency between her signature of the peace pledge and her desire to send arms to Spain. Still a pacifist in the long run, she wanted her hands free for immediate situations. Wrestling with this ‘agonising’ internal conflict, she came to the conclusion that she was a socialist first and that ‘in Spain I should be with the workers on the barricades’. Later the same month, she signed the Manifesto for Peace and Disarmament alongside Sheppard and Lansbury, which rejected all war, including that waged under the covenant of the League of Nations. It observed that modern war entailed the use of aerial bombardment, the killing of innocent civilians, the perversion and degradation of the personality and predicted that another world war would bring civilisation to an end. As such, despite Wilkinson’s signature, it did not match her own militant position against imperialist war; in particular it was inconsistent with her stance on Spain.221 Above all, she sought – despite political differences – to be involved in social movements for social change, encouraging anti-war movements. Nevertheless, Wilkinson had read ‘more woolly nonsense’ about this subject than opponents of suffrage had written a generation before about women. Until the war, she anchored her analysis in capitalism as cause of war.222 She thought Sheppard’s associates an ‘ill-assorted group’ and that he was unaware of the incongruity. She did not entirely exempt herself from this, given that she had to reconcile her pacifism with her desire for a steelworks in Jarrow (that would owe its existence to rearmament).223 Wilkinson continued to work with the peace movement during the Spanish Civil War. Privately, in March 1937, she had written to Sheppard explaining her resignation from the PPU. Spanish events made ‘100% pacifism’ impossible for her but she apologised for letting Sheppard down. Revealing the tearing contradiction that she felt, she offered him the consolation ‘I know you are right.’224 By summer 1937, her attitude to peace had been transformed. She supported the Labour Party position 186
Against imperialism and war of collective security and support for the League of Nations, which the National government had ‘torpedoed’ despite all their election promises.225 On Wednesday 7 July 1937, Wilkinson spoke at Platt Fields for Manchester and Salford Peace Week, saying that it was all too easy to refuse to fight at any price.226 Men and women were fighting in Spain for liberty of thought and conscience. She looked to Britain and the United States to make the League of Nations something real.227 Similarly, she told a Labour demonstration in Cannock Park in August 1937 that disarmament for Britain after Abyssinia, Spain and China was nonsense.228 With the threat of fascism internationally, she argued, the situation had changed since Keir Hardie’s pacifist programme. Indeed, speaking to the WILPF’s Manchester branch in March 1938, she announced that she had quit Sheppard’s ‘100 per cent peace movement’ because, though the intentions were admirable, they no longer fitted the international situation. Now she campaigned for the League of Nations to assemble a peace bloc consisting mainly of Britain, France, the USA and the USSR.229 There was a transnational dimension to Wilkinson’s campaigning over peace. Visiting Geneva during a League of Nations council meeting in May 1938, she sensed the League’s impermanence. With del Vayo and (as she put it) the ‘accusing shadow’ of Haile Selasse present, the British Foreign Minister signalled doom for their cause and could not look people in the eye. When the Spanish delegate tabled a motion, it exposed the isolation of Britain and France after abandoning the small nations. Wilkinson was already pondering the implications of British policy on US opinion, anticipating that this factor would be crucial in the event of war with Germany.230 Although Wilkinson did not initially participate in the International Peace Congress (IPC), she did eventually gravitate towards it. In summer 1938, Wilkinson was amongst the British MPs who responded to the public appeal of the Mayor of Canton in favour of a world conference.231 The IPC was the initiative of Pierre Cot and Lord Cecil of the League of Nations Union in September 1935 in response to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. It looked to the League of Nations, international diplomacy and disarmament. Wilkinson attended its World Conference against the Bombing of Open Cities and the Restoration of Peace held on 23–24 July 1938 in Paris.232 This attracted 1000 delegates, with the support of 24 international organisations, 200 parliamentarians, from 34 countries. It responded specifically to the horrific bombing in Spain as well as the Japanese imperial onslaught against Canton. German threats to Czechoslovakia coincided to create an ominous atmosphere. Her message of support for the Conference read: ‘I support with all my heart your campaign to stop the bombing of Canton and to outlaw bombing of civilians wherever it 187
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson may be.’233 At one of the sessions, Wilkinson attempted to foil the efforts of the top table to prevent Dolores Ibárruri, the Pasionaria, getting to the microphone. ‘Let her speak’, Wilkinson shouted on the Pasionaria’s behalf. In her memoirs, Ibárruri paid tribute to Wilkinson’s intervention and suggested that the attitude of her opponents at the conference was incomprehensible.234 This incident encapsulated Jules Humbert-Droz’s disappointment with the conference, ‘They refused to let La Pasionaria speak! In contrast, too many bishops and vicars spoke for a long time. A lot of hollow resounding speeches. As for action for Spain … we will see!’235 From November 1937, Wilkinson played her part in the IPC’s China Campaign Committee (CCC), speaking at a series of its events.236 IPC’s ‘Save Peace, Save China’ conference in London on 12 February 1938 was, according to Wilkinson, a ‘remarkable gathering’. Sixty French delegates attended including prominent Radicals and the CGT General Secretary Léon Jouhaux. She regretted that there were no British trade union leaders who might have guaranteed reciprocal action to stop munitions to Japan. Such action would weigh more heavily than the ‘more polite appeal to ladies not to buy Japanese toys.’237 Her associations with the IPC continued into 1939, being a delegate to the International IPC Council in London on 18–19 February 1939 and sending greetings to the International Conference on the Defence of Democracy, Peace and Humanity of 13–14 May 1939.238
Appeasement and the Second World War Wilkinson was a recurrent critic of appeasement in general and Neville Chamberlain in particular. On 18 September 1938, shortly after Chamberlain had met Hitler in his Berchtesgaden residence, the IPC called the ‘united save peace demonstration’ in Trafalgar Square. With a heavy police presence guarding Downing Street, between 30,000 and 40,000 attended, marching up and down Whitehall chanting ‘Stand by the Czechs.’ The IPC was able to assemble an impressive platform.239 Speaking at Nelson’s Column in front of banners saying, ‘Stand by Czechoslovakia. No Plebiscite’, ‘Stop German aggression. Act to Save Peace’, Wilkinson implored: ‘We are asking for a peace at this meeting that shall be a real peace, a peace whereby we may be freed from the constant menace of brawling fascist dictators’. She argued that the untrustworthy Chamberlain had gone to Germany to ‘fix up a sale’ of Czech liberty and asked why he would not recall parliament.240 Personal acquaintance complicated Wilkinson’s criticism of appeasement. Thus, according to Sir Charles Peake, Wilkinson defended Halifax during Munich ‘like a little tiger’ whenever he was criticised.241 188
Against imperialism and war After the outbreak of war at the beginning of September 1939, she continued to criticise Chamberlain. From at least December 1939, Wilkinson carefully scrutinised the fortunes of the campaign to replace Chamberlain with Churchill.242 For her, Chamberlain’s dismissal of the youthful minister Leslie Hore-Belisha signified the former’s ineptitude, bowing to the military who objected to his able minister’s democratic army reforms.243 Chamberlain could not even tell the Commons the self-evident truth about the affair. Criticising the government’s lax handling of the war, she predicted that the ‘earthquake of war disaster’ would provoke a Churchill premiership, whatever the government whips or Carlton Club thought.244 Various signs pointed to this. With the defeat of Finland, in late March 1940, she observed that Chamberlain’s stage tricks were wearing thin on the Commons.245 For her, the publication of former British Ambassador to Germany, Sir Neville Henderson’s memoir confirmed the rottenness of Chamberlain government. Henderson’s appointment had been consonant with appeasement. Coinciding with a post-mortem of Denmark with Sweden and Norway expected soon, Henderson’s apology enervated opinion.246 With the Norway disaster, she again appealed for a challenge to Chamberlain but stressed the significance of policy rather than personality for those who were advocating Morrison, Attlee, Churchill or Archibald Sinclair.247 Thus, by the time of the establishment of the wartime coalition, Wilkinson had established herself as a prominent critic of Chamberlain and even an advocate of Churchill’s more robust approach to the war.
Conclusion Wilkinson’s approach to imperialism and war provides significant insight into her political ideas. For much of the inter-war period, she perceived a causal link between imperialism – which she understood as a product of late capitalism – and war. This was clearly a Marxist analysis rather than a feminist or Fabian one. For instance, attributing the First World War to competition between capitalist rivals of Britain and Germany, Wilkinson intimated that Lloyd George’s memoirs should have the inscription ‘illustrations to Das Kapital’.248 Her opposition to these connected phenomena led her to participate in movements against war (No More War Movement, PPU, WILPF, IPC) and against colonial oppression (LAI, India League, Meerut Prisoners, CCC). Her support for these movements superseded her doctrinal differences with both pacifists and anti-colonial nationalists in her commitment to social mobilisation to effect change. This illustrates the compartmentalised character of her political ideas and practice.
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Her analysis drew on the theories of Lenin and the Plebs circle, especially Horrabin, and later Conze. Both her Marxism and her commitment to extra-parliamentary movements meant that she could not easily assimilate into the conventional Labour Party mould. She therefore had to manage her differences with the Labour Party’s policy and its record. Her approach to these matters also reveals a drift and transition in her political ideas. Her continuing membership of the NEC from autumn 1937 increasingly restricted her public, political and intellectual autonomy. In late 1936 in response to appeasement, her ideas started to drift away from a Marxist position and she underwent a transformation in 1940. After that point, she gave enthusiastic support not only for the war but also for the interests of the Empire. In so doing, she became aligned to the Labour Party mainstream and Fabianism. Consequently, she shifted from a belief in the equality of all peoples to a civilisational hierarchy of races. Where war was concerned, she moved from an anti-militarist and radical pacifist position to an acceptance of war and a legalist solution to it in the shape of the United Nations. Sharing the same dilemmas as Wilkinson, Leah Manning described the effect of 1935 to 1938 upon her own commitment to peace and anti-fascism as a ‘continuous conflict of conscience’ with pacifism as ‘the main plank of my political and philosophical thinking was gradually slipping away’.249 In December 1937, Wilkinson mused that the war threat ‘creates a new situation which needs a revision of many beloved dogmas’.250 The ‘grim days’ of the late 1930s produced ‘tearing anxieties’ in which Wilkinson used the motif of ‘muddle’ to describe the state of political ideas.251 By June 1938, Wilkinson’s journalism elaborated a more equivocal view of the British Empire. Despite the ‘bloodshed, and violence, and cheating’ of the Empire, it did have consent and prestige among small nations because it stood for a sense of security, open sea routes and opposition to an obvious bully. The Empire’s moral authority might be based on ‘sixth-form ethics’ but it was real. Tragically, Chamberlain was squandering the Empire’s compact with small nations.252 Even worse, a section of the British establishment was encouraging aggression in Manchuria, Abyssinia, Spain, Austria and Czechoslovakia. A new morality tale was taking shape that might be entitled The Decline and Fall of the British Empire.253 Thus, with the Czech government shunned, Munich signified a ‘Franco-British surrender’ with the Chamberlain government largely responsible.254
Notes 1
Mesbahuddin Ahmed, The British Labour Party and the Indian Independence Movement, 1917–1939, Leeds, 1987. 190
Against imperialism and war 2
On British feminism’s pro-imperialist stance in relation to Indian women, Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915, Chapel Hill, NC, 1994. Barbara Ramusack, ‘Cultural Missionaries, Maternal Imperialists, Feminist Allies: British Women Activists in India, 1865–1945’, in Margaret Strobel and Nupur Chaudury (eds), Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance, Bloomington, IN, 1992, pp. 119–136. 3 Partha Sarathi Gupta, Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, 1914–1964, London, 1975. 4 Edward W. Said, Orientalism, New York, 1978. Nicholas Owen, The British Left and India: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, 5 1885–1947, Oxford, 2007. 6 Plebs, December 1930. 7 Kumari Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia During Colonial Rule, London, 1995. 8 M. Keith Booker, The Modern British Novel of the Left: a Research Guide, Westport, CT, 1998, pp. 307–309. For comment on ‘backward races’, North Eastern Daily Gazette, 30 March 1928. On West African superstition, Daily Mail, 9 April 1931. 9 Helen Ward, A Venture in Goodwill. Being the Story of the Women’s International League, London, 1929, pp. 26–31. 10 WILPF, Report of the Third International Congress of Women, Vienna, 10–17 July 1921, Switzerland, 1921, pp. 25–32. 11 Time and Tide, 28 December 1935. 12 Irish Monthly, June 1936. 13 Time and Tide, 14 December 1935, p. 1367. 14 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 27 February 1929. 15 Ward, A Venture in Goodwill, p. 29. 16 WILPF, Report of the Third International Congress of Women, Vienna, 10–17 July 1921, Switzerland, 1921, p. 32. 17 NUSC TDWR Wilson, ‘Wilkinson’, p. 19. 18 American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, Evidence on Conditions in Ireland, Washington, 1921, pp. 583–584. Michael Brennan, The War in Clare 1911–1921, Dublin, 1980. 19 BLPES WILPF executive committee minutes, 14 October, 5 November and 3 December 1920. Evelyn Sharp, Unfinished Adventure: Selected Reminiscences from an English-woman’s Life, London, 1933, p. 212. 20 NUSC TDWR Wilson, ‘Wilkinson’, p. 19. MCA AR MISC 718 106 Robinson to Nellie Wilkie, n.d. 21 MCA AR MISC 718 111 Robinson to Nellie Wilkie, 3 November 1920. 22 The Communist, 28 October 1920. See also The Worker (Brisbane), 20 January 1921. 23 The Times, 8 December 1920. American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, Evidence on Conditions in Ireland, Washington, 1921. New York Times, 22 December 1920. BLPES WILPF executive committee minutes, 3 December 1920. Spending Christmas with Addams and visiting her
191
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson settlement house project, Methodist Times, 4 December 1930. An extended report appeared in Nation, 23 March 1921. 24 NUSC TDWR Wilson, ‘Wilkinson’, p. 19. 25 The Weekly Summary regularly attacked sympathisers of Irish nationalism within the Labour movement and commented on the ‘bogus and packed’ Washington Commission as the ‘anti-British campaign in America’ and the testimony of one witness as a ‘farrago of nonsense’, Weekly Summary, 29 October 1920 and 14 January 1921. 26 She ended her testimony with a letter from H.M. Swanwick, the chair of the British section of the WILPF and appended to the commission was the report that the mission had written after its visit to Ireland. 27 TNA HO 317 46 ‘The American Committee for Relief in Ireland, its Composition and the Evidence it heard … Being some remarks based on a pamphlet’, n.d. 28 Labour Woman, 1 June 1921. 29 Daily Herald, 9 March 1925. 30 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 7 March 1925. 31 Daily Telegraph, 11 October 1926. 32 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 13 June 1925. 33 Northern Daily Telegraph, 24 January 1927. 34 Newcastle Chronicle, 31 December 1927. 35 Portsmouth Evening News, 3 February 1927. 36 HC Deb, 7 July 1926, cols 2070–2071. Ibid., 8 March 1927, cols 1197–1202. British Library Indian Police Files P and JS 2045 Minute paper: refusal of a passport to Mme Sun Yat Sen. British Library Indian Police Files P and JS 2042 Minute paper: R. Peel, ‘Action to be taken against members of the League against Imperialism’, 21 December 1927. The others were Bennett MP, Maxton MP, Pollitt, Bridgeman and Malone. HC Deb, 8 March 1927, cols 1197–1202. 37 Plebs, August–September 1928. 38 Ibid., December 1930. 39 Frederik Petersson, ‘In control of solidarity? Willi Münzenberg, the Workers’ International Relief and the League against Imperialism, 1921– 35’, Comintern Working Paper, 8 (2007), pp. 1–21. 40 Martin Ceadle, ‘The First Communist “Peace Society”: the British AntiWar Movement 1932–1935’, Twentieth Century British History, 1, 1 (1990), pp. 58–86. 41 Others in attendance were Ben Tillett, of the Transport and General Workers’ Union and the General Council of the TUC, Colonel L’Estrange Malone, later Labour MP for Northampton, W.N. Ewer, the Daily Herald’s foreign editor, and Communist Ralph Fox. 42 IISG LA IMP 1 Invitation to the International Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, 15 December 1926. 43 IISG LA IMP 6 Greetings to the Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, n.d. 44 LPASC ID CI 36 3i Reginald Bridgeman circular letter, 5 February 1927.
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Against imperialism and war 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55
56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64
65 66 67
68
Jean Jones, League against Imperialism, London, 1996, p. 7. World of Labour, March 1927. Neil Redfern, Class or Nation: Communists, Imperialism and Two World Wars, London, 2005. TNA HO 144 10693 report on League against Oppression in the Colonies, n.d. c. 10 February 1927. Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 19 February 1927. IISG LA IMP 54 Resolution commune sur la question nègre, 14 February 1927. Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 19 February 1927. IISG LA IMP Congress manifesto. LPASC CP IND MISC 16 1 Joint declaration, Brussels, 14 February 1927. The others were Bridgeman, Pollitt, MacManus, Beckett. HO 144 10693 report on League against Oppression in the Colonies, n.d. c.10 February 1927. Sunday Referee, 26 April 1936. IISG LA IMP 44 interview with Daniele Martini. Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 18 February 1927. This was also the grounds upon which Münzenberg disagreed with miners’ leader A.J. Cook, TNA KV2 772 Willi Münzenberg to James Maxton, 18 February 1929. Daily Herald, 14 February 1927. Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 19 February 1927. Ibid., 19 February 1927. New Leader, 5 August 1927. Ibid., 27 July 1927. Ibid., 24 February 1928. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 21 February 1928. New Leader, 24 July 1928. Ibid., 3 August 1928. Report of the Sixth Congress of the WILPF, Prague, 24 to 28 1929, Geneva, 1929, pp. 78–81. John Saville, ‘Britain: Internationalism and the Labour Movement Between the Wars’, in Frits Van Holthoon and Marcel Van Der Linden (eds), Internationalism in the Labour Movement, 1830–1940, Leiden, 1988, pp. 565–582. CI 36 33 Report of the Annual Conference of the British Section; HO 144 10693 intelligence report, p. 8. TNA KV2 772 Cross-reference summary report on Münzenberg, 23 January 1930. Der Rote Aufbau, July 1930. The translation appears in the British intelligence file on Münzenberg, TNA KV 2 773 J.V. Leckie to Idris Cox, 9 July 1930. See also, Matthew Worley, Class against Class: the Communist Party in Britain between the Wars, London, 2002, p. 228. British Library Indian Police Files P and JS 1974 report on League against Imperialism meeting at Brussels, 9–11 1927. Also on the international executive at this time were Maxton (president), Saklatvala, Bridgeman, Diego Rivera, Münzenberg, Mohammed Hatta, Liau Hansin, Nehru, Fimmen (vice-president), Manuel Ugarte, Roger Baldwin, Chedly Ben Moustapha, Dr Marteaux, Duchêne. 193
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 69 70 71 72 73 74 75
HC Deb, 29 June 1927, cols 381–383; Ibid., 23 November 1927, col. 1830. Workers’ Life, 23 December 1927. New Leader, 11 and 18 November 1927. Ibid., 25 November 1927. Daily Herald, 5 December 1927. New Leader, 7 December 1927. British Library Indian Police Files Report of the National Conference of the League against Imperialism (British Section), February 1931, pp. 3–4. 76 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 9 April 1927. 77 IISG LA IMP 139 Report on the first conference of the British section of the LAI, Essex Hall, the Strand, 3pm, Saturday, 7 July 1928. There was a letter of apology from Maxton who had another engagement with ILP in Glasgow. HO 144 10693 intelligence report, p. 9. 78 LPASC ID CI 36 33 Report of the Annual Conference of the British Section. 79 HC Deb, 4 February 1929, cols 1380–1384. 80 Ibid., 22 November 1927, cols 1645–1646. 81 Katherine Mayo, Mother India, London, 1927; Joanna Liddle and Shirin Rai, ‘Feminism, imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the Indian woman’, Women’s History Review, 7, 4 (1998), pp. 495–520; Mrinalini Sinha, ‘Reading Mother India: Empire, Nation and the Female Voice’, Journal of Woman’s History, 6, 2 (1994), pp. 6–44; Mrinalini Sinha, Spectres of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire, Durham, 2006. 82 Manoranjan Jha, Katherine Mayo and India, New Dehli, 1971. She had argued against Filipino self-government in The Isles of Fear in 1925. 83 Susan Pedersen, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience, New Haven, CT, 2004, pp. 241–245. Mrinalini Sinha, ‘Gender in the critiques of colonialism and nationalism: locating the “Indian Woman”’, in Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar (eds), Women and Social Reform in Modern India, Bloomington, IN, 2008, p. 463. 84 LPASC LP NEC minutes, SJC minutes, 10 November 1927. 85 Mrs Bridges Adams’s review, Daily Herald, 30 July 1927. For a favourable review of a Mayo critic by the same reviewer, Daily Herald, 21 December 1927. Lord Olivier surveyed the responses to Mayo who he stated had flung ‘bucketful of slops … over the whole Hindu community’. Daily Herald, 16 May 1928. 86 HC Deb, 22 November 1927, cols 1645–1647. 87 Liverpool Post, 30 November 1927. 88 Johanna Alberti, Eleanor Rathbone, London, 1996, pp. 105–108. 89 WILPF, Mother India’s Daughters: The Significance of the Women’s Movement, London, n.d. Katherine Mayo, Mother India, New York, 1927, pp. 413–416. 90 Manchester Guardian, 28 November 1930. Daily Worker, 29 November 1930. 91 Labor’s News, 10 January 1931. 92 North East Daily Gazette, 12 February 1931. 93 J.F. Horrabin, A Short History of the British Empire, London, 1929. New Leader, 8 February 1929. 194
Against imperialism and war 94 Time and Tide, 30 April 1932. 95 Kumari Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia During Colonial Rule, London, 1995, p. 238. 96 On the Viceroy’s double standard on untouchability, Time and Tide, 28 January 1932 and 4 February 1933. 97 Ibid., 7 May 1932. 98 Ibid., 14 May 1932. 99 Denouncing the trip, Daily Worker, 14 July 1932. 100 India League Appeal from Bertrand Russell, C.F. Andrews, H.J. Laski, E. Pethick-Lawrence and J.F. Horrabin, 12 July 1932. 101 NUSC TDWR Home Political 1932 40 XII, p. 2 M.G. Hallett to Sir Samuel Findlater Steward. 102 Marie Seton, Panditji: a Portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru, London, 1967, p. 52. 103 Dartington Hall Record Office, Totnes, Elmhirst Papers, Elmhirst to Wilkinson, 16 December 1929; approaching Benn on the matter, Wilkinson to Elmhirst, 19 December 1929; Elmhirst to Wilkinson, 20 December 1929; Wilkinson to Elmhirst, 2 May 1930; Elmhirst to Wilkinson, 3 May 1930. 104 Ibid., Wilkinson to Elmhirst, 16 July 1930. 105 Ibid., Leonard Elmhirst to Wilkinson, 23 July 1930. 106 Ibid., Wilkinson to Elmhirst, 13 July 1932. 107 BL IOR L PJ 12 448 letter (illegible) to Nott Bower, 12 July 1932.NUSC TDWR Home Political (HP) 40 12 Charlie Andrews to Malaviya, 22 July 1932. 108 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 R.T. Peel (India Office) to M.G. Hallett (secretary to Government of India), 15 July 1932. 109 BL IOR L PJ 12 448 Whately to Lothian, 17 July 1932. 110 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 Peel to Hallett, 5 August 1932. 111 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 [Illegible] Home Department Pune to Hallett, 25 August 1932. 112 India Bulletin, October 1932. 113 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 Kelly to Clee, 18 August 1932. 114 BL IOR L PJ 12 448 Extract of weekly report of the Director, Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, GOI, Simla, 15 Sept 1932, no. 36 115 Time and Tide, 7 January 1933. 116 Northern Daily Telegraph, 10 October 1934. 117 Daily Herald, 7 December 1932. 118 India Bulletin, October 1932. 119 Star, 25 November 1932. Monica Whately, Ellen Wilkinson, Leonard W. Matters and V.K. Krishna Menon, Condition of India: Being the Report of the Delegation sent to India by The India League in 1932, London, 1933, pp. 129–134. Christophe Jaffrelot, Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste, London, 2005. 120 After police dispersal of a liquor shop picket in Contai (Bengal), Whately et al., Condition of India, p. 183. 121 New Dawn, 25 February 1933, pp. 79–80. 122 Whately et al., Condition of India, pp. 172–173. 123 Clarion, 17 March 1934. Salter, Slave of the Lamp, London, 1967, p. 110. 195
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 124 NUSC TDWR Wilkinson to Middleton, 8 September 1932. 125 Daily Herald, 15 February 1933. 126 Whately et al., Condition of India, p. 182. 127 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 Bengal secretariat to Hallett, 17 October 1932. BL IOR L PJ 12 448 Confidential: copy of a DO no. 1088 PSD, from the Government of Bengal, to the GOI, Home Department, 17 October 1932. 128 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 W.L. Scott (Government of Assam) to Trivedi, 29 October 1932. 129 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 Confidential diary of Assistant Superintendant of Police, Patna City, 23 September 1932. 130 Whately et al., Condition of India, pp. 186–187. 131 Ibid., pp. 185–191. 132 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 Punjab civil secretariat to Hallett, 16 November 1932. 133 Whately et al., Condition of India, p. 83. 134 Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier, Oxford, 2000, p. 57. 135 Mukulika Banerjee, ‘Justice and Non-Violent Jihad: the Anti-Colonial Struggle in the North West Frontier of British India’, Études rurales, 149/150 (1999), pp. 181–198. Irfan Habib, ‘Civil Disobedience 1930–31’, Social Scientist, 25, 9/10 (1997), pp. 43–66. 136 Whately et al., Condition of India, pp. 415–425. 137 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 Secret report: visit to the NWFP of Miss Wilkinson and Menon, 18 October 1932. Report of the Assistant Superintendant of Police, Mardan. 138 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 Civil secretariat, NWFP to Hallett, 15 November 1932. 139 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 A.H. Layard, Deputy Commissioner, confidential note, 27–31 October 1932. 140 Whately et al., Condition of India, p. 170. 141 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 H.V. Thomson to Hallett, 3 November 1932. Hindustan Times, 19 October 1932. 142 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 Superintendant C.H. Everett, Delhi CID, confidential note, 25 October 1932. 143 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 Confidential note R.L. Ritter, 30 October 1932; note, 31 October 1932. 144 NUSC TDWR HP 40 12 Illegible (Lucknow) to C.M. Trivedi, Deputy Secretary to the Government of India, 3 November 1932. 145 Daily Express, 29 November 1933; North Mail, 29 November 1933. 146 HC Deb, 22 December 1932, col. 1260. 147 TNA CAB24 234 Secretary of State for India, Confidential appreciation of the political situation in India, 24 October 1932. 148 TNA CAB 24 234 Secretary of State for India, Confidential appreciation of the political situation in India, 24 October 1932. CAB 24 235 Secretary of State for India, Confidential appreciation of the political situation in India, 21 December 1932. 149 Daily Mail, 23 December 1932. 196
Against imperialism and war 150 Star, 2 December 1932. See also rejection of charge of being a conducted tour, Whately et al., Condition of India, pp. 10–11. Manchester Guardian, 6 December 1932. Whately doing the same, India Bulletin, December 1933. 151 Star, 25 November 1932. Being condemned for trivialising untouchability, Daily Mail, 29 October 1932. 152 Manchester Guardian, 22 November 1932. 153 BL IOR LP J 12 448 report on India League conference, 26 November 1932. 154 Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge, 1998. 155 Manchester Guardian, 12 December 1932. 156 NUSC TDWR Frida Laski to Reid, 10 August 1971. 157 Brighton World, 11 February 1933. Northern Echo, 12 June 1933. Birmingham Post, 13 February 1933. Northern Daily Telegraph, 10 October 1934. 158 Woodford Times, 6 January 1933. 159 National Conference of Labour Women Report, Brighton 14–16 June 1932, 1932, p. 39–40. Manchester Guardian, 15 July 1932. 160 Northern Echo, 12 June 1933. Birmingham Post, 13 February 1933. Northern Daily Telegraph, 10 October 1934. Sinha, ‘Gender in the critiques’, pp. 452–473. 161 Daily Herald, 3 January 1933 & 15 February 1933. 162 Manchester Guardian, 30 December 1932. 163 BL IOR L PJ 12 449 Jeffrey Williams to Hoare, 12 January 1933. New Clarion, 14 January 1933; Graham Pole (chairman and hon. Sec. of British committee on Indian and Burman affairs) to Hoare, 12 January 1933. WDC [Croft] replies on Hoare’s part, 18 January 1933. A second reply of WDC, 18 January 1933. Pole to D. Croft, 19 January 1933. Departmental note, to Peel, Seton, Croft, 27 January 1933. 164 BL IOR L PJ 12 449 Note to Williamson, 7 January 1933. India Bulletin, March-April 1933. 165 Bristol Evening World, 4 February 1933. 166 Whately et al., Condition of India. 167 Lathis were three or five foot canes issued to police which could inflict vicious even fatal blows. 168 BL IOR L PJ 12 449 Telegram Home Department, Government of India to the Secretary of State for India, 25 March 1934. On the ban, Daily Mail, 31 March 1934. 169 Bolton Journal, 5 October 1934. BL IOR L PJ 12 449 Extract from New Scotland Yard, report no. 23, 25 October 1934. 170 BL IOR L PJ 12 450 Extract from Scotland Yard report no. 34, 27 March 1935. 171 BL IOR L PJ 12 450 Extract from Scotland Yard report, no. 63, 6 May 1936. IOR L PJ 12 450 Extract from SY report, 20 May 1936. 172 Nehru Memorial Museum Library (NMML), Jawaharlal Nehru papers, Wilkinson to Jawaharlal Nehru, 5 November 1935, vol. 103, pp. 79–82. See also, Clarion, 28 April 1934.
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 173 Time and Tide, 13 June 1936; NMML Nehru papers Wilkinson to Nehru, 17 February and 22 March 1936; Jawaharlal Nehru, Bunch of Old Letters, New Delhi, 2005, pp. 171–172 and 176–178. Nicholas Owen, The British left and India: Metropolitan Anti-imperialism, 1885–1947, Oxford, 2007, p. 237. British Library, Oriental and India Office Collection, Public and Judicial Department L PJ 12 293 Scotland Yard Report, 20 May 1936. 174 NUSC TDWR William Henderson to Reid, 11 May 1975. 175 Edward Conze, The Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, Sherborne, 1979, p. 25. 176 Seton, Panditji, p. 52. 177 BCSC AvT III V H313 Diana Hubback to von Trott, 10 January 1936 and 27 January 1936. 178 NMML, Jawaharlal Nehru papers, Wilkinson to Nehru, ‘Wednesday’, January 1936, vol. 103, p. 91. 179 NMML, Jawaharlal Nehru papers, Wilkinson to Nehru, 5 November 1935, vol. 103, pp. 79–82. TNA KV 2 688 Cripps minute sheet, 26 January–7 February 1936. 180 BL IOR L PJ 12 293 Secret Report: Jawarhar Lal Nehru, 12 February 1936. Extract from Scotland Yard report, no. 57, 12 February 1936. 181 BL IOR L PJ 12 293 Report on India League reception to Nehru, Kingsway Hall on 27 June 1938, 30 June 1938. 182 Sunday News, 7 June 1931. 183 African World, 6 June 1931. 184 Daily Worker, 4 August 1931. 185 Time and Tide, 28 December 1935. 186 Ibid., 21 December 1935. 187 Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917–1939, Chapel Hill, NC, 2011, p. 213. Anne Spry Rush, Bonds of Empire: West Indians and Britishness from Victoria to Decolonization, Oxford, 2011, p. 107. 188 Time and Tide, 13 June 1938. 189 Jewish Chronicle, 13 May 1938. 190 Time and Tide, 28 May 1938. 191 LPASC NEC minutes, 6 February 1940. This was referred to a sub-committee at an NEC meeting on 6 February 1940, NMLH LP ID IND 1 6iii Reference to NEC meeting, February 1940. 192 Owen, The British Left and India, pp. 286–287. 193 Bodleian Library MS. Attlee 33 333 Wilkinson to Attlee, n.d. 194 TNA CAB 195 4 Cabinet Notes, 8 March 1946, p. 65. 195 TNA CAB 195 4 Cabinet Notes, 5 June 1946, p. 234 and 10 December 1946, p. 433. 196 TNA CAB 195 4 Cabinet Notes, 14 May 1946, p. 193. 197 TNA CAB 195 4 Cabinet Notes, 5 June 1946, pp. 232–233. 198 NUSC TDWR Edward Conze to Reid, 30 July 1974. 199 Richard Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain and the Crisis of Civilisation, London, 2010, pp. 182–183, 195. 200 NUSC TDWR J.P.M. Millar to Reid, 17 June 1971.
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Against imperialism and war 201 Conze stated that Why Socialism? was also agreed with their publisher Hutchinsons but because of Jagger’s intervention never materialised. Conze, Memoirs, p. 15. 202 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 20 September 1930. 203 Bristol Evening Post, 22 February 1933. 204 Ellen Wilkinson and Edward Conze, Why War? a Handbook for those who will take part in the Second World War, London, 1934, p. 5. 205 Written as an explanation of the First World War in 1917, V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism: a Popular Outline, New York, 1977, c. 1939. For the concept of the ‘state capitalist trust’ which is used in the text, Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy, London, 1972. Influential upon Lenin and probably upon Conze, less easily detectable in Why War, Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital: a Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development, London, 1981. 206 Wilkinson and Conze, Why War?, p. 22. 207 Ward, A Venture in Goodwill, p. 29. 208 Wilkinson and Conze, Why War?, p. 35. 209 Ibid., p. 39. 210 Ibid., p. 46. 211 Manchester Guardian, 9 June 1932. 212 LPASC ID CI 9 1 list of appeal for anti-war conference of 9 June 1932. 213 LPASC ID CI 9 5i leaflet for 30 July 1933 demonstration. Daily Worker, 31 July 1933. 214 Daily Worker, 10 November 1933. 215 NUSC TDWR Leslie Paul to Reid, 5 December 1974. 216 Nottingham Guardian, 25 June 1934. 217 New Leader, 13 September 1935. 218 James Hinton, Protests and Visions: Peace Politics in Twentieth-Century Britain, London, 1989, pp. 101–106. 219 Birmingham Post, 7 September 1936. 220 Lambeth Palace Library (LPL) Sheppard papers MS. 3744 ff.229r–230v Wilkinson to Sheppard, 15 September 1936. 221 Manchester Guardian, 24 September 1936. 222 Time and Tide, 19 October 1936. 223 Ibid., 30 October 1937. 224 LPL Sheppard papers MS. 3744 f 243 r Wilkinson to Sheppard, 30 March 1937. 225 Dudley Herald, 25 September 1937. 226 Manchester Guardian, 3 July 1937. 227 Daily Herald, 8 July 1937. 228 Walsall Observer, 25 September 1937. 229 Manchester Guardian, 8 March 1938. 230 Time and Tide, 21 May 1938. 231 IISG RUP IPC Newsletter, no. 8, 13 July 1938, p. 2. 232 Au secours des victimes de l’agression, débats de la Conférence universelle d’action pour la paix et contre les bombardements des villes ouvertes. Paris, les 23 et 24 juillet 1938, Geneva, 1938, p. 141. 199
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 233 234 235 236
Au secours des victimes de l’agression, p. 147. Dolores Ibarruri, Mémoires de la Pasionaria, Paris, 1964, p. 334. IISG RUP 190 Jules to Jenny Humbert-Droz, 25 July 1938 Courier Mail, 8 November 1937. Manchester Guardian, 8 November 1937. NUSC TDWR Arthur Clegg to Reid, 30 June 1974. IISG RUP 265 China Week, 19–27 February 1938. Manchester Guardian, 14 June 1938. Daily Worker, 15 June 1938. IPC Newsletter, no. 16, 2 November 1938. 237 Time and Tide, 19 February 1938. 238 IPC Newsletter, no. 25, 1 March 1939. IISG RUP 282. 239 Wilf Roberts, Wilkinson, Rathbone, Lord Meston, Ramsey Muir, Harry Adams and Gollancz. 240 Manchester Guardian, 19 September 1938. IPC Newsletter, no. 13, 21 September 1938. 241 Borthwick Institute, York University, Halifax A2 278 58 3 Sir Charles Peake to Earl of Halifax, 28 February 1955. 242 Time and Tide, 2 December 1939. 243 Ibid., 13 January 1940. 244 Ibid., 2 March 1940. 245 Ibid., 23 March 1940. 246 Ibid., 26 April 1940. 247 Ibid., 4 May 1940. 248 Ibid., 26 March 1932. 249 Manning, A Life for Education, p. 141. 250 Time and Tide, 25 December 1937. 251 Ibid., 1 October 1938. 252 Ibid., 18 June 1938. 253 Ibid., 26 March 1938. 254 Ibid., 24 September 1938.
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5 The Commons and the Parliamentary Labour Party
Wilkinson’s parliamentary career began as an extension of her trade unionism. Given her talents for campaigning and her charisma, NUDAW – and Jagger in particular – pushed for her parliamentary candidacy in Gorton, before she was selected for Ashton in 1922 and then Middlesbrough East in 1924. As to her view of parliament, she mused about the Westminster-bound Labour MPs in late 1922: ‘May they not forget in that luxurious atmosphere the men and women who sent them there … The revolutionaries have sunk all differences to get the Labour men there. If they betray their trust, God help them.’1
Middlesbrough East election, 1924 Wilkinson entered the Commons after the general election of 29 October 1924 representing Middlesbrough East. The constituency had changed hands from the Conservatives in 1922 to the Liberals in 1923.2 In April 1924, having missed out on Newcastle East, NUDAW nominated Wilkinson to be the prospective candidate for Middlesbrough East, winning the selection conference held in early May.3 During the election campaign, her energetic open-air meetings and doorstep persuasion generated a ‘pitch of enthusiasm’ and confidence in victory.4 After long days campaigning, she would slump exhausted on a mattress in an empty office.5 Amongst local Labour members her memory persisted. William Lillie believed that Wilkinson’s ‘vivacity, her passionate sincerity … melted the hearts of the iron men of Middlesbrough … [and she] was the real person who broke the old liberal tradition in Middlesbrough’.6 Her eve of poll message showed the difficult climate of the campaign. She predicted that the forged letter purportedly from Zinoviev to MacManus was proving to be a boomerang not a bombshell and had to refute rumours that she was not old enough to vote.7 Reporting for the WFL, a Middlesbrough correspondent noticed how the working-class constituency took ‘Our Ellen’ as one of their own.8
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Wilkinson’s campaign increased Labour’s vote by 1,862 votes and she beat the Conservatives into second place with a slender majority of only 927. Local politics in Middlesbrough presented particular problems. Steel, chemicals and shipbuilding dominated the town. Rather than making an abstract call for socialism, she invited the LRD to make an expert assessment of the industry.9 According to her, 50% of the plant was obsolete and watered capital to raise dividends had inflated share prices, thereby enriching shareholders and overvaluing assets. The industry clearly needing reorganisation; she contended that the public interest would be best served if this took the form of nationalisation.10 She and the Liberal MP for Middlesbrough West crossed swords over steel in the press early in her tenure.11 Responding to a letter calling for wage cuts in the steel industry, Wilkinson reasserted the case for nationalisation.12 She engaged in regular controversies in the local press over steel nationalisation but also women in industry, medical prescriptions under the health insurance act, infant mortality (with the Medical Officer of Health) and the need for soup kitchens in Middlesbrough.13 Where casework was concerned, she was an effective constituency MP, championing the veterans who were refused pensions or an epileptic who was sent to Broadmoor for striking a dentist who removed his teeth without an anaesthetic.14 One principal way in which Wilkinson tried to engage with her Middlesbrough constituents was over the unemployment question. Even before the election, she led a delegation to Margaret Bondfield, the Minister of Labour (1924 and 1929–31), about the cases of those excluded from benefit by the ‘not genuinely seeking work’ (NGSW) regulation.15 In February 1925, she spoke at the Middlesbrough Labour Hall condemning local steel boss Sir Hugh Bell, who had made ‘thousands out of the sweat and blood of the men at the blast furnaces’, for his comments hostile to unemployment insurance.16 On 2 May 1925, she addressed a regional conference hosted by the Middlesbrough Unemployment Committee. Proposing a school leaving age of sixteen to alleviate unemployment, she condemned Churchill’s budget that tightened eligibility for benefit to exclude the supposed ‘workshy’.17 In the Commons, she questioned ministers about local ex-servicemen on the poor law or in the workhouse and requested the local statistics for those losing their unemployment benefit over the new regulations stipulating thirty insurance contributions in the past two years.18 She also represented constituents before the unemployment insurance umpire.19 In a language that she later adapted to Jarrow, she complained about government departments accepting pockets of heavy unemployment and high infant mortality. Of Middlesbrough she said ‘no town can be considered a dying area’.20 202
The Commons and the PLP Weak local party organisation made Middlesbrough East a difficult constituency. NUDAW’s executive believed Wilkinson’s first electoral agent Jock Beilby to be part of the problem. NUDAW paid for the agent and 65% of the legal maximum for expenses during the electoral campaign. The 1924 Middlesbrough East election campaign overspent by £233, which NUDAW paid as a loan. This was never, despite frequent requests, repaid.21 The NUDAW executive sought an explanation but convening a meeting proved difficult.22 After seven months of procrastination, Wright Robinson, NUDAW’s Political General Secretary, visited Middlesbrough. The local Labour Party simply refused responsibility for the debt.23 Robinson organised a meeting on 3 November 1926 with the Middlesbrough East Divisional Labour Party executive, the Labour Party’s north-east organisers and Wilkinson to discuss local party reorganisation. In early December 1926, probably feeling under scrutiny, Beilby reported to NUDAW on Wilkinson’s successful meeting in the Labour Hall of St Hilda’s ward.24 Despite reorganisation, the situation remained unsatisfactory so Robinson convened another meeting on 10 January 1927 with the local Labour Party executive and Wilkinson.25 Consequently, Beilby – who according to Robinson had gathered around him a ‘very undesirable crowd … for free drinks and largesse’ – resigned in February.26 Six months later, showing his political colours, Beilby appeared for Industrial Peace Union of the British Empire at an open air meeting, which had to be abandoned because of the hostility of the 4,000-strong crowd.27 Labour organisation improved somewhat after Berriff replaced Beilby. The new agent provided regular constituency reports, better local organisation, greater transparency for the MP’s union sponsors and more effective use of her time in the constituency.28 During the summer recess of 1927, she conducted a campaign of forty cottage meetings to reach women voters in their homes with neighbours attending.29 In September 1928, Wilkinson visited a thousand houses in a fortnight with the aim of doubling party membership.30 Mary Bamber, one of NUDAW’s national organisers, could confirm the improvement.31 However, shortly afterwards, a car accident incapacitated Berriff for several months.32 Consequently, on 29 September 1930, Alfred McVie (whom Marion Phillips described as a ‘pearl among agents’) was appointed Wilkinson’s agent.33
Westminster: from palace of illusions to people’s protector Entering the Commons on 2 December 1924, Wilkinson was sworn in the following day and took her place on the opposition benches between Lansbury and James Sexton.34 Between late 1924 and spring 1926 when 203
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Susan Lawrence arrived, Wilkinson was Labour’s only female MP.35 This conferred a particular status and she became a regular on Labour’s speaking circuit, notably in by-elections and was appointed to the Trade Union Group of MPs’ executive.36 By June 1925, the Manchester Guardian even speculated that as her ‘popularity had increased remarkably since last year’, she might be elected to the TUC’s General Council.37 Despite claiming that she had been advised to wait seven years, Wilkinson made her well-received maiden speech on 10 December 1924, covering women’s unemployment, widows’ pensions, equal franchise, and the need for subsidised, TB-free milk.38 As a woman MP, Wilkinson had to contend with press trivialisation. Journalists were seemingly only interested in ‘whether I should need a footstool, or if I would bob my hair or quarrel with Lady Astor’.39 Her hats, her green dresses, her hair (colour, length, or style) captivated the press throughout her career.40 She observed that it was ‘high time that members stopped growing excited whenever a woman wears colours in the House’.41 If such attention marked Wilkinson’s arrival, the press did broaden its focus. When one paper bemoaned the new crop of Labour members, the ‘charming’, ‘plucky’ Wilkinson was the exception.42 The Graphic soon noticed that she had become ‘the most talked about woman in the Commons’.43 Her repartee made her a ‘great hit’. Goading Tory vanity about young women voting for the best-looking candidate, not only brought peals of Commons laughter, but also widespread press admiration.44 Her aphorisms were regularly reported, such as her comment: ‘Now that so many other careers are open to women marriage has to take its chances with the rest.’45 She satirised opponents, complimenting Austen Chamberlain that in two and a half years: ‘I have never seen one single hair out of place on that sleek and well-brushed head. But I have not seen any evidence of one single original idea coming from inside that head.’46 When the Trades Disputes Bill sought to ban the term ‘blackleg’, she suggested that they be called ‘Douglas Hoggs’. Her witticisms even reached the non-Anglophone press.47 Although she came to be ‘at home’ in parliament, she was not always so.48 Given her background in the movements, she saw herself as their representative and promised: ‘whenever it would be useful to have an MP on the stump, whether in a strike or in a difficult organising job, I shall always be glad to weigh in’.49 Wilkinson was aware of the institution’s limits: ‘But no House of Commons action is sufficient. MPs can only express, they cannot make a movement.’50 As a left guild socialist and then a Communist, she had believed that parliament was ‘an instrument of the domination of a capitalist minority acting upon the apathy of the majority’ that, nonetheless, could be used as a ‘political weapon to hamper the operations of Capitalism and to educate the workers’.51 204
The Commons and the PLP Conversely, wanting to correct a representational deficit, she had fulminated about the lack of working-class women MPs: Parliament is constantly interfering with working women, inspecting her, regulating her, drilling her children, bullying and arresting them, doing everything and anything for them except feeding and clothing them, and giving them decent places to play in when they can indulge their high spirits free from the dread shadow of the policeman. Working women are badly needed to be on the spot when some of the more idiotic of these regulations are being framed.52
Framing her attitude to parliament, Wilkinson entered the Commons as a republican and described Ethel Snowden as ‘the woman who wants slapping’ for praising the monarchy.53 Her first parliamentary experience – the State Opening of Parliament – provoked her indignation, as she wanted the Labour Party to stand for the ‘ending of all that show and theatrical glitter and tinsel’. In February 1928, she ridiculed the aristocratic participants at the same ceremony: ‘the mixed assemblage of grocers who were sharper than their neighbours, brewers who didn’t need to be and newspaper proprietors who hired men to write their stories which no decent person would read …’. They were dressed in a costume ‘almost too reminiscent of those pathetic and slightly motheaten individuals who impersonate Father Christmas in the children’s departments of the big stores during the December shopping orgy’. For her, the debate on the Prince of Wales’s expenses allowed the Labour Party to show that it was ‘a great instrument to end a system whose polite superstructure is based on wage-slavery and human degradation, then the Prince as a symbol of that system has to be prevented from wasting still more money than he has already’.54 Reflecting upon the Prince of Wales’s appearance at the Commons, Wilkinson supposed that his ‘Press Agent thinks that his presence is good window-dressing for the Established Order’.55 Her attitude to the monarchy drifted over time. With manipulation of royal public appearances to suggest the Palace’s endorsement of the Munich agreement of 1938, Wilkinson believed that Chamberlain was being unfair to the King. The problem was no longer the institution per se but the monarchy’s aristocratic milieu that evidently favoured the Conservatives and excluded Labour leaders.56 That said, she could still, in January 1940, praise Laski’s delicate malice when satirising the royal family.57 Yet, her appointment to the Privy Council in the 1945 New Year’s Honours List meant that the ‘Right Honourable’ Ellen Wilkinson joined the body that advised the crown on the exercise of the royal prerogative. 58 Parliament did not initially dazzle Wilkinson. In her view, Baldwin’s large majority after the 1924 election created an atmosphere of ‘haste, of boredom and bad temper’ and rendered the legislative process farcical, 205
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson a great machine to force through the interests of the very rich.59 Though an ‘unexpectedly interesting’ week might surprise her, she despaired: ‘Heavens, how dull it is!’60 The Commons was the ‘biggest funk-hole in the country’ and its ritual resembled a ‘pantomime’.61 She dreamed nostalgically of Cromwell, noting the absurdity of the Lords (‘that decorated dustbin’) and the ‘little tame King who “veults” when he is told to “veult”.’ She offered Hansard as prize for anyone who could suggest a duller place than the Commons.62 With time, Wilkinson was obliged to bow to parliamentary procedure and practices, signalling a gradual process of institutionalisation. In a filibuster during an all-night session on protectionism, Wilkinson spoke amusingly about scissors after which she was sent a pair as a whimsical gift.63 By early 1927, lobby correspondents began to notice that her views were moderating.64 With striking self-awareness, she described the stifling atmosphere of the Commons as ‘an insidious drug which steals away resolution, enthusiasm and militancy’.65 The Sketch believed Westminster had rendered her more genial.66 In November 1930, the People observed that she was shedding her extreme views, linked perhaps to possible promotion.67 Judging her to be an ‘excellent parliamentarian’ and having ‘a House of Commons sense’, parliamentary correspondent James Johnson revealed insightfully that ‘inside the House she shows little or nothing of the demagogue and seldom rails against society’.68 Private members’ bills provided an index of her growing parliamentary experience and institutionalisation. For her, the ballot for private members’ bills was an ‘entertaining parliamentary lucky bag’.69 With her private members’ bill on women police in December 1925, she marched formally across the floor of the House performing a series of bows that were accomplished ‘with the ease and grace of an old parliamentary hand’.70 Wilkinson proposed a series of such bills on hire purchase, widows’ pensions, married women’s nationality, access to the countryside (the ‘right to roam’), equal pay in the civil service and building societies.71 This culminated in the entry into the statute book of her bill on hire purchase in 1938. She had previously attempted to establish legislation on this question in 1930; evidently she had learned from the process.72 By 1938, she not only understood procedure but also the special interest alignment, legal expertise and press campaign required to minimise Commons opposition. The preparation for the Hire Purchase Bill began with Wilkinson meeting with Haldane Society lawyers to formulate the bill.73 Wilkinson also met representatives of the Hire Purchase Trade Association on 20 November 1937.74 She penned a series of newspaper articles and even spoke on the BBC, dramatising her case against the ‘snatch back’ of goods that were almost paid for.75 Compliments came from all sides of the House with its completion. 206
The Commons and the PLP By autumn 1929, after Conservative electoral defeat, Wilkinson’s parliamentary tone was mellowing. Although she criticised ‘superior people’ with a jaundiced attitude to the opening of parliament, her contempt for the Lords remained. She suggested that the Lords should be filmed and shown in cinemas. The institution would be abolished amid ‘shrieks of laughter of common folk’. 76 Wilkinson had come to believe that the secret to parliamentary success was not oratory on the floor of the House but ‘work behind the scenes’.77 While her attitude towards parliament was becoming more sympathetic, the Commons also frustrated her at times. After a 17-hour overnight sitting of Conservative obstruction to the Widows’ Pension Bill in November 1929, Wilkinson showed her frustration ‘of all the mad ways of governing a modern State the British Parliament is almost the silliest’.78 On her 1931 trip to the USA, she described Westminster as a highly decorated cake on the outside and a Victorian railway station on the inside, the Lords being the first class waiting room and the Commons, the second class one.79 This process of institutionalisation combined consent and coercion. There were penalties for breaching Commons convention, with mechanisms to control the behaviour of unruly members. She had to apologise in print to Simon about his legal work in India when criticising his commission in late 1927. More seriously, her New Leader article on 1 March 1929 criticised J.F. Hope, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, for partisanship regarding Derby Corporation’s bill to raise funds for land improvement.80 Ideologically opposed to this municipal ‘socialism’, six Tory backbenchers intended to put down a motion but were absent during the bill’s reading. Having missed the debate, the ‘Tory truants’ approached Hope who, allegedly breaking with protocol, timetabled a further discussion.81 Conservative backbench MP Herbert Grotrian raised Wilkinson’s transgression in the House on the day of her New Leader article, moving it to be libellous and contravening parliamentary privilege.82 Wilkinson had not been notified about the disciplinary motion and was absent due to her father’s death.83 MacDonald asked for adjournment, which was granted for three days. On 4 March, Wilkinson appeared before the Commons contrite and visibly pale.84 After her apology, while Wilkinson was asked to wait outside the chamber, the motion was withdrawn. Rear-Admiral Tufton Beamish was not satisfied that matters ended so swiftly. He pressed unsuccessfully for greater punishment for Wilkinson’s insults that arose ‘from innocence, ignorance, bad manners, or thirst for notoriety’. 85 Margaret McWilliams, who was her secretary at the time, recalled that this illustrated Wilkinson’s acting skill, playing the grieving daughter (for a father she had not seen in years), dressed in black ‘and of course, she got off’.86
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Wilkinson developed a side-line career as a parliamentary correspondent. She published where she could and her manuscripts show that she wrote rapidly in a fluent prose.87 For those publications close to her own creed, she wrote politicised commentary. However, for newspapers such as the Evening News, the Daily Express, the Star, Daily Mail, or Pearson’s Weekly, she turned to matters of personality and gender. Thus, for the Evening News, she focused on the appearance of male MPs, ranking them in a ‘beauty competition’, with a particular fascination for their chins.88 In articles, speaking engagements and in a book, she sought to amuse audiences with her ‘peeps at politicians’, especially its ‘star’ performers. This mode was generally non-controversial, gossipy and non-political. Wilkinson’s Oxford-educated secretary Diane Hubback thought her employer’s journalism was cheap but acknowledged that Wilkinson needed the income.89 Seeking to demystify parliament in her journalism, Wilkinson penetrated its dull appearance and read the signs of the complex process at work.90 She tried to expose the power of civil servants, noting how the Treasury was really run by second secretary Sir Richard ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins and permanent secretary Sir Warren Fisher, who only required the Chancellor to act as ‘public scarecrow’ to justify their parsimony.91 Wilkinson was sceptical of the image of the civil service as ‘the model of purity, uprightness, honour, and the rest of the Boy Scout adjectives’. Although she had met ‘many decent fellows’, their relationship with a Labour government was different, serving ‘chiefs from a class most of them despise, and who stand for an economic creed that means the end of the privileges of their own social order’. By way of illustration, for her, the civil service had failed spectacularly its democratic credentials with regard to the Zinoviev letter.92 Wilkinson’s parliamentary experience widened yet further in 1929 when she was appointed to a parliamentary committee investigating ministerial powers, chaired by Lord Donoughmore. Wilkinson served alongside the MPs, legal experts, and senior civil servants, amongst whom the Duchess of Atholl, Harold Laski and Sir John Anderson featured significantly in her future.93 The commission’s function was to scrutinise the controversial tendency to delegate greater powers to ministers, described by critics as a ‘new despotism’ and a usurpation of parliament.94 Wilkinson’s presence on the committee produced headlines when she questioned local government officials who defended the delegation of powers in the implementation of the statutes. She believed this to be against the public interest, commenting ‘Would not the Shah of Persia in his medieval days have approved of the view you are putting now?’95 Both Wilkinson and Laski dissented from the majority, appending minority reports.96 Wilkinson emphasised the type of powers needed
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The Commons and the PLP to push through socialist measures, perhaps particularly bearing in mind the plans to tackle mass unemployment. By 1931, she had accommodated to the Commons, learning its practices and following its routines. At that time, she was writing Division Bell Mystery set in the Commons precisely because its atmosphere was ‘so strange, so unreal, so fascinating’.97 When she lost her seat, she expressed a disorienting isolation. In the immediate aftermath, Wilkinson explained that she felt that ‘the whole framework of my life had suddenly crumbled’, being shocked to realise ‘how completely parliament had absorbed me’.98 Life as an MP, she admitted, had provided her bearings and created an artificial distance with her old acquaintances and relatives.99 With her Commons return in 1935, her habituation to the Commons increased. At this time, she depicted the Commons as a train in which the first and third class carriages were mixed, representing more or less the social blend and attitudes of the country. As such, parliament did not rule, it allowed the ‘half-humourous, half-serious grousing of any casually picked body of citizens who gets to know each other by travelling together fairly often’.100 During the late 1930s, she became attuned to rumour as an index of political fortunes and the lubricant of the Commons.101 Speaking to Heaton Chapel Literary Society in March 1938, she opined whimsically that parliament ‘was not intended to do anything. It was to prevent things being done.’ According to her, the Commons now stood to protect the rights of the ordinary man.102 With the threat of Hitler, the British people were faced with a choice between ‘talking shop and concentration camp’.103 Thus, over time, the Commons had broken down her resistance to its appeal. Although in 1927 Wilkinson had argued that the capitalist had made the constitution for his own benefit, by 1939 the constitution fitted ‘our national life like a well-worn shoe’ balancing interests through ‘a mass of compromises’.104
Gender and the Commons When Wilkinson first entered the Commons, office and dining facilities for women members were inadequate and gender governed access to certain parts of Westminster.105 Her novel The Division Bell Mystery decoded the Commons as a complex, gendered, ritualised habitat and Wilkinson played her part in breaching those gendered boundaries.106 She set precedent in the ‘holy of holies of male members’: the smoke-room. When a policeman barred access in vain as ‘ladies are not allowed in here’, she entered saying, ‘I am not a lady – I am a Member of Parliament.’107 In a feat listed in the Manchester Guardian’s ‘Year of
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Success for Women’, Wilkinson secured female access to the Strangers’ Dining Room from the Kitchen Committee in November 1928, although the final obstacle of the Speaker and the Sergeant at Arms remained until March 1931.108 The Spanish journalist Irene de Falcón reported that Wilkinson had more than anyone brought a feminine touch to the Commons.109 Parliament could be a hostile environment, combining convention and a pervasive sense of social distinction. Wilkinson observed that while Saklatvala – the only non-white MP – was a great platform speaker, young Tory MPs goaded him into histrionics with jeers of ‘speak up’.110 In an imaginary Christmas present list, she suggested that Saklatvala might send a book of good manners to Winterton who might then pass it on to his superior Lord Birkenhead.111 The atmosphere of the House could resemble a boys’ public school with mocking, insinuation and sneering at supposed social inferiors. Gallantry did not spare Wilkinson from such practices. Proposing an amendment to the Shop Hours Bill, Wilkinson had to interrupt Macquisten objecting to an abusive reference to her.112 When she recounted being amongst the soldiers in Republican Spain, the opposite benches delighted in sexist innuendo.113 Even as a Minister, she had to deal with inappropriate ‘flirtatious’ behaviour.114 Generally speaking, Wilkinson was not one to be bullied and found her own strategies for dealing with the masculine environment, subverting that masculinity by describing the Commons as ‘ladylike’ on one occasion.115 Also symptomatic of her treatment as a woman MP, Wilkinson reflected upon the hate mail that she received. Women in the public eye, she observed, received a ‘storm of abuse’ from vicars objecting to lowly women flaunting themselves in public, from housewives resentful of the independent women, and from the well-to-do worried about dangerous ideas contaminating their domestic servants and working girls. Her ‘thick hide’, she wrote, protected her from the barbed gossip columns in the provincial press.116 She hoped that the advent of more Labour women MPs would end such treatment.117
Overwork, strain and illness From the beginning, the Commons exacted a heavy toll on Wilkinson. She complained of headaches adjusting to the routines. She had no break during her first Christmas recess and planned to have none at Easter, given her attendance at the NUDAW ADM and being chair of the National Labour Women’s Conference.118 Combined with Wilkinson’s campaigning activities, the Commons led to periodic bouts of nervous exhaustion, the ‘flu’ and possibly depression.119 Her secretary Hubback had never met anyone who worked so hard. Florence Paton MP reflected 210
The Commons and the PLP that Wilkinson ‘never spared herself’.120 Leaving on the midnight train to London, Wilkinson spoke at several meetings in a day trip to Cheltenham during Paton’s by-election campaign in 1928. Wilkinson developed a reputation as an energetic MP, which became a crucial dimension of her public persona and myth. Symptomatic of this was Wilkinson’s driving. Her private secretary Margaret McWilliams during her first spell in parliament remembered Wilkinson’s ‘hair-raising’ driving of her Baby Austin, ‘she used to drive flat out, not being too particular which side of the road she was on!’121 Wilkinson confessed to a friend that after a ‘fagging and strenuous week’s work’ that she suffered habitually from ‘a weekend depression’ but that this was ‘merely a fleeting emotion’.122 Describing her personality type, she talked about the ‘mind-pain’ that gives ‘depth and colour to life’ preferring this to being one of those ‘cushioned from life’s agony’ who were as dull as their unfortunate friends. The difficulty was to find a balance: being able to get on with life ‘without crushing the bad parts so far into the sub-conscious that they come out to plague us in other and uglier ways’.123 At times, the strain showed. At a meeting discussing imprisoned Communists in January 1926, she lost her temper with an audience in Leeds for laughing when the lighting failed.124 Shortly afterwards, doctors consigned her to bed and she cancelled forthcoming engagements.125 There were several press reports indicating the severity of this episode. Living ‘on her nerves’ and having ‘cracked up’, one journalist was pleased that ‘Our Ellen’ was resting as ‘we don’t want to lose her’.126 With Wilkinson cancelling engagements and being rumoured to be seriously ill five months later, her doctor once again ordered rest.127 She experienced a similar episode in February 1927 after meetings up and down the country against British intervention in China. She had to sit down during the middle of a speech in Portsmouth; this was ascribed to ‘the flu’.128 She had another breakdown on 13 April 1927 and was ordered to have a month’s complete rest. After convalescing in Devonshire, she returned early to the Commons.129 Within a fortnight of her return, she was doing all-night sittings over the Trades Disputes Bill.130
A rich man’s government and a left strategy for the PLP, 1925–29 Wilkinson subtly gendered the Labour left’s language condemning the ‘Rich Man’s government’, with its ‘Rich Man’s budget’, supported by the ‘Rich Man’s press’. Her New Leader articles regularly scrutinised Churchill’s chancellorship. For Wilkinson, the ‘gambler of Gallipoli’s’ budget was an attempt to drive 400,000 jobless off unemployment insurance which he rationalised with the discourse of ‘the permanent pensioners on the dole.’ When Churchill targeted the young working 211
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson woman with the artificial silk tax on her ‘luxury’ stockings, Wilkinson contrasted the extravagant new Kit-Cat club with the luxuries of the poor, calling for the quietly forgotten capital levy.131 Her criticisms of Churchill’s budgets encompassed what she dubbed ‘the cross of gold’ (sterling’s return to the Gold Standard) on which the ‘happiness of humanity’ was being sacrificed.132 Consequent upon the free trade orthodoxy of the Labour leadership, Snowden supported the return to gold in the face of backbench opposition including Wilkinson’s own criticisms. When Churchill raided the sinking fund, Wilkinson admired his conjuring trick and noted that Snowden was the only chancellor to respect Treasury orthodoxy. She also criticised Snowden for not explaining that workers who had served in the war were paying bondholders £355 million a year for the next half century for the privilege. She observed that Churchill’s mounting government debts would tie a future Labour government’s hands and his overvalued sterling–gold parity would have a deleterious effect upon employment. Unemployment was a recurrent theme of Wilkinson’s critique of Tory policy.133 She contrasted the happier queue for the rich man’s dole with the unemployed breadline.134 While ‘persecuting’ the unemployed with the NGSW clause, nobody investigated whether the labour exchange was genuinely providing work. With the Board of Guardians Default Bill debate, Wilkinson noted the effects in West Ham of Neville Chamberlain’s four pence in the pound saving: in three months, the infant mortality rate leapt from 56 to 89. He had replaced the Guardians with six highly paid officials and was letting children die to save the rates. She reflected: ‘The class war is a bitter thing. Amid the suavities of the House of Commons it bares its teeth.’135 Conservative plans to ‘dump’ the unemployed ‘in various parts of the Empire’ also incensed Wilkinson. Wilkinson believed that unemployment was ‘Labour’s most terrific argument against the capitalist system. It goes to the very roots of the class struggle.’136 Complementing her sharp critique of the Baldwin administration, Wilkinson sought a change in PLP strategy. After the first minority Labour government, Wilkinson entered parliament via the ‘red letter’ general election, which returned a large Conservative majority. Writing in Lansbury’s Labour Weekly and Plebs, she had definite views on Labour Party strategy. Wilkinson’s association with Lansbury’s paper provided her with a significant platform, as it attained a circulation of 172,000 and her column on parliament was, according to Postgate, ‘the liveliest and most ruthless in the country’.137 Lansbury hoped to rally a Labour left so that it could shift the debates inside the party.138 Being part of the ginger group and the Left-Wing Movement, Wilkinson’s approach combined loyalty and patient persuasion rather than splits and recriminations.139 212
The Commons and the PLP As she saw it, with the Liberals in disarray, a choice existed between two PLP strategies.140 The Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) could perceive itself as the heir to the Liberals with the hope of ‘hastening’ their ‘inevitable end’. Wilkinson worried that Labour leadership wanted to become the new liberals, objecting to the Labour leadership’s criticism of the budget as a ‘free trade dogfight’.141 MacDonald’s goal was quiet consolidation, constructive opposition, the winning of the ‘hesitating brethren of the left of the Liberal Party’ and the ‘excommunication’ of the reds. She thought this self-defeating because the Labour Party was ‘built on the basis of class struggle, … founded on and by the trade unions; and its inspiration has been the socialist teaching of the pioneers of the ILP and BSP’.142 She criticised MacDonald’s gradualism that had descended like a ‘miasma’ over the front bench.143 For her, the Labour Party’s choice was both strategic and about its very identity, being caught between its pioneer spirit and its machine. Thus, at the Blackpool conference of 1927, she believed that the machine was more in evidence than the spirit and that ‘it has to be prevented from becoming a juggernaut, rolling independence of mind and passionate ardour into a level uniformity’.144 She viewed Labour as more than the PLP; it was a movement, encompassing the trade unions and co-operative movement, that should become a ‘fighting army’.145 Part of the PLP’s problem, as Wilkinson saw it, was the party acting as an official opposition, abiding by parliamentary procedure and putting its faith in long-term progress.146 The right were compromised in Wilkinson’s eyes as Thomas and Clynes did not even oppose the air estimates at a time when the RAF was being used to bomb Iraqi civilians.147 Reflecting upon the experience of the Labour government, she called for socialist measures on a wide scale rather than being forced by expediency into hasty capitalist solutions.148 Her proposed strategy consisted of attacking the Baldwin government, particularly over unemployment and halting all agreements to get parliamentary business done.149 She implored the party leadership to ‘stop playing the parliamentary game’ in the face of its ‘utter stagnation’, hoping that stifling convention would be defied to highlight the great issues of the day.150 Wanting a PLP strategy geared to the movement beyond parliament, the Commons might become a ‘propaganda platform, rallying the workers behind the Party, on certain great lines of attack, especially on housing, unemployment, public ownership, and the scandals of Conservative foreign policy’.151 The ginger group’s task – as Wilkinson saw it – was to ‘drag class issues on to the floor of the House’, while trying to win a majority of the PLP, putting party loyalty first rather than engaging in a quarrelsome dissension.152 213
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson After rejoining the ILP in July 1927, Wilkinson’s parliamentary strategy changed somewhat. She wanted to transcend routine bickering of the left and the right in which right-wingers wanted the ‘adjectival idiots’ disciplined because they alienated middle-class voters and the left-wingers wanted ‘adjectival rotters’ to be ‘tipped into the Thames’. As her criticism of the right mellowed, so Commons pragmatism rather than just left–right distinctions informed her understanding of the PLP’s dynamics. She identified three groups: those who are ready for anything, those who want to go home to bed and those who did not want to miss the divisions. She sought a strategy of pulling together into a corps more youthful, militant, talented backbenchers to coordinate dramatic challenges to ministers over particular issues. In so doing, this would inspire the public to take an interest in politics and avoid the leadership’s strategy of simply waiting for the next general election, which would be, in her view, a suicidal policy.153 By early 1928, her motif was the need for a bold lead in the Commons and intensive constituency work to counteract the millionaire press and the clandestine Conservative Party funds.154 She wanted a more combative style, citing the tactic of the allnight sitting as an example. She applauded Wheatley’s move from the Shadow Cabinet to the backbenches because he refused to follow ‘traditional etiquette’, arguing that the front bench should be elected by the NEC.155 She complained about the friendship between older members across the party divide and the front bench’s conformity with parliamentary convention. When this had been raised in the PLP, the only outcome, she claimed, had been Charles Roden Buxton’s appointment to frame questions for Labour MPs. When she proposed this strategy at the Labour Party conference, MacDonald questioned the seemliness, honesty and profit of such a challenge. While having served his fair share of all-night sittings, he suspected the ‘heroes of the all night sittings’ of engaging in ‘silly vanity of show’.156
On the NEC: the battle for the programme of government 1927–29 At the 1927 Labour Party conference in Blackpool, MacDonald moved a proposal for the preparation of a programme of government, which would be presented for the following conference’s approval. During the debate, Wilkinson reiterated her appeal for a ‘fighting programme’ that would provide a ‘bold lead’ to the working class. She argued that 1926 had shown that when asked, the workers were willing to fight and the programme should reflect this instead of ‘persuading the rather more intelligent sections of the middle class’. She warned conference that the press was interfering with the party’s decision-making process by highlighting and disparaging both internal criticism and left-wing demands; 214
The Commons and the PLP the press would throw mud at the party come what may. The party also was becoming obsessed with administrative detail rather than realising the power of extra-parliamentary mobilisation to provide backing for its efforts in the chamber. In circumstances of ‘the utter morass of poverty’ in the constituencies, the party should show ‘will, passion and determination’ to bring socialism in their time, rather than ‘a thousand years hence’.157 Wilkinson was elected onto the NEC at the Blackpool conference. In her first two NEC meetings on 5 and 26 October 1927, she was delegated onto several committees: the National Trade Union Defence Committee, the Research and Propaganda Sub-Committee, Labour representative on Unemployment Insurance Administration, one of four NEC representatives on the SJC as well as replacing Dalton on the Living Wage Commission.158 Mostly significantly though, the NEC voted for a sub-committee for its programme from nine nominees. Wilkinson secured election alongside F.O. Roberts, Concemore Cramp, Herbert Morrison, Oswald Mosley and Sir Charles Trevelyan who served alongside the chair (Lansbury), secretary (MacDonald) and Henderson.159 Indicative of the frictions in the drafting of the programme, Arthur Henderson (who was a Methodist committed to temperance) wrote to the NEC threatening resignation from the sub-committee over its silence on the drink question. Wilkinson pushed for acceptance of his resignation, though the NEC decided to ask him to reconsider.160 The programme’s length was the major sticking point and came before the NEC on 29 February 1928. The sub-committee reported that MacDonald was in favour of a longer document in opposition to Wilkinson and Mosley. Despite, the suggestion for a special NEC to instruct the sub-committee, the NEC decided to ask MacDonald to write the draft programme along the lines he was suggesting.161 In the midst of this process in June 1928, ILP chair James Maxton dropped a ‘bombshell’ within the party, issuing a manifesto with A.J. Cook against the class collaboration that the Mond–Turner talks epitomised. Wilkinson criticised Maxton for doing this without consulting his colleagues on the left and for its timing, being published shortly before the launch of the Labour Party’s programme. The Maxton-Cook manifesto did elicit from Wilkinson one of her clearest elaborations of the Labour Party’s nature. It was not a party like the Conservatives that had unity through inertia of conservatism, ‘the laziness that wants to let things be’. Instead, it was founded upon ‘a protest against things as they are, they naturally create a movement, sections of which will go on protesting’.162 In contrast to the Tories, unity is established through the decisions of annual conference. Through her association with the leaders of the left and the right, she believed that all were sincere and that the 215
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson language of treachery or foolhardiness should be dropped. She sought to be fair to the position of the right, which was concerned with the problems of immediate power, or the establishment of a parliamentary majority through attracting the votes of classes and sections of the population that hitherto did not heed Labour’s appeal. The left, conversely, refused to make peace with capitalism or the increased exploitation of working people. Although she saw Maxton’s move as ill-judged, it was a warning to the safety-first approach and a call to remain true to Hardie’s vision of a ‘great movement’ that gave a ‘strong lead’ to working people. Labour’s draft programme – Labour and the Nation – was to appear in July 1928.163 Wilkinson reflected in New Leader upon the work of the sub-committee. Trying to move beyond the sharp divisions on the sub-committee, she asserted that given that conference decisions determined policy, these disagreements were matters of method and emphasis rather than principle. She had been in the minority that had urged a short snappy document offering three things: audacity, an outline of what the party would do if elected and a fighting lead. The majority wanted something in keeping with the precedent of Labour and the Social Order. The programme counted 22,000 words and 70 subjects. Despite losing the argument, Wilkinson appealed for unity so that the press could not exploit the differences that had existed over the document.164 Wilkinson assessed the Labour Party Conference of 1928 in Birmingham in the following terms. She began with praise for Maxton’s call for leadership. Given the approaching general election, the mood of conference was intolerance of dissent wanting to pass the programme without controversy. The executive had decided by majority (implying Wilkinson was in the minority camp) to pursue the exclusion of Communists from conference, even those who were delegated by their trade unions. The NEC deemed that ‘only those prepared to advocate the principles and policy of the Labour Party should be engaged as speakers at public meetings by constituency parties’. Wilkinson noted that the press were speculating that this might not only deal with its explicit target – continuing Communist influence – but also lead to the expulsion of Maxton, Cook and the ILP.165 The set piece debate was between Maxton and MacDonald over the programme. What was needed, according to Maxton, was not another declaration of socialist faith but a definite legislative programme that would provide reassurance that a Labour government would not try to run capitalism. Morrison responded for the executive, ridiculing the idea of detailed control of government by the electorate.166 When Snowden outlined his plans for chancellorship to the conference, it prompted another major controversy. He drew concerted criticism from the left. Maxton, Lansbury and 216
The Commons and the PLP E.F. Wise all rounded on him before Wilkinson condemned Snowden’s speech as a renunciation of the socialist principle of nationalisation.167 After Birmingham, Wilkinson hoped that a shortened version of the programme would be put before the electorate, condensing the ‘great document’ Labour and the Nation. This could harness the anger of the public and channel it for a clear socialist case. Without such an approach, the danger was that rather than a decisive victory, there would be a muddled election, an indeterminate result and another election within the year.168 At the NEC of 26 March 1929, a long discussion on the draft election manifesto took place with a report from the sub-committee. On this occasion, there was a consensus for a shorter, crisper supplementary document with a change in style rather than substance and Wilkinson pleaded for only four or five principal items, and that the rest could be referred to in Labour and the Nation.169 A shorter document did materialise but Wilkinson’s frustrations continued during the electoral campaign as MacDonald and Snowden substituted the word reorganisation for nationalisation due to their anxieties about middle-class opinion. She believed that the lesson of the 1924 government had not been learnt and that the leadership did not realise the impossibility of placating the readership of the Daily Mail with a change in language. She believed that the slogan of ‘safety first’ was a mistaken ‘motto of the cemetery’. Wilkinson called for an energetic response plastered on every hoarding and chalked on every pavement: ‘Don’t grin and bear it, vote Labour and change it.’170
General election 1929 As the Commons session ended before the general election, Wilkinson was grateful that the ‘nightmare’ of five years of an overwhelming Conservative majority was over. The contrast with her election campaign was stark: ‘everywhere there is an enthusiasm that feels like a revival’.171 In an interview for a Spanish magazine, asked who would win the election, she shrugged her shoulders and said that she only hoped that it would be our party.172 At election time, Labour had to contend with the ‘storm of lies from the millionaire newspapers’. She did not see the point in appeasing ‘silly people in suburban trains talking of “trusting Baldwin” or “socialism always fails”’.173 The Times’s special correspondent summed up the situation in Middlesbrough East. He expected a close contest, in which all three parties expected victory. His prediction was that the Catholic vote would prove decisive. Wilkinson had secured this in 1924 but subsequently alienated it. She also faced the seat’s Conservative former incumbent,
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Wesley Brown who had not been able to stand in 1924 for reasons of ill health.174 Labour’s failure to win the neighbouring Middlesbrough West by-election in 1928 was a reminder that this was difficult territory.175 Wilkinson observed that in places like Middlesbrough trade unionists had not been broken from the old Lib-Lab traditions and grassroots socialist activism was necessary.176 When a leader writer in the local press argued that a woman politician could not know about the masculine preserve of the steel industry, she pointedly replied: ‘It would be interesting to know where the permitted limits of my knowledge are to be drawn’.177 Margaret McWilliams, or ‘McBill’ as Wilkinson called her, the MP’s private secretary between 1925 and 1929, recollected a public meeting during the 1929 general election in Middlesbrough at which Wilkinson and MacDonald spoke. It was Wilkinson that people wanted to hear and she captivated the audience with her speech, reducing some to tears.178 Her eve of poll message urging ‘Labour into power this time’, betrayed her anxiety about the possibility of a minority Labour government.179 Adding a new twist to the poll, this was the so-called ‘flapper election’ after equalisation of the franchise. While the Conservatives lost votes, it seems that Wilkinson won slightly more of the new women voters than the Liberals.180 Her majority roughly trebled to 3,199. However, as she pointed out to a women’s meeting during the campaign, her constituency was one of the few where men had a numerical advantage, outnumbering women by approximately 1,300.181
Minority government, 1929–31 Before MacDonald had formed the government as a result of the 1929 election, Wilkinson predicted serious difficulties ahead for such a government. In her journalism, she anticipated not only the possibility of a minority Labour government but also that this had entered into Baldwin’s calculations in the last months of his government.182 While admiring his sparring with Churchill, Wilkinson continued to be concerned about Snowden ‘the darling of the City of London’ and his silence about unemployment.183 She noted that at the Blackpool conference he did not intervene in the debate about the capital levy and the use of a surtax to be earmarked for social services. Only Morrison argued against the ILP position from the platform on the grounds that the party should not tie the hands of a Labour Chancellor. Snowden’s speech at the 1928 Labour Party conference in Birmingham gave her little confidence that he would be able to handle the critical question that would face a Labour government intent on socialist measures: opposition from the banks and financial institutions. Given the latitude that the electoral
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The Commons and the PLP programme afforded, the choice of chancellor, for Wilkinson, would be the ‘deciding factor’ of the Labour government.184 After the election, Wilkinson began the new parliament with high hopes that accompanied new Labour faces and Tory defeat. She realised that there were difficulties in the new situation. Though the Liberals held the balance, they did not want a new election. She also believed that an understanding across the party existed that a repeat of 1924 would not do. The end of the ‘Poor Law dictators’ was a good start but India and Russia would be bigger tests.185 On 5 July 1929, Wilkinson was appointed as the PPS to Susan Lawrence, who was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, Arthur Greenwood. Wilkinson used her novel Division Bell Mystery (1932) to explain the relationship between ‘the humblest of God’s creatures’ the PPS, the senior civil servants and ministers.186 Senior civil servants resented the PPS for having access to the minister without the responsibility of permanent position and they sought to dominate their ministers if necessary by ‘removing the props at unexpected moments’. It was only the exceptional minister who was able to call the permanent officials to heel through a combination of determination and intelligence. Wilkinson admired Lawrence’s formidable ‘mathematician’s brain’ and her ‘gentle schoolmistress’ style.187 For Wilkinson, Lawrence’s interventions into the unemployment debate – or ‘elementary economics classes for Tories’ – were the only break in the monotony of Baldwin’s De-Rating Bill.188 In office, Lawrence silenced Tory protests of extravagance over the Widows’ Pensions Bill with sheer detailed knowledge. This self-assurance made her, for Wilkinson, ‘the most modern woman of the lot of us’.189 Becoming a PPS was not the only indication of Wilkinson’s prestige. After the election, Wilkinson missed by one vote a position on the twelve-person Consultative Committee that would liaise between the party and the ministers.190 Wilkinson’s New Leader article on the Labour Party conference of 1929 in Brighton illustrates her thinking at this time. She believed that the ILP had become the coherent voice of the left, three years after that place had been vacated by the Communists. Symptomatic of this was Dorothy Jewson’s telling intervention in favour of family allowances in the face of ‘ill-founded’ trade union opposition.191 Wilkinson herself intervened in this debate urging support for family allowances as a means to win the confidence of women voters.192 Ultimately, however, the ILP resolution was shelved as conference voted to move to other business. The ILP also put the case for the Meerut prisoners though anti-communism swayed conference. The centre piece of the debates was the row about unemployment insurance which Wilkinson described as a spectre hanging over the conference. There was considerable impatience amongst delegates over the lack of progress on this question and the executive 219
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson narrowly won the vote against referring the matter back. With the clash between Thomas and Wheatley over unemployment, she believed that the government needed to enact socialist policy as ‘unemployment would last as long as capitalism’ and that this should be recognised frankly. She took some consolation in the expenditure of £600 million on poor relief and unemployment benefit as this at least injected ‘spending power’ into the economy. She was more positive about Henderson’s report as Foreign Secretary which detailed his negotiations with the USSR and his commitment to disarmament. However, Wilkinson made no mention in her article in the New Leader that she lost her place on the NEC at the conference.193 Neither did she mention the angry scene when Morrison refused to allow an insistent Kirkwood speak in a debate on nationalisation of the Bank of England.194 As parliament opened in autumn 1929, the legislative programme in the King’s speech delighted Wilkinson. That the mines, the unemployment insurance, widows’ pensions, the 48-hour week, amendment to the Trades Disputes Act and factory conditions were all to be legislated upon visibly deflated Baldwin.195 Contextualising the Labour government’s difficulties over welfare, Wilkinson unpicked the assumptions of the existing Conservative social policy. They obsessed that the poor should not be given ‘something for nothing’ and thus the ‘blessed word’ insurance soothed their anxieties. Their concern about doles sapping the moral fibre of workers led to the twin absurdities of asking workers to insure the uninsurable – mass unemployment – and restrict widows’ pensions according the arithmetic vagaries of an insurance fund.196 While recognising the limited categories of widows who would receive pension rights, Wilkinson defended the new Widows’ Pensions Bill of October 1929 because it catered for the most needy. She stated that she would have preferred that all widows were included but Labour inherited the Conservatives’ muddled legacy.197 She rejected the criticisms from Labour’s women’s sections on the basis that this was a first instalment of reform and others from Labour’s election programme would take time.198 In her New Leader and New Dawn commentaries, Wilkinson supported the government, but targeted criticism at a resistant civil service. She welcomed three excellent bills – the Coal Mines Bill, the Road Traffic Bill and the Mental Treatment Bill.199 She saw the valued role of the backbencher to the government and the need for debate. Thus, she praised Buxton for his amendments to the Colonial Development Bill against forced labour, for standard wage rates and community participation. She tried to take a measured stance with regard to dissension in Labour ranks. The first major row arrived over the harsh regime at the labour exchanges. The ‘ghost of Blanesburgh’ haunting Bondfield complicated 220
The Commons and the PLP this.200 Wilkinson predicted that the NGSW clause was such an ‘insult to our people’ that if it did not go, it would bring down the government. Surveying the new Cabinet, she noted that no one envied Bondfield and Jack Lawson at the Ministry of Labour as they had to tackle ‘a mountain of mismanagement, false economies and wrong traditions’. If ‘impartial’ civil servants at the Ministry of Labour were blocking change, then there should be some ‘spring-cleaning’.201 Indeed, the new government had to face the opposition of the civil service as ‘most of the higher posts are staffed with men inflexibly opposed to all we stand for’.202 In November 1929, Bondfield introduced the Unemployment Insurance Bill. This provoked the first serious crisis of the Labour government. Signalling her evolving attitude to the organisation, Wilkinson implored the ILP to consider the situation carefully. Her criticisms of the little Clydeside group (David Kirkwood, Campbell Stephen and George Buchanan) became more open. In contrast to Maxton, ‘Vinegar Hill’, as they became known, were in her words using ‘truculent discourteous exaggeration’ against the front bench and this turned dozens of Commons supporters away from the ILP. According to Wilkinson, they were undermining the possibility of effective left-wing pressure upon the Labour leadership. Their stance, she predicted as early as November 1929, would ultimately force the ILP to quit the Labour Party and follow the Communist Party into self-imposed isolation and wrecking tactics.203 Wilkinson worried about the government’s growing caution as it faced press outcry about ‘doles’, stock market falls calculated to discipline the government and signs of opposition from the Liberals. Without a response, the press campaign would turn into a sequel to the Zinoviev letter storm, provoking an early election in an unfavourable climate.204 She noted the demoralising effect of the Unemployment Insurance Bill debate and the front bench mistake of stifling criticism rather than meeting it halfway. In all this, Wilkinson defended Bondfield, seeing her as a scapegoat for Snowden’s parsimony and for being loyal to Ministry of Labour officials.205 Wilkinson ruefully quipped that the two other parties were now redundant as the Labour Party was providing both government and opposition. Writing years later, Bondfield appreciated Wilkinson’s restraint, unlike others on the Labour left.206 On 3 December 1929, Wilkinson voted against the government over the Unemployment Insurance Bill, despite being a PPS and being expected to resign for doing so. She was fortunate given the size of the backbench revolt, encompassing those beyond the ILP notably Arthur Hayday, and the fact that another PPS Philip Noel-Baker also voted against the government.207 The Unemployment Insurance Bill crisis eased in the short term as the left wing adhered to the PLP majority and the front bench began to consult more carefully.208 The ill-fated bill suffered at the hands 221
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson of the Lords which shocked Wilkinson as she claimed to have nearly forgotten of their existence. She wanted the government to challenge this ‘tolerated anachronism’ and provoke them to use their veto to prompt an election, which would provide favourable terms to Labour. During the course of 1929 and 1930, flashes of optimism in Wilkinson’s writing gave way to frustration. In December 1929, she believed they were ‘on the eve of big changes which will help towards making this cumbrous machinery really do the workers’ will’.209 However, she became convinced that the existing governmental machinery was not suited to the goals of the Labour movement, even with a Commons majority because the parliamentary system had evolved alongside the rising bourgeoisie as a ‘club for squires who liked to justify their comfortable existence by an occasional spot of work for the country, as a Tommy Tiddler’s ground for ambitious lawyers’.210 Growing more impatient Wilkinson complained of the PLP wasting intelligence and talent given its propensity to promote on seniority and suppress free political conscience through party whips.211 Her dissatisfaction deepened over the Tory ‘traffic block’ in the Commons. She wanted to scream, ‘For God’s sake, man, stop talking for talking’s sake. Can’t you see the state of the country? Let us get something DONE.’212 Her contempt for the Liberals, whom she viewed as inconsistent and petty, grew.213 When Lloyd George opposed the Coal Bill in the Commons, Wilkinson could not restrain her anger and called him a cad.214 Although still supportive of her government, Wilkinson’s open criticism began with J.H. Thomas’s handling of unemployment. Here was a problem that ‘was a by-product of Capitalism, and you can’t solve it, or even appreciably lessen it, within a system which by its working is bound to create more unemployment’. Herein lay the Labour government’s difficulty: with the first hint of socialist measures, Liberal parliamentary support would be lost. Wilkinson believed that the answer was to appeal beyond parliament and to mobilise opinion in favour of bold socialist policies.215 As the months passed, Wilkinson noted that although Thomas had implemented various work schemes – given his rejection of socialism – he could not rebuke Tory insolence with the comment that their system created unemployment. In the meantime, all that Labour could do was provide adequately for the system’s victims.216 At this point still in the ILP, Wilkinson agreed with Wheatley’s under-consumptionist critique of Thomas that what was needed was a ‘rationalisation of distribution’.217 She praised the ILP’s pressure upon the front bench to improve allowances under the new unemployment legislation. This was after the ILP had called a meeting of MPs over the unemployment insurance on 29 October 1929, with 50 attending. They called for an urgent discussion, increases in benefits, abolition 222
The Commons and the PLP of the NGSW, and continued benefits for those appealing against disqualification. Wilkinson returned repeatedly to Thomas’s performance, in November 1929 hoping that his plans were ‘a small pup that may grow into a big dog someday’.218 Thomas’s contribution to the debate on unemployment in February 1930 reminded her of every other such ministerial intervention since 1921, with its routine ‘excuses for the capitalist system’.219 By March 1930, Thomas had sanctioned £65 million for public works to tackle unemployment, which was impressive by the standards of the £10 million earmarked in the previous two years. The problem, she noted, was that by the time this expenditure was spent its chief effect would most likely be to improve the statistics of the Conservative Minister of Labour. Responding to Mosley’s memorandum on unemployment of January 1930, Wilkinson observed even-handedly that while it focused real discontent, she recognised the government’s dilemma: achieving what it could as a minority or calling an election; she preferred the former course of action.220 Her equivocation continued when she observed that Mosley had made the speech of his life when he resigned from the Cabinet on 20 May 1930.221 In so doing, albeit by creating a party crisis, he had succeeded in putting unemployment to the head of the political agenda so it was no longer a matter that the Prime Minister could relegate to another Cabinet member’s department.222 Several incidents prompted Wilkinson’s unease with the government to grow in piecemeal fashion. In February 1930, the Labour Party NEC decided that members of ‘communist auxiliary organisations’ including the LAI, WIR and the NUWM were ineligible for party membership, for delegation to conferences, for electoral candidacy.223 Wilkinson participated publicly in all these campaigns. At the Labour Party conference of 1930, she pressed the party to do something about the rise of fascism in Austria, eliciting a defensive response from the Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson.224 On 24 July 1930, pleading for Middlesbrough’s 11,000 jobless, Wilkinson urged the government to establish greater trade links with the USSR to combat unemployment. Sharply critical of government inaction, she argued ‘this simply cannot be allowed to go on’.225 Wilkinson was among the 64 backbenchers who voted against the appointment of Lord Hundson as the Public Works Loans Commissioner in July 1930, a man who had said in 1926 that the miners should be starved back to work.226 On 17 December 1930, Wilkinson abstained on the Dyestuffs Act which afforded ICI monopolistic status rather than voting with the government.227 The NUDAW annual conference of 1930 revealed underlying tensions between the unions and the Labour government over the repeal of the Trades Disputes Act. NUDAW-sponsored MPs were uncertain whether the government’s pledge would be enacted. Wilkinson believed that 223
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson without prior agreement with the Liberals, the government would not even attempt the repeal.228 The union instructed its MPs to work for the repeal of the act. Yet, Wilkinson was distancing herself from the ILP, moving towards a new left alignment within the Labour Party, featuring the Coles, Lansbury and Cripps: the Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda (SSIP).229 Wilkinson publicly outlined the threshold of compromise that she would not cross in the approaching crisis of the government. On 22 February 1931, she pledged at a public meeting in Middlesbrough that she would vote against any measure that would reduce the benefits of the unemployed.230 Just before publication of the Royal Commission on Unemployment Insurance, she conducted several open-air meetings in her constituency. She argued belligerently that the commission did not reflect the government’s view and its proposed reductions in unemployment benefits would be opposed.231 Her speech at a by-election meeting in her native Ardwick on 7 June 1931 highlighted the tension between her public support for the government and her anticipation of its crisis. Wilkinson argued that she was amazed by what the Labour government had achieved considering the obstacles that it faced. It had protected workers from the worst of the economic blizzard. She asked her audience to imagine the Royal Commission on Unemployment Insurance in the hands of a Conservative Prime Minister. It would give him the excuse to cut benefits for the jobless. Labour had thrown it in the waste-paper basket. To loud applause, she concluded, the ‘faces of the Labour government, from the Prime Minister to the youngest member were set like granite against any reduction of benefits or the turning of any men or women off the “dole”’.232 The breaking point was the Unemployment Insurance (no. 3) Bill otherwise known as the Anomalies Bill, which was first read on 18 June 1931.233 As a PPS, there was strong expectation that Wilkinson would follow the party whips. Although professing to support the Bill in general and not voting consistently with its twenty or so (mainly ILP) opponents, she felt she had to vote against the government over seasonally unemployed women on 15 July. This affected a good number of milliners and dressmakers that NUDAW represented.234 On 21 July, she successfully urged Bondfield to accept Jennie Lee’s amendment exempting married women whose husbands were incapacitated from the regulations.235 The same day she also seconded Rathbone’s amendment for the inclusion of two women on the advisory committee overseeing the ‘anomaly’ cases.236 Despite publicly opposing the government, her core support in Middlesbrough appeared to approve of her stance as she held four meetings in August with an average of 1,500 attending.237
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The Commons and the PLP The Labour government collapsed on 24 August. The Cabinet met to consider the package of cuts including a 10% cut in unemployment benefit that was a condition of a loan to bail out sterling. When MacDonald did not get sufficient Cabinet backing, he resigned as Prime Minister.238 The following day, however, the King invited him to form a coalition National government with the Conservatives and Liberals, which he did. The Middlesbrough press interpreted the news that Wilkinson would not join the National government as following the TUC in sheeplike fashion. For the North Eastern Daily Gazette, this entailed support for the ‘grotesque argument’ that a ‘bankers’ ramp’ had undermined the Labour government as well as the ‘wickedly untrue’ allegation of treachery against MacDonald.239 Fortunately, from Wilkinson’s perspective, her constituency Labour Party executive voted unanimously to support the party’s position.240 When she wrote of her summons to the reconvened Commons on 7 September, her response was that she would ‘fight against sacrifices being offered on any secret altar to the Unknown Gods of World Finance’. She predicted that MacDonald would ‘hint of deep, dark mysteries and horrors’ but would reveal ‘precisely nothing’. She felt that ordinary people should be told precisely why they would be asked to pay for the crisis. The real drama, she believed, would be the position of Henderson and the Labour Party. His opposition to the government’s proposals were known, more important was whether he could offer a genuine alternative.241 Auguring future battles, during the brief interim National government prior to the general election of October 1931, Wilkinson was amongst those who objected to police heavy-handedness against a protest of the unemployed outside the Commons.242 Her final intervention challenged the new Minister of Health Neville Chamberlain over the effect of health cuts on maternal mortality.243
1931 general election: losing her seat The election campaign of 1931 took place in extremely unfavourable circumstances for Labour. Not only were there the defections of MacDonald, Snowden and Thomas, a scare that Labour threatened people’s Post Office savings was panicking electors into voting for National candidates who promised stability and non-partisan unity. At the Scarborough conference of the Labour Party, held on 5–8 October 1931, Wilkinson complained that the Prime Minister was broadcasting a second appeal to the nation without a right to reply from the leader of the opposition. Henderson said that he would raise the matter with the BBC on his return to London.244
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Wilkinson recognised Middlesbrough East as a paradox: a difficult seat but one ‘quick grown from the hotbed of nineteenth-century Capitalism, and its history reads like a chapter from Marx’.245 This was a very different campaign from 1929. Things were ‘nice and polite’ then and polling day had a particular arithmetic: ‘About 12,000 … voted for us, and about 14,000 voted for the other fellows but there were two of them, we won.’246 In 1931, Wilkinson faced a single opponent: the National Liberal Ernest Young (whom she described as a Tory ‘decoy duck’).247 Hence it was widely expected that Wilkinson would not hold the seat.248 Despite public declarations of confidence in victory, she warned the constituency Labour Party executive against over-optimism.249 During the campaign, she was ‘badly shaken’ by a ‘rough reception’ at one of her open-air meetings when a large group of Liberal supporters came out of a public meeting and interrupted her with heckling, cat calls and jeering.250 The letters’ page of the North Eastern Daily Gazette filled with hostility to Wilkinson’s cause. On 23 October, correspondents told how nationalisation would bring starvation; how Catholics should follow anti-socialist papal encyclicals; of Wilkinson’s non-attendance at an unemployed meeting; of her failure to print her leaflets in the constituency; of her annual income; of her support for cuts in the army budget; and of her need to accept defeat philosophically.251 She stressed her record of achievement as a constituency MP, using the slogan in her election special: ‘Write to Ellen about it. She gets results.’252 Suggesting a battle to get her own supporters out, Wilkinson’s eve of poll message talked of her growing confidence in victory despite the ‘stiff struggle’.253 Regardless of her celebrity, her womanhood and her constituency work, Wilkinson was defeated comprehensively. As Mary Hamilton who also lost her own seat in 1931 put it: ‘the party ticket hides the plainest or prettiest face with grand impartiality’.254 Announced at 11.50pm on 27 October, Wilkinson polled 12,080 and lost by 6,329 votes.255 Nationally, Labour faced a resounding defeat. Despite, the heavy loss in Middlesbrough East, the Labour vote had only fallen by 135 votes. In the short term, her union executive provided work for her at central office.256 In Wilkinson’s NUDAW report, she considered her future, placing herself ‘in the hands of the E.C.’ She looked forward to returning to trade union work and regretted becoming cut off from the rank and file. On the political front, to achieve a Labour majority in the Commons would need intensive educational and organisational work. She wished to remain on the union’s parliamentary panel and to be considered for a different constituency. Unless there was a three-way contest, chances in Middlesbrough East were poor and as she had antagonised local liberal opinion, it would be easier for a new candidate. She concluded: ‘Frankly, after seven years’ experience in Middlesbrough I feel that a 226
The Commons and the PLP change of candidate there would be as good for them as for me.’257 Eight months later, she reflected that in Middlesbrough there was ‘an awful feeling which was so oppressive … that the entire organisation rested on the shoulders of the agent and the candidate’.258 This is not to say that she did not remain popular in Labour circles in Middlesbrough. After her selection for Jarrow, the Middlesbrough East Divisional Labour Women’s Section petitioned NUDAW for Wilkinson’s retention as their constituency candidate.259 No doubt a galled Wilkinson encountered the widespread fallacy that the flapper vote had lost Labour the election.260 Wilkinson told the readers of Pearson’s Weekly that she was ‘beaten – but cheerful’. She concluded that the MacDonald-Snowden strategy of clinging onto minority government and applying the odd sticking plaster to the social fabric was ‘utterly and tragically wrong’. Labour had been forced into an impossible position of responsibility for events beyond its control. The pretence of the last two years needed to be lifted. Wilkinson attributed defeat at the election to the mass psychology of fear. The press, the BBC, the Church, employers and social workers had created a ‘grand wind up’.261 She reported her own experiences of impoverished mothers worrying about the fate of the pound if Labour won and street meetings at which people honestly believed that Labour ministers had stolen people’s Post Office savings. Noting that Beaverbrook had supplied the Conservative slogan ‘Empire free trade’ that popularised the otherwise dull tariff reform policy, she asked him what he expected in return from the pages of his own newspaper.262 She took comfort from the expectation that MacDonald would continue to conjure the illusion of ‘giving the impression of bustling activity while doing precisely nothing at all’. Reflecting on his exit from 10 Downing Street in 1935, Wilkinson believed MacDonald’s only lasting mark on government was his obsession with the media and his restrictions on press freedom. She remarked on the irony of MacDonald’s complaint about the press manipulating public opinion given that he had been returned with the biggest ever parliamentary majority on the back of just such a scare.263
Red Ellen’s Jarrow Wilkinson’s name has become synonymous with Jarrow. Yet, Labour opinions were divided when news leaked out that NUDAW intended to nominate Wilkinson for the Jarrow constituency. Felling Labour Women’s Section supported her nomination enthusiastically, remembering her ‘spade work’ for R.J. Wilson in 1923, commenting, ‘Her hard work was a great factor towards Mr Wilson’s election.’264 NUDAW executive had decided initially to nominate Wright Robinson, their 227
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Political General Secretary, for the constituency and local organisations were circulated with this.265 However, the NUDAW executive council of 10 January 1932 – with a delegation in attendance from the Pelaw CWS branch – had a long discussion about the matter. The outcome was that Robinson withdrew and Wilkinson was nominated.266 The Jarrow branch was angry that the press had erroneously reported their support for her nomination and that there was ‘a lot of noise’ over the switch.267 Some in Jarrow Labour circles wanted to teach NUDAW a lesson and show that the constituency was not in its pocket and that the local party was ‘not to be pawns in any underhand game played by your employees’. Despite this, Wilkinson won the selection conference held on 30 April 1932 against Councillor George Harvey, of Follonsby Miners’ Lodge, by a margin of 43 to 10.268 Wilkinson visited Jarrow between 5 and 8 June, attending a series of meetings. She spoke before 500 Labour Party members in Jarrow and then addressed the 1,200 to 1,500 outside the venue who could not gain admittance. Her agent Coutts believed that the visit was a great success. Her emphasis that electoral victory relied upon the local party membership did much to allay the ‘murmurings and grumblings’.269 Her first impression was that party organisation was uneven and beset by local quarrels. Party work was effective in Jarrow and Hebburn, but less so in Felling, Billy Quay, Pelaw and Wardley Colliery. Her plan was to get Coutts to strengthen these weaker areas in which case she felt confident of success. She wanted to get local Labour Party organisation to work on ‘modern lines’ and become more self-reliant. Unemployment had beset the town in the early 1920s as the wartime boom ended and the demand for shipbuilding plummeted. Jarrow had vividly entered her imagination from the 1922 and 1923 election campaigns, closing her eyes and seeing Jarrow’s ‘narrow streets’ where ‘men with nothing to do’ tramped around endlessly and ‘starving women’ lurked in ‘dreary back streets’.270 On her visit in June 1932, two councillors took her around the worst slums in Jarrow. As with Middlesbrough East, the NUDAW Political General Secretary intervened in constituency organisation, interviewing Coutts, after which the latter resigned in early 1933.271 It seems that Wilkinson’s strategy for the Jarrow constituency only really took off when Harry Stoddart became her electoral agent in summer 1933.272 During her first visit under his term, she spoke at special meetings in Pelaw, Bill Quay and Wardley as well as two women’s meetings in Felling and Hebburn. With his careful preparation, Wilkinson commented that ‘they were the best attended meetings she had had since her adoption as the Labour Candidate for the Division’. This paid off in terms of new local organisation in Wardley. This strategy of using Wilkinson’s visits to build up organisation continued. In 228
The Commons and the PLP December 1933, she spoke on three occasions in Bill Quay and at a large meeting in Felling. With the turn of the year, the strategy in Jarrow shifted towards agitation with the organisation of a march to Easington on 17 January to challenge the Prime Minister in his constituency over the closure of Palmers’ shipyard.273 It was a great success. Three hundred men and women accompanied Wilkinson on the 15-mile trek. Their placards demanded ‘steamships not hardships’ and ‘shipyards not graveyards’. Police prevented the marchers from assembling directly outside the house where MacDonald was staying but a delegation was able to see him.274 Having organised it in ten days, Stoddart reported that the event ‘will long remain with us a very happy and treasured memory’.275 In the months before the general election, Wilkinson was a regular visitor to the Jarrow constituency. She spoke alongside Will Lawther of the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) at Jarrow’s May day event on 4 May 1935 and led the local women’s sections in June at the Durham Women’s Gala before speaking at Warton Park.276 When she returned on 10 September 1935, Stoddart had arranged five big meetings in Felling (1,200 attending), Wardley (500), Jarrow (1,200–1,500) and Hebburn (1,500).
Leadership succession and the 1935 general election Wilkinson was involved at this time in efforts to secure the Labour Party leadership for Morrison. Their paths had crossed periodically. They were both in the ILP before the war and Wilkinson had spoken alongside Morrison on a platform as early as the LCC campaign of January 1925 at the Albert Hall.277 Some contemporaries found their relationship politically baffling.278 He was on the right of the party, she on the left. As to his performance at the party conference in Brighton in 1929, for her, he ‘exceeded expectations’ as chair being ‘dignified, courteous and, on the whole, fair’.279 During the second minority Labour government, she believed that he was one of the few front benchers committed to socialism.280 She mused that her views had evolved somewhat from the time when she was an ‘ardent communist’ and he ‘the Big Black Beast’ and that she would have played Corday to his Marat ‘though there may have been practical difficulties about the bathing scene’.281 Morrison cemented his reputation by winning the London County Council in March 1934, reversing a significant Tory majority. In the aftermath of that victory, speculation about his leadership of the party began. In an article in the Clarion, Wilkinson sketched Morrison favourably: ‘He prefers cocoa to cocktails, and hates parties unless he is organising them at two shillings a head for the funds.’ She joked that he 229
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson owed her commission for the publicity that she generated amongst suspicious northerners.282 Three months later, comparing him favourably to Maxton and Churchill, Wilkinson returned to Morrison’s leadership qualities, noting his single-mindedness, his directness, his drive and his growing support.283 Seen as a good administrator, he came from a working-class background and possessed both considerable political acumen and common sense. His practical side attracted Wilkinson rather than his position on a left–right spectrum. Despite disagreeing sharply with his attitude to the Communists and his ‘anti-Left Wing complexes’, she believed that he was the best equipped of his generation to lead the Labour Party.284 Morrison’s challenge for the party leadership first materialised after the 1935 Brighton party conference. There, the incumbent Lansbury had opposed on pacifist grounds the NEC’s support for sanctions against Italy, believing that they might provoke war. Lansbury lost the vote and felt obliged to resign. The timing for such a contest was not propitious with a general election within a year at most. Also, given the defections and electoral losses of 1931, Labour lacked obvious successors. Three candidates put themselves forward: Morrison, Attlee and Greenwood. In the first round of voting 58 MPs cast their vote for Attlee, 44 for Morrison and 33 for Greenwood. A second round of voting occurred between Attlee, PLP deputy leader, and Morrison. For Wilkinson, Attlee’s victory was contingent upon short-term circumstances (a ‘fluke’) and his poor performance in the 1935 election, contrasted with Labour’s performance in London.285 In this carefully constructed account, one can see how Dalton, Wilkinson and later Laski would intrigue to oust Attlee whose record, pedigree and leadership qualities were widely questioned. Shortly after the general election of 1935, Wilkinson discussed Attlee, Dalton and Morrison as the Labour Party’s ‘men to be noted’, signalling her belief that the party leadership was still not settled. In circumspect terms, she mused about the difficulties that a press chief would have with the devoted but withdrawn Attlee in contrast to the forcefulness of the proletarian cockney Morrison.286 According to John Paton MP, Dalton campaigned hard to get Morrison elected as the PLP leader after the election of 1935, inviting Paton, Wilkinson and Commander Fletcher (who had come to Labour from the Liberals) to a planning meeting. Attlee won the vote by show of hands at the PLP. From that point, Paton reflected, Morrison and Wilkinson became good friends. Morrison liked female company, was a good dancer and had a reputation as a charmer. The character of their relationship has been disputed. Paton ‘would not have been surprised’ if they slept together at times. Morrison’s biographers have denied any affair.287
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The Commons and the PLP As regards the 1935 general election, given the momentum in Jarrow, Wilkinson’s victory was no great surprise but it was far from a safe Labour seat. Despite facing only the sitting Conservative MP W.G. Pearson, Wilkinson won with a relatively small majority of 2,350 on 14 November 1935.288 Wilkinson’s secretary during her first months as Jarrow MP, Diana Hubback wrote of the arduous burden of constituency correspondence. Wilkinson would dictate some replies, Hubback would write some herself.289 The idealist Hubback observed that her ‘generous and good hearted’ employer was sometimes sympathetic, but sometimes a cynic and tough realist, even describing her as ‘somewhat of a careerist’.290 Wilkinson’s postbag from constituents troubled Hubback as it revealed a world of ‘starving children, faithless husbands, bad landlords, divorce cases, unemployment and every form of cruelty and injustice and hardship. The uneducated seem to have a pathetic faith that my employer can in some miraculous way overcome the legal decision already made and turn it in their favour.’291 As well as dealing with individual grievances, Wilkinson encouraged the mobilisation of a grassroots movement in her constituency. On 23 December 1935, she led a ‘monster procession and demonstration’ about the ‘pots and pans’ clause of the unemployment regulations, with the result that large numbers of her unemployed constituents received grants for bedclothes. Returning in early January 1936, she attended a victory social in Hebburn.292 She visited the May day celebrations. On 1 May, she received a ‘very hearty reception’ from the procession in Jarrow, with Stoddart pleased at the ‘very excellent turnout’. On 3 May, she attended May day events in both Hebburn, where there was a packed audience in the Vimy Avenue Labour Hall, and Felling, addressing a huge crowd in the square.293 Returning the following month on 6 June, traffic was stopped in Durham as a result of 10,000 attending the Durham County Labour Women’s Advisory Council’s annual gala. Wilkinson, Mary Sutherland, the Labour Party’s Chief Woman Officer, and Emmanuel Shinwell were the principal speakers.294 She also spoke at that year’s Durham Miners’ Gala on the last Saturday in July.295 Reminiscing about Wilkinson in Jarrow, Arthur Blenkinsop MP wrote of her influence upon him in his youth, drawing him into Labour politics. Until the war, he worked closely with Wilkinson and her agent the old ILPer Harry Stoddart in the anti-means test campaign, Spanish Medical Aid and other anti-Franco meetings. One of the first public meetings he spoke at was an open-air meeting against the means test alongside Wilkinson in Felling. He remembered time he spent at 5, The Crescent, Gateshead in discussion with Wilkinson and Stoddart. This was Stoddart’s lodgings, living with two other ILP families: the Haigs and the Shepherds. This was where Wilkinson often stayed when she was on 231
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Tyneside. They were also associated with the People’s Theatre who were a ‘natural left wing group that welcomed Ellen’s sharp-tongued political oratory and her interest in the arts’.296
The Jarrow march This campaigning approach was the backdrop to the controversy about the banks and steel employers blocking a proposed steelworks in Jarrow. During June and July 1936, Wilkinson’s stock grew yet higher in Jarrow through meetings against the means test and the campaign for the steelworks, which would culminate in the Jarrow Crusade. The MP spoke before two monster meetings – one in Felling and the other between Jarrow and Hebburn – against the new Unemployment Assistance Board regulations.297 The cycle of unemployed protest was once again in an upswing and Stoddart commented in his constituency report that these protests enabled Wilkinson to address ‘thousands … and this is no exaggeration … of voters in the constituency who had never heard Miss Wilkinson speak since she first came into the Division’. On 30 August, Wilkinson led a contingent the five miles from Felling to Newcastle’s Town Moor against the means test. According to Stoddart, the contingent from the Jarrow constituency was the largest of all with colliery bands from Heworth and Follonsby and women outnumbered men.298 Wilkinson and the Jarrow Crusade have come to symbolise Britain in the 1930s. This event was crucial to the making of Red Ellen’s celebrity, legend and reputation.299 All too often though, the collective memory of the Jarrow Crusade has enveloped Wilkinson, sinking her other achievements into oblivion, hollowing out her memory, rendering life a single snapshot. Her actual relationship with the Crusade was more complex than this prevailing association with her name would suggest. On occasion, the Crusade was described mistakenly as ‘Miss Wilkinson’s march’.300 The idea for the march and the particular form that it took were not hers and had more to do with the Jarrow Labour councillors. She played a specific role not immediately obvious from the photographs of her at the front of the Crusade or relaxing with the marchers at rest. The march set out on 5 October from Jarrow. Wilkinson marched its first leg to Chester-le-Street before leaving for the Labour Party Conference in Edinburgh. Throughout the march, she was a key intermediary with the press and was partly responsible for the (largely) positive coverage that the march received. Preston Benson recalled how she
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The Commons and the PLP recruited the sympathetic pressmen who met her to lead the march and make a bold show with her. Among these was Bernard Murphy, burly reporter and later news editor of the Star, BBC reporter and British vice-consul in New York … he used to say that marching with Ellen was one of the proudest adventures of his reporting days.301
The relationship between Wilkinson and the Crusade’s publicity came under scrutiny. The Blackshirts’ newspaper condemned Wilkinson for joining the march ‘now and then’ with photographers always present when she did. This misses the point that her function was to attract positive media attention which would not have occurred otherwise. Many of the newspaper stories were about her, because she was newsworthy, from the viewpoint of contemporary journalistic conventions, in a way that marchers were not.302 While the fascist press decried Wilkinson as an ‘intermittent marcher’, Berthie Archdale, her secretary, recalled that Wilkinson marched as much as her other commitments would allow. When Wilkinson realised that her secretary was driving slowly in order to save her from arduous distances on the march, Wilkinson admonished her.303 David Cargill, one of the medical students on the march and a CPGB member, spent one or two sessions on the road with her. He did see her speak at lunchtime or evening meetings with ‘her usual fieriness, but the whole thing was kept deliberately in a very low political key, the theme being that Jarrow wanted work and that the march was not about over-throwing [sic] the government’.304 Wilkinson was also involved in advocacy for Jarrow’s cause and the organisation of the march.305 Thus, she tried unsuccessfully to gain support from the Labour Party annual conference in Edinburgh during the first days of the march.306 With cross-party lip-service to a political truce, Wilkinson had to conduct the subtle contest with the Tories over a march that they supported locally. One dimension of this was to deal with Tory benefactor Sir John Jarvis. His Surrey Relief Fund for Jarrow was a means of restoring Conservative credibility in the north-east.307 His announcement of plans for a metal tube plant in Jarrow as the march reached London was calculated to diffuse the pressure on the government that the march generated. Further indicating this political intent of Jarvis’s philanthropy, the Conservatives selected his son-in-law Francis Williams for the constituency in August 1938. Williams, a London barrister, was a director of the Jarrow Tube Works and Jarrow Metal Industries (both of which had been established by Jarvis).308 Another consequence of the rhetoric of the non-political Crusade was that disappointment at its apparent failure led to a split in local Labour ranks, with march leaders being expelled and standing in local elections on an independent socialist slate.309 Just as Wilkinson had attended the first leg of the march a month earlier, so she witnessed the Crusade’s return on 5 November. Despite Wilkinson’s 233
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson efforts, the Jarrow march did not overturn the abandonment of the steelworks for the town. It did dramatise the suffering of the distressed areas as no other event did. In a letter thanking Dick Sheppard for supporting the Crusade, she reflected on the failure of the non-political approach: ‘I put all my hopes in being super-constitutional. Now the other marchers are saying “See what Ellen got for being good.”’310
Battles on the NEC, 1937–39 After an eight-year absence, Wilkinson was re-elected to the NEC at the 1937 Labour Party Conference. Being a prominent Labour left, she tried to battle on its behalf inside the NEC. Her key allies were Cripps, Laski and Pritt. Their efforts centred on international affairs and an electoral strategy seeking to unite the centre-left and progressive forces. These had a succession of labels: the Unity Campaign, the peace alliance and the Popular Front. Wilkinson specifically implored the NEC to do more over Spain and the threat of war. The Campaign Committee of the NEC planned three meetings on peace and security in early 1938, at two of which Wilkinson was to speak alongside such Labour Party notables as Attlee, Morrison and Sir William Jowitt.311 Wilkinson was associated with efforts to persuade the party to call an emergency conference on the international situation. At the NEC of 25 March 1938, Wilkinson seconded a motion for such a conference that lost by five votes to eleven. The issue gathered momentum within the movement, with a stream of supportive motions, alongside ones calling for a ‘peace alliance’.312 The NEC reasserted that the party conference had decided against Popular Front-type activity and that this was binding. Consequently, Wilkinson criticised the Labour Party leadership’s unprecedented intolerance.313 On 2 May 1938, despite Wright Robinson’s opposition, Wilkinson won her own union to a position of support for a peace alliance against the government at the next election.314 This afforded Wilkinson greater latitude on the NEC. A special NEC meeting on 5 May 1938 voted sixteen to four for a draft statement rejecting the Popular Front, showing the isolation of Wilkinson and her allies who had tabled a lengthy memorandum on the international situation.315 Cripps also moved a motion for a special conference. Although this was not carried, the vote was a seven-seven deadlock. The Cripps–Laski–Pritt–Wilkinson memorandum was responding to the urgent international conjuncture. Both non-intervention and the recent German occupation of Austria reconfigured the European balance of power and the relative prestige of fascist and democratic powers. Specifically, Czechoslovakia and the Franco–Soviet–Czech alliance were under serious threat. The memorandum offered a particular analysis of 234
The Commons and the PLP British domestic politics as well. Although a widespread mood against the government existed, that sentiment had not generated a sufficient growth in Labour membership and organisation, nor would it deliver a Labour victory at the next general election (due before mid-November 1940). A victory for Chamberlain would – the memorandum continued – precipitate either an ‘imperialist war’ or an alliance between his government and the fascist powers. Either way, it would reinforce the National government’s perceived drift towards fascism. Given the overriding consideration of electoral victory, the memo reasoned, what was needed was a ‘political device’ to facilitate this: an alliance between all progressive anti-government forces, principally the Liberals but also the ILP and the CPGB. These forces converged with the Labour Party on foreign policy. Such an alliance would draw strength from the undoubted anti-Chamberlain mood. This would subvert Chamberlain’s appeal to national unity in the face of a crisis, given his comparatively narrow platform. Even though the memo was defeated on the NEC in the spring of 1938, the turn of international events (Franco’s advance in Spain and the threat to Czechoslovakia) seemed to validate Tribune’s position. Complicating this picture, by-elections offered supporters of the Popular Front the chance to test their strategy in practice. Under the pseudonym of East Wind, Wilkinson supported the Progressive Front candidate A.D. Lindsay, the Master of Balliol College, in the October 1938 Oxford by-election. She praised Oxford Labour Party’s courageous support for Lindsay and argued that Labour speakers were within their rights to appear on campaign platforms until the NEC ruled otherwise.316 This by-election, that of Vernon Bartlett in Bridgewater (who won a safe Conservative seat) and Atholl (who was unsuccessful in defending Kinross and West Perthshire as an independent) raised the stakes on the NEC. When Wilkinson endorsed Atholl publicly and called on all Labour supporters to do the same, Tom Johnson urged members not to participate because of the complications resulting from united front candidates in Oxford and Bridgewater.317 Richard Acland, who managed the Bridgewater by-election campaign, recalled an episode indicating the careful course that Wilkinson had to navigate. After the by-election, there was a dinner for supporters of the Popular Front which Wilkinson attended. In his speech, Acland suggested an election fighting fund for Popular Front candidates. Knowing the difficulties that this would cause prominent Labourites (like Wilkinson), Gollancz glared at him. Wilkinson ‘was frightened clean off by my suggestion’ given the likelihood of disciplinary sanction that would follow for anyone supporting it.318 The question of the emergency conference came before most of the subsequent NEC meetings during 1938.319 By January 1939, five 235
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson national trade unions, three socialist associations, four Labour Party federations, 236 constituency or central Labour Parties had supported the call for a national conference.320 Despite this, those in favour of the Popular Front were in a small majority on the NEC, and given the conference vote, in a precarious constitutional position if the right decided to use disciplinary procedures to end the campaign. Matters came to a head in January 1939 when Cripps issued a second memo and a special NEC was convened on Friday 13 January to discuss it. This text differed from the one the previous May on three substantive points. First, it talked of rigid party discipline preventing loyal members from doing good work. Secondly, it bore Cripps’s signature alone. Finally, he threatened to circulate it to the movement if the NEC rejected it.321 After a two-hour discussion, Cripps could only secure three votes, given that Laski was absent. A messy sequence of events ensued as Cripps circulated the memo and the party leadership began disciplinary action. On the Saturday, Attlee, Jim Middleton and NEC chair George Dallas released an official statement to the press and this was broadcast on the BBC. Cripps objected that this constituted a personal attack upon him. Also enervating the NEC minority, the Daily Herald named those who had voted for the memo (Cripps, Pritt and Wilkinson), breaching NEC confidentiality.322 At the NEC of 18 January 1939, both Cripps and Laski were absent, isolating Wilkinson and Pritt even further. Pritt later believed that the NEC wanted to expel both him and Wilkinson but lacked sufficient evidence.323 Wilkinson wrote to the Daily Herald to challenge allegations that Cripps missed the meeting for a lucrative legal case. Instead, he was acting on behalf of a wife widowed by an industrial accident and had waived his fee.324 The Daily Herald leak was discussed and the NEC agreed to investigate. The meeting endorsed the NEC press release to the BBC, another source of grievance to Cripps’s supporters, with Wilkinson insisting that her dissent be minuted. As regards Cripps’s conduct, a two-hour argument yielded referral to the NEC Organisation Subcommittee, which would report to the NEC on 25 January. Wilkinson also came under the scrutiny of the Organisation Sub-committee. This body issued a statement rebutting her letter to the Daily Herald about Cripps’s absence from the NEC citing the reasons that Cripps himself had given in his letter of apology.325 The third NEC meeting dealing with this affair occurred on 25 January. Both Pritt and Laski were absent. The Organisation Sub-committee had decided on an ultimatum to Cripps: withdraw the memorandum or face expulsion. The decision was endorsed eighteen to one. Either Cripps or Wilkinson apparently voted against and the other abstained, at which point Cripps left the meeting. Cripps’s expulsion was ratified 236
The Commons and the PLP by the Annual Conference in Southport (29 May to 2 June) as were the expulsions of Nye Bevan and several other individuals. In the intervening period, the party had disciplined a host of other branches and trade councils. Wilkinson escaped, having learnt to test the line of party discipline to the limit before. Expulsion for her would, in all likelihood, have ended her career both in parliament and in her trade union, forcing her to depend on less certain income from her journalism. Writing to Naomi Mitchison in late June 1939, Wilkinson regretted that only three left-wingers plus Jack Swann of the DMA voted for the immediate reinstatement of Cripps; the new NEC was no better than the old.326
Leadership intrigue of May–June 1939 Prompted by the international situation, Wilkinson pressed once again for a Labour Party leadership change in May–June 1939. She raised the leadership question in two articles. At this time, Morrison and Wilkinson were networking in Rhondda’s social circle and this coincided with an unattributed article in Time and Tide, in which Wilkinson spoke about the Labour Party’s glaring need for ‘strong and decisive leadership’. 327 Attlee had not proved himself ‘big enough’, while Morrison’s name was widely suggested as a credible alternative to Chamberlain. This, the article suggested, was obvious to all, except the Labour Party NEC.328 In the Sunday Referee, her named article ostensibly considered how Labour should harness the talents of Cripps (who had recently been expelled). In it, she described how Attlee came to lead the party by accident. Cripps – who was first choice and turned it down – persuaded Attlee to step in when Lansbury had broken his leg and was in hospital. She mused about Morrison replacing Attlee: I wonder what Mr Chamberlain would think if he were informed that in future he would have to face daily a Herbert Morrison, that superb political organiser, at last induced to give to the Front Opposition Bench the gifts that have made such an administrative success in the London County Council, and with him a corps of lieutenants like Dalton, Greenwood, and the brilliant but erratic Cripps, now welded into a working team. I believe it would transfigure not only British politics, but the whole European situation.329
Her campaign was not just in print. During summer 1939, Wilkinson expected a general election shortly, rendering the Labour Party’s case ever more urgent. Louis Fischer recalled that Wilkinson would tell an anecdote to illustrate Attlee’s colourless character. At a turbulent party meeting seething with passion, Attlee made his slow reasoned speech. This induced the angry audience of 200 to wonder why they had made 237
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson such a fuss.330 On 14 June, as the chair of a PLP meeting Greenwood objected strongly to Wilkinson’s Sunday Referee article. Shinwell moved a resolution of confidence in Attlee’s leadership which passed without opposition (Wilkinson abstained).331 Dalton reflected that it had been ‘an unfortunate, miscalculated affair’ that had made Wilkinson unpopular.
Against appeasement Where Wilkinson’s position aligned with the majority of the NEC was over criticism of Chamberlain and appeasement. In this context, public opinion became one of Wilkinson’s principal preoccupations and might be summarised as follows. Much of the British press had been concentrated into the hands of five or six proprietors and they had extricated Chamberlain from crises that would have brought down Labour or Liberal administrations, presenting the Cabinet as ‘immaculate supermen’.332 Censorship took subtle forms in Britain in order to ease the way for Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Where film and the newsreels were concerned, the government was able to influence the British Board of Film Censors. With the newspapers, the ministerial phone call threatening the flow of information to journalists was a deniable, effective means of informal censorship.333 Wilkinson also pointed to Ribbentrop’s courtship of wealthy or influential allies within the Conservative Party and in the press.334 Through whispering campaigns at dinner parties and letters to The Times, ‘Hitler’s London Group’ led by Lord Londonderry and Lord Lothian had undermined Sir Robert Vansittart, permanent under-secretary of foreign affairs and then Eden at the Foreign Office. Chamberlain’s new appointments Lord Halifax, Lennox-Boyd and Channon, she alleged, were all close to this circle.335 A similar faction also existed in France around Flandin. Wilkinson noted how they had monopolised the time of visiting British MPs in June 1937. For her, it was Reynaud who impressed most during this visit as being a solid opponent of Nazism and a defender of French interests. The significance of the groups sympathetic to Hitler in London and Paris, she observed in March 1938, were pushing Spain towards a ‘disastrous conclusion’ and Nazi advance in Austria.336 It is indicative of the drift of her ideas that she articulated her opposition to appeasement in terms of national interest and democratic defence as well as her sympathy for a French politician who was instrumental in reversing the 40-hour week that ended the Popular Front in France. The Popular Front strategy led to a series of disappointments in France, Spain, Munich and Britain. It came to an abrupt halt on 23 August 1939 with the signing of the Hitler–Stalin Pact. The rationale of Wilkinson’s battle on the NEC was now over and it created the 238
The Commons and the PLP conditions for a turn in her politics. Wilkinson’s immediate response to the Hitler-Stalin Pact in the Commons was to condemn the ‘utter collapse’ of Chamberlain’s policy. Having snubbed and insulted Russia, the government could make no claim to the moral high ground, after failing Abyssinia, Spain and Czechoslovakia. He had rejected an anti-fascist alliance and had fallen behind on his premiums on the country’s insurance policy of collective security. Behind Chamberlain’s ‘so-called national interests’, Wilkinson perceived ‘City and financial interests’. Moreover, the ‘highest and most influential political and social circles’ constituted a fifth column. Ribbentrop’s visit to London had provided the German foreign minister with ample proof of elite opinion. At a reception on the night of the German invasion of Austria, he could gauge their tacit approval of Nazi control of the working class and that Britain would not oppose German expansion. Now war seemed imminent, Wilkinson argued that it was necessary to give people something worth fighting for – liberty and social justice – because they would not fight for the City of London.337 After war had been declared, Wilkinson continued to have a full diary of public events. In October and November, she paid several visits to the children evacuated from her constituency.338 Being on the NEC and a sponsored MP, she was still in high demand to speak at party and union events. She moulded the rhetoric of class contestation to the situation of war, condemning the capitalist class for conducting an ‘international class war’ through the use of fascism. As workers would bear the brunt, this war had two fronts: Europe’s workers against Hitler as well as a battle along class lines inside Britain itself. She continued to condemn the ‘Chamberlain crowd’ from public platforms, contending that the war could not be won while they were in power. To a Labour Party audience in Exeter, she maintained that it was impossible to run or win the war on the basis of private industry or private profit-making. Furthermore, under Chamberlain, Britain had lost its greatest asset in a war against fascism: its moral leadership. If Britain and France won the war as ‘merely as a sordid struggle between two sets of Empire, that would not represent a victory for human freedom’.339 Yet at the same time, there was vocal opposition from Communists and pacifists to Labour’s position of support for the war. She dismissed hecklers without a second thought. She had seen fascism first-hand in several countries and argued that peace at this moment would simply offer Hitler victory. Speaking before a regional conference on the Labour Party’s peace aims in Nottingham, she asserted that the suggestion that the electoral truce meant that the Labour Party was backing the Conservative government was a ‘foul lie’.340 Despite her reputation, delegates voted three to one for an anti-war position rather than the 239
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson official Labour stance. Similarly, she walked off the stage in Stirling after intense heckling.341 As she stressed at a WEA conference in Jarrow in January 1940, the war made the case for public control of industry, bypassing the redundant ‘brokers, middle-men and the apparatus of competitive industry’.342 She criticised the government’s half-measures such as the scheme to enforce savings as a form of deferred pay for workers, observing that nothing stopped future inflation rendering current hardship futile.343
Conclusion Wilkinson’s relationship to the Commons and the PLP is thus crucial to explaining her political and intellectual itinerary. On entering the Commons, she combined a Marxist rejection of parliamentary illusions with a feminist desire for women’s representation albeit with a workerist twist. Although her scepticism and frustration continued for some time, gradually she habituated herself to Westminster’s practices and the associated state institutions. On occasion transgressing the boundaries of Commons immunity or PLP rules, disciplinary procedures helped to force Wilkinson into line. More generally, party loyalty, considerations of career and the exigencies of an NEC member or a PPS constrained her outlook. Between 1924 and 1940, Wilkinson lived in two different though mutually dependent worlds. Inside Westminster, she became a skilled parliamentarian seeking to influence the legislative process and to reshape her party’s strategy and leadership. Outside parliament, her commitment to social contestation and the movements persisted. The connection between these two worlds would, in her view, be necessary for a Labour government intent upon introducing socialism. By the late 1930s, her battle on the NEC came to a frustrating dead end and with it the strategy of the Popular Front as a domestic and international possibility. Her focus turned to the party leadership, an anti-Chamberlain alliance and the need to prosecute the war with greater determination. This provided the circumstances for an abrupt turn in her politics, her rupture with the politics of social contestation and entry into Churchill’s government. As she did, she left behind the world of the social movements to be fully assimilated into the realm of Whitehall and Westminster.
Notes 1 2
All Power, December 1922. The Times, 25 February 1928.
240
The Commons and the PLP 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
USDAW Political General Secretary’s Reports (hereafter PGSR), 2 March 1924 and 6 April 1924. Daily Herald, 27 November 1924. Star, 21 October 1935. NUSC TDWR William Lillie to Reid, 12 November 1972. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 29 October 1924. The Vote, 7 November 1924. Middlesbrough Archives, Middlesbrough Labour Party Honour Mrs Alice Schofield Coates, 12 June 1958. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 23 February 1929. Ibid., 17 October 1927. Ibid., 21 and 22 April 1925. Ibid., 22 April 1931. Ibid., 2 December 1926, 26 and 30 October 1928, 2 and 3 November 1928; 23 February, 19, 21, 23, 30 September, 2 November 1929. Northern Echo, 17 November 1927. Northern Dispatch, 17 November 1927. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 12 July 1924. Ibid., 16 February 1925. Ibid., 4 May 1925. Advocating steel nationalisation to the unemployed association, Ibid., 9 April 1931. Newcastle Chronicle, 12 March 1926. Northern Dispatch, 18 November 1927. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 11 November 1930. Ibid., 30 May 1931. Written off in February 1930, USDAW PGSR, 14 December 1924 and 23 February 1930. On a speaking engagement with Lansbury, USDAW PGSR, 11 January 1925. USDAW NUDAW Executive Council, 4 July 1926. USDAW PGSR, 12 December 1926. Ibid., 9 January 1927. USDAW NUDAW Executive Council minutes, 20 February 1927. USDAW PGSR, 11 September 1927. Newcastle Journal, 23 August 1927. North Mail, 23 August 1927. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 20 August 1927. This was formed by sailors’ union leader Havelock Wilson for ‘industrial peace’ or a strike-free industrial relations. USDAW PGSR, 19 June 1927, 17 July 1927 and 11 September 1927. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 24 September 1927. Ibid., 28 September 1928. USDAW PGSR, 14 October 1928. Ibid., 11 November 1928. USDAW PGSR, 15 November 1931. The Times, 3 December 1924. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 30 April 1926. Brian Harrison, ‘Women in a Men’s House the Women M.P.s, 1919–1945’, Historical Journal, 29 (1986), pp. 623–654. The Vote, 27 December 1924. Manchester Guardian, 19 June 1925. 241
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74
HC Deb, 10 December 1924, cols 242–243. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 11 December 1924. Labour Magazine, January 1925. Manchester Guardian, 14 March 1927. Evening Standard, 11 March 1927. Manchester Guardian, 11 December 1928. Admiring Lee for dealing with the Daily Mail slur ‘the flapper MP’, Labour Magazine, May 1929. Outlook, 7 March 1925. Graphic, 12 February 1925. Weekly Dispatch, 1 March 1925. Evening News, 20 February 1925. Magazine Programme, 16 February 1931. Daily News, 11 April 1927. Meridia (Barcelona), 10 December 1938. Christine Collette, The Newer Eve: Women, Feminists and the Labour Party, Basingstoke, 2009, p. 95. New Dawn, 8 November 1924. Plebs, January 1926. From the amendment of the guild left at the NGL conference, NGL, Annual Report 1920–1921 London, 1921, p. 4. Niles Carpenter, Guild Socialism: An Historical and Critical Analysis, New York, 1922 p. 129. All Power, December 1922. Mischievously claiming she banned the national anthem from local Labour events, North Eastern Daily Gazette, 15 November 1924. Manchester Guardian, 16 January 1925. Daily Mirror, 16 January 1925. Ibid., 23 February 1925. New Leader, 27 April 1928. Time and Tide, 5 November 1938, p. 1529. Ibid., 6 January 1940. Churchill Archive CHAR 20 138B 221 Churchill to Wilkinson, 19 Dec 1944 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 21 May 1925. Ibid., 16 July 1927. New Leader, 12 August 1927. Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 28 November 1925. New Leader, 5 August 1927. Hertfordshire Advertiser, 23 January 1926. Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 9 May 1925. Ibid., 9 April 1927. New Leader, 11 December 1925. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 9 June 1928. Northern Dispatch, 4 February 1927. New Leader, 19 August 1927. Sketch, 14 April 1927. People, 23 November 1930. James Johnston, A Hundred Commoners, London, 1931. New Leader, 1 November 1929. Daily Mirror, 9 December 1925. Sheffield Mail, 15 May 1931. Daily Herald, 16 May 1931. Evening News, 16 May 1931. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 7 March 1929. Manchester Guardian, 17 December 1930. NUSC TDWR Philip Asterley Jones to Reid, 21 March 1975. NUSC TDWR appended to McNeil Greg to Reid, 21 May 1975. Opposition 242
The Commons and the PLP from trade association, North Eastern Daily Gazette, 15 April 1931. 75 BBC Written Archives (BBCWA) NO T650 script for Wilkinson, The hire purchase bill, 14 July 1938. 76 New Leader, 1 November 1929 77 Ibid., 2 August 1929. 78 Ibid., 8 November 1929. 79 New Leader, 15 November 1929. Manchester Guardian, 14 November 1929. As before, Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 13 June 1925. 80 New Leader, 1 March 1929. Daily Herald, 2 March 1929. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 1 March 1929. 81 New Leader, 1 March 1929. 82 HC Deb, 1 March 1929, cols 2332–2335. 83 Whose body had been discovered at home on 26 February. LPASC NEC minutes, 27 February 1929. 84 HC Deb, 4 March 1929 vol. 226 c53. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 5 March 1929. 85 Daily Herald, 5 March 1929. 86 Reid interviews: Margaret Horrabin (formerly McWilliams). 87 Scottish National Library ACC 5120 boxes 45(5) and 4(10) manuscripts of Wilkinson articles. 88 Evening News, 8 May 1928. 89 Balliol College Special Collections (BCSC) Adam von Trott papers (AvT) III V H313 Hubback to von Trott, 20 January 1936. 90 Sunday Referee, 16 February 1936. 91 Daily Express, 18 April 1932. 92 New Leader, 2 March 1928. 93 The Times, 31 October 1929. 94 Gordon Hewart, The New Despotism, London, 1929. Manchester Guardian, 31 October 1929. 95 Sheffield Independent, 11 December 1930. 96 Report of the Committee on Ministers’ powers (Donoughmore Committee), Cmd. 4060, 1932, pp. 135–138. 97 Daily Express, 3 October 1931. 98 Pearson’s Weekly, 5 December 1931. 99 Ibid., 10 October 1931. 100 The Star, 23 December 1935. 101 Time and Tide, 12 March 1938. 102 Cheshire Daily Echo, 10 March 1938. 103 Time and Tide, 12 November 1938. 104 Northern Daily Telegraph, 24 January 1927. Time and Tide, 2 December 1939. 105 Methodist Times, 26 February 1925. Estampa, 28 May 1929. 106 Ellen Wilkinson, Division Bell Mystery, London, 1932, p. 239. 107 Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 9 December 1930. 108 Manchester Guardian, 20, 21 and 29 November 1928. Bachelor Tory MPs bought her a cooker in response, Ibid., 28 December 1928. Evening Standard, 19 February 1931. Sydenham Gazette, 7 March 1931. 243
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 109 Estampa, 28 May 1929. Glasgow Bulletin, 11 March 1927. Returning in 1935 a dramatic improvement had occurred, Rochdale Observer, 25 April 1936. 110 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 7 March 1925. 111 New Leader, 30 December 1927. 112 The Times, 28 March 1928. 113 HC Deb, 6 May 1937, col. 1360. 114 BLPES Redcliffe-Maud Papers 7 7 notes on Ellen Wilkinson 13 November 1946–6 February 1947. 115 Sunday Referee, 30 November 1930. Liverpool Evening Express, 29 November 1930. Being made to feel ‘slightly freakish’ as though she was a giant panda, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, From the Wings: An Autobiography, London, 1967, p. 126. 116 Pearson’s Weekly, 28 November 1931. 117 Labour Magazine, May 1929. 118 Leeds Mercury, 13 April 1925. 119 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 12 June 1925, 22 April 1926, 3 February 1927, 14 April 1927, 21 January 1929. 120 NUSC TDWR Florence Paton to Reid, 27 June 1972. 121 NUSC TDWR McWilliams, Recollections of Wilkinson, to Reid, 1 March 1970. 122 The Star, 3 December 1930. 123 Time and Tide, 28 December 1935. 124 Hertfordshire Advertiser, 23 January 1926. 125 South Wales News, 23 January 1926. 126 Newcastle Sunday Sun, 31 January 1926. 127 Daily Chronicle, 12 June 1925. Western Daily Press, 12 June 1925. Northampton Echo, 12 June 1925. 128 The Star, 3 February 1927. 129 Returning on 3 May. Evening Standard, 7 May 1927. 130 South Wales Echo, 13 May 1927. 131 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 9 May 1925. Sunday Worker, 3 May 1925. 132 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 15 May 1925. Pleb, June 1925. 133 HC Deb, 5 August 1925, cols 1397–1463. 134 New Leader, 4 May 1928. 135 Ibid., 22 July 1927. On the replacement of the Chester-le-Street and Bedwelty Guardians, Ibid., 5 August and 12 August 1927 136 New Leader, 4 May 1928. 137 Postgate and Postgate, A Stomach for Dissent, p. 117. 138 Daily Herald, 6 February 1925. On Moscow’s relationship with Lansbury, Kevin Morgan, Bolshevism and the British left: Labour Legends and Russian Gold, London, 2006. 139 Plebs, 1 January 1926. 140 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, February 1925. 141 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 9 May 1925. 142 Ibid., 28 November 1925. 143 Ibid., 5 December 1925. 244
The Commons and the PLP 144 New Leader, 14 October 1927. 145 Daily Herald, 5 December 1927. 146 David Howell, MacDonald’s Party: Labour Identities and Crisis, 1922–1931, Oxford, 2002. 147 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 7 March 1925. 148 Ibid., 15 May 1925. 149 Ibid., 23 February 1925. 150 Ibid., 28 November 1925 and 5 December 1925. 151 Ibid., 28 November 1925. 152 Plebs, January 1926. 153 New Leader, 19 August 1927. 154 Ibid., 10 February 1928. 155 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 9 April 1927. 156 LPACR, 1926, pp. 243–245. Birmingham Dispatch, 7 October 1926. 157 LPACR, 1927, pp. 182–183. 158 LPASC LP NEC minutes, 5 and 26 October 1927. 159 Ibid., 26 October 1927. 160 Ibid., 21 December 1927. 161 Ibid., 29 February1928. 162 New Leader, 29 June 1928. 163 LPASC LP NEC minutes, Research and Publicity Sub-Committee minutes, 29 February 1928. 164 New Leader, 12 July 1928. 165 The Times, 26 September 1928. 166 New Leader, 5 October 1928. 167 The Times, 5 October 1928. 168 New Leader, 16 April 1929. 169 LPASC LP NEC minutes, 29 March 1929. Howell, MacDonald’s Party, pp. 73–74. 170 New Leader, 3 May 1929. 171 New Leader, 10 May 1929. New Dawn, 16 March 1929. 172 Estampa, 28 May 1929. 173 New Leader, 25 January 1929. 174 The Times, 22 May 1929. 175 The Times, 25 and 29 February 1928. New Leader, 2, 9 and 16 March 1928. Ibid., 27 April 1928. 176 Ibid., 2 March 1928. 177 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 18 and 21 May 1929. 178 NUSC TWDR Margaret Horrabin, Recollections of Wilkinson, to Reid, 1 March 1970. Reid interviews: Margaret Horrabin. 179 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 29 May 1929. 180 In Middlesbrough East, franchise equalisation added nearly 5,977 female electors and roughly 4,600 additional mainly female votes. While the Conservatives lost votes and the Liberals gained 2,328 votes, Wilkinson’s vote increased by 2,641 votes. 181 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 12 March 1929. 182 New Leader, 13 March 1929. 245
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 183 Ibid., 16 April 1929. Ibid., 16 November 1928. 184 Ibid., 12 October 1928. 185 New Leader, 28 June 1929. 186 Wilkinson, Division Bell Mystery, p. 11. 187 New Leader, 22 July 1927, 19 and 26 July and 2 August 1929. 188 Ibid., 15 February 1928. 189 Ibid., 8 November 1929. 190 LPASC PLP minutes, 27 June 1929. Performing less well a year later, LPASC PLP minutes, 30 July 1930. 191 New Leader, 4 October 1929. 192 Manchester Guardian, 1 October 1929. 193 Ibid., 4 October 1929. 194 Ibid., 4 October 1928. 195 New Leader, 1 November 1929. 196 Ibid., 25 October 1929. 197 Ibid., 25 October 1929. 198 Ibid., 1 November 1929. 199 New Dawn, 1 March 1930. 200 New Leader, 26 July 1929. 201 Ibid., 26 July 1929. 202 Ibid., 2 August 1929. 203 Ibid., 22 November 1929. 204 Ibid., 29 November 1929. 205 Ibid., 6 December 1929. 206 London Metropolitan University Women’s Library (LMU WL) Press Cuttings Wilkinson, Wilkinson by Rt. Hon. Margaret Bondfield. 207 Manchester Guardian, 5 December 1929. 208 New Leader, 13 December 1929. 209 Ibid. 210 Ibid., 21 February 1929. 211 Ibid., 13 December 1929. 212 Ibid., 28 February 1930. 213 Ibid., 14 March 1930. 214 Manchester Guardian, 21 December 1929. 215 New Leader, 12 July 1929. 216 Ibid., 1 November 1929. 217 Ibid., 14 March 1930. 218 Ibid., 8 November 1929. 219 Ibid., 7 February 1930. 220 New Dawn, 8 November 1930. 221 A special meeting of the PLP voted 210 to 29 against Mosley’s motion calling for a change in direction over unemployment, PLP minutes, 22 May 1930. 222 Daily Herald, 26 May 1930. 223 LPACR, 1930, pp. 23. 224 LPACR, 1930, pp. 168–169. 225 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 25 July 1930. 246
The Commons and the PLP 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234
Manchester Guardian, 25 July 1930. Ibid., 18 December 1930. Ibid., 21 April 1930. NUDAW ADM report, 21 April 1930. Postgate and Postgate, A Stomach for Dissent, p. 165. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 23 February 1931. Ibid., 29 May 1931. Manchester Guardian, 8 June 1931. HC Deb, 18 June 1931, cols 1953–1954. HC Deb, 15 July 1931, cols 627–629 and 676–677. HC Deb, 21 July 1931, cols 1351–1353. Evening Standard, 16 July 1931. 235 The Vote, 31 July 1931. Fenner Brockway, Socialism Over Sixty Years: the Life of Jowett of Bradford (1864–1944), London, 1946, p. 290. 236 HC Deb, 21 July 1931, cols 1359–1365. Johanna Alberti, Eleanor Rathbone, London, 1996, p. 84. 237 USDAW PGSR, 13 September 1931. 238 Howell, MacDonald’s Party. Philip Williamson, National Crisis and National Government: British Politics, the Economy and Empire, 1926– 1932, Cambridge, 1992. 239 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 2 September 1931. 240 USDAW PGSR, 13 September 1931. 241 Daily Express, 7 September 1931. 242 HC Deb, 9 September 1931, cols 248–266. 243 HC Deb, 17 September 1931, cols 1024–1025. 244 LPACR, 1931, pp. 221. 245 Daily Herald, 20 August 1928. 246 New Dawn, 23 June 1929. 247 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 12 October 1931. 248 Manchester Guardian, 22 October 1931. 249 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 9 October 1931. 250 Ibid., 24 October 1931. 251 Ibid., 23 October 1931. 252 Ibid., 23 October 1931. 253 Ibid., 27 October 1931. 254 Mary Agnes Hamilton, ‘Women in Politics Today’, Political Quarterly, April–June 1932, pp. 226–244. 255 Manchester Guardian, 28 October 1931. 256 USDAW NUDAW Executive Council minutes, 13 November 1931. 257 USDAW PGSR, 15 November 1931 258 Ibid., 10 July 1932. 259 Ibid., 8 May 1932. 260 Hamilton, ‘Women in Politics Today’. 261 Manchester Guardian, 7 November 1931. 262 Daily Express, 30 October 1931. 263 Time and Tide, 1 June 1935. 264 USDAW PGSR, 10 January 1932. Councillor Paddy Scullion also remembered the impression that she had made then, Reid interviews: Paddy Scullion. 247
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 265 USDAW NUDAW Executive Council minutes, 13 December 1931. 266 Ibid., 10 January 1932. 267 USDAW PGSR, 7 February 1932. With letters from John Connolly, Jarrow Branch and Pelaw CWS branch. 268 USDAW PGSR, 12 June 1932. 269 Ibid., 10 July 1932. 270 All Power, December 1922. New Dawn, 22 December 1923. 271 USDAW NUDAW Executive Council minutes, 3 January 1933 and 19 February 1933 and 12 March 1933. 272 Ibid., 9 July 1933. USDAW PGSR, 10 September 1933. 273 Daily Worker, 9 and 23 January 1934. Daily Mail, 18 January 1934. 274 Worker (Brisbane), 28 March 1934. Stoddart’s Report in USDAW PGSR, 11 March 1934. 275 Stoddart’s January report, USDAW PGSR, 11 March 1934. 276 USDAW PGSR, 14 July 1935. 277 The Times, 31 January 1925. 278 Manning, A Life for Education, pp. 165–166. 279 New Leader, 4 October 1929. 280 Ibid., 14 February 1930. 281 Ibid., 4 October 1929. 282 Clarion, 24 March 1934. 283 Ibid., 23 June 1934. 284 New Leader, 12 October 1928. 285 Cheshire Daily Echo, 10 March 1938. 286 Time and Tide, 28 December 1935. 287 NUSC TDWR John Paton to Reid, 3 March 1975. Reid interviews: John Paton. 288 The Conservatives received 46.9% of the vote. Maureen Callicott, ‘The Making of a Labour Stronghold: Electoral Politics in Co. Durham Between the Two World Wars’, and Ian Hunter, ‘Labour in Local Government on Tyneside 1883–1921’, in Maureen Callicott and Ray Challinor (eds), Working Class Politics in North East England, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1983, pp. 63–78. A.W. Purdue, ‘Jarrow Politics, 1885–1914: the Challenge to Liberal Hegemony’, Northern History, 18 (1982), pp. 182–198. 289 BCSC AvT III V H313 Diana Hubback to Adam von Trott, 27 January 1936. 290 BCSC AvT III V H313 Hubback to von Trott, 2 February 1936 291 BCSC AvT III V H313 Hubback to von Trott, 21 March 1936. 292 USDAW PGSR, 8 March 1936. 293 Ibid., 14 June 1936. 294 Sunderland Echo, 6 June 1936. 295 North Mail, 27 July 1936. 296 NUSC TDWR Arthur Blenkinsop to Reid, 12 October 1974. 297 USDAW PGSR, 9 August 1936. 298 Ibid., 13 September 1936. 299 M. Perry, ‘The Myth of the Jarrow Crusade and the Making of a Local Labour Culture’, in Krista Cowman and Ian Packer (eds), Radical Cultures and Local Identities, Newcastle, 2010, pp. 129–148. 248
The Commons and the PLP 300 M. Perry, The Jarrow Crusade: Protest and Legend, Sunderland, 2005. 301 NUSC TDWR Preston Benson to Reid, 23 September 1974. 302 Action, 14 November 1936. 303 NUSC TDWR Berthie Archdale to Reid, 3 May 1972. 304 NUSC TDWR David Cargill to Reid, 10 September 1974. 305 Wal Hannington, Never on our Knees, London, 1967, pp. 314–316. 306 Thinking the Jarrow Crusade to be a ‘very unkind thing’ raising their hopes, suggesting an easy solution was possible and turning them into ‘an object of pity.’ NUSC TDWR Isabelle Peterkin to Reid, 16 September 1974. 307 M. Perry, ‘The Limits of Philanthropy: Sir John Jarvis and the Attempt to Regenerate Jarrow, 1934–39’, North East History (2000), pp. 35–59. 308 Manchester Guardian, 6 August 1938. 309 M. Perry, ‘The Jarrow Crusade’s Return: the “New Labour Party” of Jarrow and Ellen Wilkinson, MP’, Northern History, 34, 2 (2002), pp. 265–278. 310 LPL Sheppard papers MS. 3744 f.237 r and v Wilkinson to Sheppard, ‘Thursday’ [late November 1936]. 311 LPASC Labour Party NEC minutes, Campaign Committee minutes, 25 February 1938. 312 Peace alliance was advocated in Reynolds News. 313 In contrast to Henderson’s approach, Time and Tide, 16 April 1938. 314 Time and Tide, 7 May 1938. Manchester Guardian, 3 May 1938. 315 LPASC Labour Party NEC minutes, 5 May 1938. 316 Time and Tide, 22 October 1938. 317 Manchester Guardian, 12 December 1938. 318 NUSC TDWR Richard Acland to Reid, 9 October 1974. 319 LPASC Labour Party NEC minutes, 25 May, 6–7 August, 26 October, 23–24 November, 16 December 1938. 320 Ibid., appendices, 1939. 321 Ibid., Cripps to Middleton, 9 January 1939. 322 Daily Herald, 14 January 1939. 323 Denis Nowell Pritt, The Autobiography of D.N. Pritt: Part 1: From Right to Left, London, 1965, p. 104. 324 Daily Herald, 21 January 1939. 325 LPASC NEC minutes, Organisation Sub-committee, 24 January 1939. 326 NUSC TDWR Wilkinson to Naomi Mitchison, 30 June 1939. 327 NUSC TDWR Coleraine to Reid, 28 March 1975. 328 Time and Tide, 27 May 1939. 329 Sunday Referee, 4 June 1939. 330 Louis Fischer, The Great Challenge, New York, 1946, p. 67. 331 Ben Pimlott (ed.), The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1918–40, 1945–60, London, 1986, pp. 268–270. 332 Time and Tide, 12 March 1938. 333 Ibid., 22 October 1938. 334 Ibid., 8 October 1938. 335 Time and Tide, 19 March 1938. Ibid., 12 November 1938. 336 Ibid., 19 March 1938. 337 HC Deb, 24 August 1939, cols 2–63. 249
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 338 Daily Mail, 31 October 1939. North Mail, 14 November 1939. Cumberland Evening News, 4 December 1939. 339 Exeter Express, 15 April 1940. 340 Nottinghamshire Guardian, 22 January 1940. 341 Raymond Challinor, ‘The Second World War and its Hidden Agenda’, Critique, 27 (1999), pp. 81–95. 342 Birmingham Post, 29 January 1940. 343 The Times, 4 March 1940.
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6 A journey through the crisis years: the slump, travel and anti-fascism
During the 1930s, a deep global crisis of capitalism shook financial institutions and forced the abandonment of the system of international exchanges. World trade slumped, industries entered deep recessions and unprecedented scales of joblessness emerged. Wilkinson anguished over the paradox of a world of 25 million unemployed where barns were ‘stuffed to bursting’.1 In summer 1934, she believed there to be no way out of the economic crisis save through ‘planning without profit’ and that resistance to this was such that it would take another world war to shake the prejudice amongst the rulers against it. As a consequence, ‘suffering and misery and horror … lies immediately ahead of us’.2 The political repercussions were profound. With the end of the prosperity and stability of the late 1920s, fascism rose across Europe and the menace of war became palpable. Wilkinson connected these events and became one of Britain’s most prominent anti-fascist campaigners during the 1930s.3 Her critique of the failing capitalist system reframed her case for socialism and planning. Moreover, her analysis of this crisis provided her simultaneously with a rhetoric that she turned to the purpose of social mobilisation.
The depression in the USA On 27 December 1930, the SS Mauretania steamed out of Southampton with Wilkinson on board. The crossing allowed her, she told the press, five days’ peace, free from the ‘incessant telephone calls’.4 She packed in a busy schedule across the east and Midwest of the USA, even venturing into Canada. Her first meeting took place in Boston on 4 January at the Forum. She visited Philadelphia, Detroit, Lima (Ohio), Syracuse, Louisville, Toronto and Montreal. With as many as six speaking engagements in a day, she offered a variety of topics: the ‘complexes of the modern women’, unemployment, the ‘human side of the British parliament’, the political situation in Europe regarding fascism and the threat
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson of war.5 She hoped to investigate unemployment in the United States and the distribution of fresh milk (undoubtedly concerned about the health of Britain’s poor, particularly mothers and children). The American press treated her as a curiosity. They observed that, unlike the women in high office in the USA, Wilkinson got to where she was through her own ability.6 They mistakenly reported that she was the youngest (it was widely reported that she was 24 years old) and the smallest MP.7 She provided widely reported sound bites: on how to interest workers in politics rather than football, on hating long skirts, on marriage as a career choice and on women obsessed with beauty.8 Her tour’s recurrent theme was the need for unemployment insurance in the USA. She described the sight of New York’s unemployed hawking apples as ‘beastly’ and its breadlines would ‘cause any British government to fall in a week’.9 At Manhattan’s Civic Club on 21 January, for instance, she detailed the propaganda against unemployment insurance fraud in Britain. She argued for increasing the purchasing power of the poor and that the causes of the crisis could be found in the ‘crazy race for armaments, the devastating terms of the peace treaty and reparations, and the war debt policy’.10 Wilkinson gendered the acceptance of the lack of unemployment insurance as a consequence of the proud ‘American “he-man” spirit’.11 Her lectures prompted some negative reactions. Her comments about Baltimore’s ladies of leisure provoked indignation.12 The Canadian press criticised her patronising attitude and superficial comprehension of their country, accusing her of political dogmatism and being ‘not a much travelled person’.13 A letter in the Vancouver Gazette denounced her as an extremist associated with Communists, quoting from the speeches identified in the red-baiting British periodical Patriot.14 She addressed several labour audiences. In Labor’s News, she broached US unemployment, Indian independence, the ‘doctrinaire free trader’ Snowden and hire purchase.15 On 14 January 1931, she spoke at a conference in Irving Plaza about unemployment alongside Socialist Party leaders Norman Thomas and Morris Hillquit.16 Billed as an ‘internationally known feminist’, women’s groups also invited her to speak.17 On 19 January, she considered the ‘complexes of the modern woman’ at the YWCA in Lima, Ohio. Despite great strides in ‘practical emancipation’, she denounced the conventions at variance with the modern world that restricted women’s lives and considered whether complete social equality between men and women was possible.18 Pacifist organisations also hosted Wilkinson’s lectures. In Philadelphia, on 24 January, she told the Pennsylvania Committee for Total Disarmament of her view that Britain and the USA should take the initiative in disarmament and that their combined economic power would deter any attack. The naval treaties, 252
A journey through the crisis years for her, provided a pretext for US battleship construction. She wanted to see militant not ‘weak and wobbly’ pacifists who would be willing to ‘fight for peace to the end’.19 The audience of five hundred applauded this message enthusiastically. She arrived in Britain to discover criticism that she had missed the opening of the new parliamentary session and over her depiction of unemployment in the USA.20 Mr L. Taylor, a Manchester businessman, challenged her over the scale of US joblessness and praised charitable and voluntary work as a solution.21 Wilkinson complained that Taylor only knew America’s hotels, theatres and big stores rather than its food queues, homeless centres and the unemployed. Mr Bergman, a Detroit local government official, had shown Wilkinson the card files of 150,000 unemployed families.22 With no unemployment insurance, there was an epidemic of evictions in New York. She had encountered seventeen people living in a two-roomed apartment, people in breadlines five deep stretching along the street, who had lost everything in the bank crash. Unlike the British worker who had become accustomed to unemployment, the American worker was, she said, ‘as angry as though someone had kicked a muddy ball in his face’. Alongside the hungry millions were the 90-storey buildings. There was an anxiety about hungry men and shops crammed with luxury. Yet, she still heard American businessmen complaining about the demoralising effect of the British dole. Wilkinson humanised these accounts of the USA, stressing in the Middlesbrough press her encounters with those who had emigrated from her constituency.23 As a consequence of her trip to the USA, she mused about the coming American revolution while reviewing Catherine Brody’s Nobody Starves set in the grim industrial Midwest. Brody examined the impact of mass unemployment and the banking crisis upon the American worker. In 1931, when thousands of small banks suddenly failed, ‘something had broken in the American people that day.’ No longer cushioned by savings or consumer possessions, with the pioneer escape route closed, working Americans were tied to the machine; Wilkinson perceived ‘the beginning of a revolution in the minds of a propaganda-doped public’.24
Visit to Germany, July 1932 While most of her anti-fascist work dates from the Reichstag election in July 1932, during the 1920s Wilkinson had been outspoken against Mussolini’s regime.25 She visited Germany during the first of the two Reichstag elections of 1932. The result of the first poll on 13 July was the highest vote that the NSDAP scored in a free election. The situation in Germany was worse than other major capitalist powers. Eight million were unemployed and increasing numbers were ineligible for 253
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson any kind of benefit. Hardship, hunger and a sense of national humiliation fed the rise of the Nazi Party. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the Labour Party’s sister organisation.26 Associated with the first months of the crisis, and introducing the unpopular Young Plan to secure American finance, the SPD’s credibility declined dramatically. On 27 March 1930, SPD chancellor Müller resigned and the Grand Coalition broke up over the question of cuts in welfare benefits. From that point, President Hindenburg had used emergency constitutional powers, appointing chancellors without Reichstag majorities who ruled by decree. Thus economic difficulties provoked a crisis in Weimar democracy from which the Nazis sought to capitalise. By this time, according to one political correspondent, Wilkinson had become ‘one of the biggest platform draws in Europe’.27 Frederick Voigt – the Manchester Guardian’s German correspondent between 1920 and 1933 – wrote to Wilkinson suggesting a tour during the July 1932 election. She responded positively to Voigt’s poignant letter. He knew that she was holidaying in Germany and asked her to support some of the SPD’s election rallies. He believed that if official blessing from the British Labour movement was secured, it would raise beleaguered SPD spirits. In his letter to Wilkinson, he outlined the political conjuncture as he saw it in Germany, reviewing the key players and the prospects for the left. He opened with his view that counter-revolution threatened workers with a grim, arduous and perhaps bloody struggle. He predicted the use of terror during the election, especially in the countryside. Voigt’s letter concluded that her visit would ‘do the German labour movement a great service’ and she would learn much from it.28 The correspondence between SPD and Labour leaders underlined the trip’s significance, intending to evoke solidarity between former belligerents to counter the right’s revanchist nationalism. Breitscheid and Hilferding both cabled their pleasure at Wilkinson’s agreement.29 After Voigt had communicated the need for an official message of support, Gillies wrote to Wilkinson, deciding on a statement that Walter Citrine, George Lansbury and George Lathan, the secretaries of the TUC, PLP and Labour Party NEC would sign. This praised the SPD’s ‘unfaltering courage and indomitable spirit’ and their effort ‘to stem the turbulent flow of Fascist reaction’. Surveying the reactionary threat and the effects of mass unemployed, the communiqué declared: ‘Capitalism has failed. Socialism alone can save the world.’ This message appeared in the Social Democratic press in the midst of the election campaign.30 On 12 July, Crispien telegrammed Gillies, concerned about the official credentials of the flag that Wilkinson was to present at a key rally. After some work behind the scenes, the SJC formally endorsed the flag. Its secretary Mary Sutherland telegrammed Crispien to that effect on 18 254
A journey through the crisis years July, the day before the presentation.31 The flag itself bore the slogan ‘Three cheers for the Iron Front from the British Labour Party’.32 Shortly before the visit, a journalist encountered Wilkinson clutching a German grammar book, informing him that she had spent three months ‘almost mastering’ the language and that she intended to use it to address her German audience.33 Although scepticism about Wilkinson’s rapid language acquisition is necessary, it would be unfair to dismiss, as Edward Conze did, the possibility of basic comprehension given her future trips to Germany as well as her many German acquaintances.34 Her speaking tour began in Hamburg on 16 July, visiting four smaller towns, before culminating in Berlin on the eve of poll on 30 July.35 In Hamburg, the SPD women’s organisation called a rally in a sports stadium. Wilkinson had expected a few hundred but 6,000 attended. She noted the size of all the meetings that she attended were in their thousands, that bodyguards would escort her to the platform, surrounded by red flags and the chants of ‘Freiheit, Freiheit, Freiheit [freedom].’ This was the day before ‘bloody Sunday’ in neighbouring ‘red’ Altona, when a Sturmabteilung parade led to the shooting of two brownshirts who were brutalising supposed opponents in the backstreets of a working-class district.36 When the police drew their guns to ‘restore order’ a further 16 died. Two or three days later, she spoke at a mass meeting alongside Rudolf Breitscheid and Franz Künstler in the Neue Welt beerhall in Neukölln, Berlin.37 She later told a public meeting in Britain, ‘I wish I could describe the feeling there at the time. Everyone knew what it was like to be in a country on the verge of civil war.’38 Everybody was talking about Hitler and she witnessed a Nazi election rally’s impressive stage management and the effectiveness of Hitler’s ‘sublimely ordinary’ image. The secret of his success, she explained, was that he told people what they wanted to hear because he understood the ‘mentality of a defeated people’.39 In her reflections on the trip, she observed that everything had become politicised. Thus, for instance, Nazis condemned the Bauhaus school of modernist architects, designers and artists as ‘cultural bolshevism’. She approved of Bauhaus’s design for workers’ flats with their clean lines and clear colour, contrasting traditionalist Germany’s florid intricacy. Such politicised cleavages abounded: between the old and the new, between pre-war etiquette-bound mothers and their daughters with emancipated dress sense, between the simple makeshift economy of the unemployed living by the lakes of Berlin and the embittered ex-officer hawking maps of Berlin, between health reformers and reactionaries.40 In the Labour Party press, Wilkinson was more upbeat, praising the SPD for the establishment of the Iron Front, an organisation that drew together the mass organisations of German social democracy to defend 255
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson itself against the Nazi threat. Interested in propaganda’s psychology, the Iron Front’s three arrows symbol impressed Wilkinson.41 She remarked upon the preparations to resist the Nazis, with special groups of trade unionists allocated the task of restoring faith in the trade unions, or spreading a general strike against a Nazi seizure of power. She reported that many trade union activists believed that there should have been a general strike against the Severing coup of 20 July. Indeed, she was in a Kurfürstenstraße café (almost certainly the Einstein café) in Berlin amongst foreign correspondents on that very night when the SPD leader Severing surrendered control of the Prussian police to the Reich Ministry of the Interior. The ‘men who really know’ were exchanging diagnoses over beer: why did the SPD relinquish their power on such a pretext? She contrasted MacDonald’s ‘spiritual brothers’ who did not believe in class antagonism with ‘the realists who understood class war and meant to win it’.42 Six months after her visit, Hitler was German Chancellor and the repression of the left had begun. From this point, she maintained a close interest in German affairs. Her next visit to Germany was to support the victims of the new regime.
Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism (RCVGF) Through her participation in the RCVGF, Wilkinson played a prominent role in another Münzenberg-orchestrated campaign.43 Wilkinson’s early involvement in the relief committee created the impression amongst some in Britain that she had initiated it.44 Her key contacts in this regard were Isabel Brown, the Communist Party full-timer and British secretary of the Workers’ International Relief (WIR), and the Czech Comintern agent Otto Katz, who was also known as André Simone, whom Koestler described as Münzenberg’s ‘roving ambassador’. Katz was ‘a smooth and slick operator … dark and handsome with a somewhat seedy charm’. Koestler remembered how Katz would deploy his ‘earnest charm’ on Wilkinson.45 Despite the ‘galaxy of international celebrities’ with only the most famous Communists such as Barbusse and Haldane amongst them, a small purely Communist caucus ran the campaign first from offices in Rue Mondetour, and then Boulevard Montparnasse, Paris.46 In effect, the committee was synonymous with the World Committee against Fascism and War (WCFW), whose secretariat was based in Paris.47 In Britain, Isabel Brown and a handful of key contacts such as Wilkinson, D.N. Pritt and Lord Marley worked together in an ad hoc manner. Wilkinson described the ‘four or five badly furnished offices’ that constituted the Paris headquarters that she evidently visited on more than one occasion in 1933. Without mentioning them by name, Münzenberg, a ‘youngish man with tousled hair and bright eyes’, 256
A journey through the crisis years had a heavy price on his head and ‘his few words are always listened to and acted upon without question’. Katz was ‘a quiet faced Jew with humourous grey eyes’. She described others including the young metalworker from the Ruhr whom she had met on a previous visit but was now in Dachau. She elaborated the group’s work to establish an underground network, gain documentary evidence (of secret rearmament, torture and the concentration camps) and provide illegal literature for the resistance.48 Years later, New Statesman editor Kingsley Martin recalled Wilkinson’s central role in the RCVGF: Her little flat was the centre of activity. The Committee … owed much to her. One day she would be persuading a Cabinet Minister or an ex- Ambassador to use his influence to get someone out of a concentration camp; the next she would be organising a protest meeting at the Kingsway Hall.49
The RCVGF focused on the four prominent Communists – Torgler, the parliamentary chair of the KPD, and Bulgarian Communists Tanev, Dimitrov, Popov – arrested for the Reichstag fire that had occurred on 27 February 1933. The Nazi leadership used this as cover to dismantle German democracy, through the Reichstag fire decrees. The fire signalled an immediate and brutal crackdown on the left with wholesale round-ups of the Communists and other opponents, who filled the concentration camps. Wilkinson had accompanied Voigt to Germany, while the ‘cinders of the Reichstag fire were still hot’.50 She observed that the incident was ‘the Nazi excuse for some of the worst things they have done since’.51 Wilkinson confided in Astor that her ‘grim time’ in Germany had left her feeling down. The persecution of the Jews and socialists were no exaggeration and her frustration at this unheeded message was evident: ‘if only people will go from their West End hotels and see the truth for themselves’. She praised Ebbutt, The Times correspondent, who was risking his life. As small consolation, she managed to get two friends – a writer and an artist – out to Paris. After leaving Berlin and visiting the disarmament conference in Geneva, Wilkinson perceived, ‘a wave of evil … slowly engulfing Europe. I feel in my bones somehow that we are in for a fascist wave here’. Illustrating the emotional cycle she experienced in the movements, her entire outlook darkened: ‘so much of my faith in people has been broken of late and I am struggling to find something to believe in, again’. In this context, she thanked Astor for her help both spiritual and in terms of offering time at Rest Harrow for quiet recuperation.52 On 23 May, the National Joint Council (NJC, of the TUC General Council and the Labour Party NEC) discussed the forthcoming 257
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson conference of the RCVGF. Having received a letter from Marley as the provisional chair of the ‘British Committee for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism’, the NJC demanded such Communist-inspired ‘ad hoc committees and conferences’ be proscribed. Morrison had already taken action against the RCVGF in London.53 He viewed all such organisations as a distraction from party and union activity. The NJC resolved to issue a circular to this effect.54 Needing to offer alternative activity, the NJC discussed work for the LSI’s Matteotti Fund and Morrison’s proposal to boycott German goods narrowly passed. On 27 May 1933, the RCGVF held its inaugural conference in Essex Hall, London.55 Marley opened the meeting outlining the purpose of the committee and the atrocities of the new German regime. To loud cheers, he condemned the NJC statement describing the organisation as a Communist front. Isabel Brown noted that the work of the committee was more than simple humanitarianism, having the intention of aiding those fighting fascism in Germany. She also praised Wilkinson for her speech at the Labour Party Women’s Conference where the latter said that she would fight fascism alongside the ILP and the Communists.56 Then Wilkinson took the floor. She described her experiences in July 1932 of massive rallies of the Iron Front and believed that these people would rise once more. She also noted that the right-wing leaders of the workers’ movement in Germany had suffered as much as the Communists. She condemned the complacency of the British Labour leaders who said that such things could not happen in Britain for she had witnessed at first hand the Black and Tans in Ireland in 1921, British repression in India only the year before and knew what was happening in the NWFP. Consequently, she would not be so confident that fascism could not take root in England. Regarding the official statement about the RCVGF, she said that she was ‘tired of this Communist bogey’. She ended with a rousing appeal for unity which – in the circumstances of persecution, flight and torture – was an urgent necessity: ‘Don’t let us be divided on this, and if the leaders are [not] able to act, then unite for this action over the heads of the leaders’.57 After Wilkinson’s speech, several German refugees were unveiled, including an unidentified female Communist deputy who addressed the conference. Following the conference, there were repercussions of Wilkinson’s comments about the inadequacies of the LSI’s Matteotti Fund as the NJC strongly objected and she came once again under scrutiny for her unofficial activities. During Whitsun 1933, Wilkinson and Marley visited Paris and the Saar on RCVGF business. She contrasted the refugees in Paris and those in the Saar. The former were intellectuals with language skills and the chance to earn some money through journalism. She wrote of Rudolf Leonard, Josef Roth and Gustav Regler. The refugees in the Saar 258
A journey through the crisis years valley conversely were working-class, could not afford Paris and clung to German-speaking areas. In Saarbrücken, Wilkinson and Marley were shown refugees fitting out a RCVGF children’s home.58 On 12 June 1933 they went to Paris. At the Hotel Madison, they received a message from Katz on details for the Anti-War Bureau which was to meet on 23 June.59 The RCVGF headquarters was preparing The Brown Book of Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag.60 Koestler compared this book’s impact with Tom Paine’s Common Sense.61 Historian Hans Mommsen described The Brown Book and the counter-trial’s enormous success, focusing world attention upon the trial at the Supreme Court in Leipzig of the Reichstag fire defendants. The prosecution’s ineptitude, the untrustworthiness of their witnesses, the shabby inconsistencies of their experts meant that if the court was to retain any credibility it had to satisfy itself with taking Marinus van der Lubbe’s life and exonerating the Communist defendants: Torgler and Bulgarians Dimitrov, Popov and Tanev. The Brown Book combined encyclopaedic authentic evidence about Nazi atrocities with fanciful conjecture and invention about the fire.62 The Brown Book, the counter-trial and other Éditions du Carrefour publications (The Second Brown Book and the White Book) were thus more than ‘masterly … forgeries’.63 The Paris headquarters interviewed all German refugees who came to them for assistance to build a compendium of Nazi abuses. Regler recalled how Münzenberg was reduced to tears on reading the passage about real Nazi atrocities that Regler had compiled.64 Again, Wilkinson aired her private thoughts to Astor about Germany. After her annual union conference, Wilkinson planned to visit the Third Reich to try to help German comrades who were in grave danger. She worried that German intelligence officers had been reading her articles. Despite ‘feeling tired to my marrow’, she was going because it would be safer for her than for men. Though it was a ‘mere flea bite’, she had managed to get some refugees out and secured homes in England for all and work for some. Given such difficulties, she was exasperated that ‘Tom Mosley goes and strikes attitudes in Rome. Really!!!’65 Wilkinson wrote to Katz on 27 June, stating that she had spoken to publisher Victor Gollancz about the proofs of the Brown Book. She was happy that the Communist Emile Burns was translating because he ‘knows what he is doing and will work specially quickly on it’.66 For the duration of Katz’s London visit between 30 June and 4 July, Wilkinson chauffeured him in her car. He stayed overnight in her flat. At 5.30pm on 30 June, she invited selected journalists and (in her words) ‘bourgeois celebrities’ including Ivor Montagu to meet Katz. Jennie Lee MP, her Guildford Street neighbour, remembered Wilkinson’s parties, which were an integral element of political campaigning. Twenty or thirty 259
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson people would crowd into her two-roomed flat. She would draw everyone together and introduce the principal guest.67 She played salon hostess making introductions and forging networks from her small Bloomsbury flat. Hannen Swaffer reported on the reception in Wilkinson’s flat where she displayed the Nazi torture instruments that had been smuggled out of Germany and described their effects in detail.68 That evening Wilkinson and Katz went to a RCVGF meeting at the Kingsway Hall. Marley opened the meeting from the chair. He paid homage to those who had lost their lives or were suffering at the hands of the Nazis. He announced that he and Wilkinson were to travel to Spain to assist in the RCVGF’s work there. He detailed the committee’s support for fascism’s victims, both those still in Germany and the soup kitchen in the Saar, catering for 1,000 each day. After Haldane, Wise and the Czech Communist journalist, Egon Erwin Kisch, had all spoken, Wilkinson delivered a rousing speech: We are here to make a demonstration of the power that can fight fascism. This meeting, different and varied as our organisations are, does represent that solid power of the working-class, that, if only it can be used as a solid power, is the power that can smash Hitler.69
She described the committee’s work in the Saar and the plan for a children’s home. She paid tribute to those who were bravely planning to return for dangerous work in the underground. To her, it seemed ‘so irrelevant to ask who belong[ed] to the Second International and who belonged to the Third International, when the urgent need was help’. She displayed the weapons that were used in the torture cellars and in the street attacks: a rubber truncheon, a spring-loaded steel rod and a whip. She vividly described the sinister nature of each weapon to break bones, lacerate or create organ damage, but minimise visual appearance of the torture.70 She concluded her Kingsway Hall speech: As a member of the Labour Party, as a Trade Union official, as a candidate of the Labour party, I say to you that we must fight this horror that is creeping over Europe. Amongst the organised workers of Great Britain centres of solidarity are being built up from the streets, from the factories, and it is to them that I appeal. I ask tonight that no sectional feeling should come into this meeting. I can only say that I want to do my part, and I believe that my comrades of other organisations want to do their part in saying not only that we will smash Hitler, but that we shall stand together to fight fascism wherever it appears.
On Saturday morning, Wilkinson drove Katz to Isabel Brown’s, 84 Gray’s Inn Road. That evening, the RCVGF held a delegate meeting in Essex Hall at which Katz was the principal speaker.71 He outlined the character of the Reichstag fire trial, highlighting the Nazi regime’s 260
A journey through the crisis years complicity in the fire and gave details from the forthcoming Brown Book, much of which had been smuggled out from concentration camps. He also described the legal commission of eminent lawyers planning to go to The Hague over the violence of the Nazi regime and its perversion of justice. Wilkinson also spoke about The Brown Book and Katz’s role in it. On Sunday, Katz, Wilkinson, Dorothy Woodman, Kisch, Mrs Haden Guest and Lord and Lady Marley met in the Grosvenor Hotel. Wilkinson then transported Katz to the NUDAW office in Ensleigh Gardens, and then onto the RCVGF office in Litchfield Street. Special Branch officers had to admit failure to maintain surveillance of Wilkinson’s speeding car.72 Katz left from Croydon aerodrome on 4 July. His visit indicated London’s importance to the RCVGF internationally and that Wilkinson was at its very centre. Writing to Katz shortly after his departure, she relayed Gollancz’s pleasure at the publicity gained for The Brown Book during the visit.73 She also noted intriguingly that there was a very curious story behind the Daily Herald article that she would tell him about when he saw her. Wilkinson described the Paris headquarters of the Münzenberg circle as the brains that were fighting Goering. It was there that The Brown Book was born. Although Goering expected to be viewed as the ‘saviour of Europe’, the Nazis found that ‘step by step each move they have made has been countered in the eyes of the world’.74 The Brown Book exposed the activities of the Nazis in the months after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in late January 1933. The NSDAP were a novelty at this time and their spectacular rise to power invited more international curiosity than condemnation. Wilkinson publicised The Brown Book in her journalism, contextualising the significance of the Reichstag fire as a decisive propaganda manoeuvre on the part of the Nazis akin to the Zinoviev letter during the 1924 election in Britain. It transformed their fortunes at a time when they were cornered by their allies, had lost votes at the previous election and were threatened by splits.75 She sold The Brown Book as an Edgar Wallace novel ‘at his most lurid’. The Labour leadership exerted increasing pressure on those sponsoring the campaign. Most damagingly, Albert Einstein, the President of the RCVGF, renounced the campaign on 15 September, two weeks after the publication of The Brown Book and during the International Inquiry into the Burning of the Reichstag.76 He had been sent a copy of the Labour Party’s The Communist Solar System. Published that month, it sought to undermine the RCVGF and the counter-trial. The pamphlet described campaigns like the RCVGF as planets in orbit around the Comintern (the ‘central fervid globe’), aiming ‘to divert energetic members of the Labour Party from their Party work to work that plays into the hands of 261
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson the Communists; to persuade prominent members of the Party to lend their names and prestige to these organisations and thus attract other members who might not otherwise join; and generally to cause confusion and dissension’.77 George Bernard Shaw followed Einstein shortly afterwards. His reason was that the RCVGF had no right to interfere in the trial of non-British subjects, sending a letter to be read at a RCVGF public meeting. As the chair, Wilkinson duly obliged, reading the statement to several thousand in the Kingsway Hall, who responded with cries of ‘shame’ and ‘don’t buy Shaw’s books’.78 She added that ‘the claims of justice transcend the bounds of nationality’.79 There was more to Einstein’s renunciation than simply a realisation that the RCVGF was a Communist front. The Nazis were viciously harassing Einstein in their press as a means to discredit The Brown Book. Talking of the ‘moral execution’ [moralische Hinrictung] of Einstein, their paper the Völkischer Beobachter rounded on ‘the Jew Einstein’.80 Relativity apparently was anti-German. Such personal intimidation and anti-Semitic incitement was not without its results. Einstein had already fled Germany and faced harassment in Belgium. Despite Einstein’s public disclaimer, The Brown Book caused a sensation, polarising opinion when it appeared in late August 1933. The liberal press deemed it to be a heavyweight indictment of the Nazi regime. The News Chronicle described it as ‘perhaps the most serious case ever brought before a responsible government’.81 The Manchester Guardian believed it to be the ‘most important book … published on the Hitlerite dictatorship’.82 At the 1933 Labour Party conference in Hastings, when Woodman proposed a motion on the Leipzig trial, Wilkinson complained tersely about inadequacy of official anti-fascist relief and the need for a more definite action from the party leadership in the campaign. The NEC responded defensively about the work of the Matteotti Fund.83 However, the real argument came with discussion of the united front. Wilkinson entered the debate attempting to appeal to the ‘very deep lying uneasiness which I feel is in our hearts after the events of the past year’. She had witnessed the rise of fascism in Germany during the 1932 election and again five days after the Reichstag fire. She was haunted by both what she had seen in Germany and the complacent island mentality in Britain. While German labour leaders languished in concentration camps, it was clear to her that both Communists and Social Democrats were to blame for the divisions that helped Hitler to power. She observed that the all too defensive Morrison was proud of the pamphlet The Communist Solar System yet this simply showed the ‘drive and energy’ of the Communists compared to the inaction of the NEC over these campaigns. She asked why it was left to an unofficial committee to unmask the conspiracy of the Nazis. Thus baited, Morrison responded menacingly. He blamed 262
A journey through the crisis years Communists alone for the division of the German labour movement, oddly citing Trotsky as his authority for this. He then turned on Wilkinson who was ‘sometimes a bit of a nuisance to us’ and whose ‘drive and energy’ might be better used in the official movement ‘rather than running straight over and starting an unofficial committee in association with people she knows she ought not’.84
Leipzig and London: trial and counter-trial In April 1933, the World Committee for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism proposed a legal commission to investigate Nazi claims about the Reichstag fire. Despite the Nazi press calling the event a ‘Jewish comedy’, the counter-trial had a significant impact on sections of public opinion in Western Europe, caused confusion amongst leading Nazis and put the prosecutors at the High Court on the defensive.85 The organisation went to great lengths to gather evidence and prestigious legal expertise in order to undermine the highly questionable legal process under way in Germany. As with the RCVGF, Wilkinson was secretary for the Commission, with her London flat being the correspondence address. She sent out invitations for the sessions and was the point of contact for international delegates.86 She also helped to organise a press reception at the Washington Hotel, Curzon Street, at which she assembled journalists and ‘some prominent people in London’.87 Wilkinson publicised and defended the work of the counter-trial in her journalism, answering Hartland-Swann’s charge that it constituted a ‘breach of international courtesy’, using the occasion to outline the basic denials of justice to the defenders, who were without proper interpreters, whose witnesses were refused safe conduct, and who were denied the lawyers of their choosing.88 Hartland-Swann’s reply was that Wilkinson should concentrate her energies remedying injustice at home rather than damaging efforts at international understanding.89 The preliminary session of the Commission of Inquiry took place in Paris on 2 September 1933. Then a sub-committee sat in van der Lubbe’s native Netherlands to hear evidence about the allegedly Communist arsonist on 6 to 7 September. Koestler reflected on the sheer temerity of the counter-trial in which prosecution lawyers called publicly on Goering to provide an alibi who, thus goaded into a response, reacted with an act of ‘incredible self-degradation’.90 The main session of the Commission took place in London at the Court Room of the Law Society in the Strand under Pritt’s chairmanship. Sir Stafford Cripps, the former Solicitor General opened the first session on 14 September.91 The Commission included an array of political figures from across Europe and the USA. It called thirty or so witnesses, amongst whom 263
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson were German Social Democratic Party leader Dr Rudolf Breitscheid, author Ernst Toller, German Communist Party (KPD) deputy Wilhelm Koenen and Otto Kühne, the secretary of the KPD in the Reichstag. As well as these prominent political figures were family members of the accused.92 Sketching these personalities and knowing several of them well, Wilkinson said in the Daily Herald that the event might prove a ‘landmark’ in the ‘heroic fight for human freedom’.93 The sitting lasted three days until 17 September. On 20 September, Pritt read the deliberations of the Commission in the Caxton Hall, the day before the beginning of the Leipzig trial. The Commission’s report had three elements: 1) Van der Lubbe was not a supporter but hostile to the Communist Party. 2) Van der Lubbe could not have acted alone. 3) The most probable means of access to and from the Reichstag was through the subterranean passage to the president of the Reichstag’s offices (Goering). The Commission noted that the Nazis had much to gain from the fire thereby reversing the culpability from the Communists to the Nazis. The Commission also indicated that it would reconvene to deliberate over the evidence presented at Leipzig. After the first sitting of the counter-trial, however, Katz’s stays with Wilkinson generated rumours within the RCVGF’s supposedly enlightened circles. She complained to Isabel Brown that Mrs Haden Guest was gossiping of an affair between Katz and Wilkinson and that Pollitt believed this. Wilkinson asked Brown to stamp on the rumour (which was false) but which did jeopardise her relationship with another of whom she was fond.94 In September and again in November 1933, Helen Bajiscowa, Dimitrov’s 30-year-old sister stayed in Wilkinson’s London apartment.95 Wilkinson’s personal involvement in solidarity with the imprisoned Dimitrov did not stop there. Wilkinson and Montagu launched a public appeal for funds for Dimitrov’s mother whom the Nazi authorities refused a Bulgarian lawyer or an interpreter. Wilkinson persuaded Lansbury who was in hospital to write a letter supporting Dimitrov that she forwarded on to the Home Secretary.96 After Dimitrov’s release and considering a denial of his request for a British visa, MI5 fully expected protests from Wilkinson and Marley, though this weighed less in political terms than anti-Dimitrov complaints in the German and British press.97 The Commission of Inquiry met once more on 18 December two days after the summarising arguments of both the prosecution and the defence in the Leipzig trial. It considered two main points. Firstly, the use of a law introduced after the fire to make van der Lubbe’s crime retrospectively punishable by death. This it found to be a ‘monstrous violation of one of the principles of justice most universally recognised among all civilised nations’.98 Secondly, the accusations against the three 264
A journey through the crisis years Bulgarians having been withdrawn, it considered the possible judgment against Torgler, deeming him to be innocent and considering a death sentence to be tantamount to judicial murder. The Leipzig trial came to a dramatic conclusion five days later when the four Communists were acquitted and van der Lubbe was sentenced to death. Wilkinson admired political scientist and friend George Catlin’s accounts of the Leipzig trial in Time and Tide and the Daily Herald but found them rather dry.99 He had travelled to Leipzig and observed the case. In her letter to him, she puzzled over the failure of journalists to humanise the event.100 In the Star, she denounced the execution of van der Lubbe as judicial murder, having been convicted of arson which at the time was not a capital offence.101 The Nazis noticed Wilkinson’s outspoken stance, with Völkischer Beobachter describing her as a ‘half Jewess who continued her lies about Germany’ and produced distorted images of her.102
Wilkinson’s Terror in Germany Wilkinson’s The Terror in Germany rendered her involvement in the RCVGF yet more visible. With such publications, Münzenberg tended to make the request, provide an outline and supply the information.103 This slim publication presented in popular form the RCVGF’s evidence of Nazi repression. The pamphlet countered the regime’s campaign of misinformation and the idea that the terror had ceased. She also reproached the British government for appeasing Hitler and for having undermined Weimar democracy. She reported a German diplomat who complained that for fourteen years British Prime Ministers insulted Republican statesmen but after a fortnight of Hitler banging ‘his mailed fist’ MacDonald was talking about a revision of Versailles. Such conciliation fourteen months earlier, the official reflected, ‘might have saved German democracy’.104 She described the counter-revolutionary terror against the working class. Cataloguing its routine viciousness, she told of the working-class activist from Berlin who was taken to a Nazi headquarters and beaten with rubber truncheons, repeatedly kicked in the face, flung down the cellar steps and ended up in a clinic with a broken nose, broken jaw and having lost his front teeth. In another case, Wilkinson cited a works’ council who were all arrested, were forced to do military drill to the point of physical collapse and to sing ‘Deutschland über alles’. Eventually, because the works’ director intervened, they were released. Before doing so, they were coerced into withdrawing from the works’ council in favour of Nazi candidates. Wilkinson reported the house searches and floggings that took place as well as the scenes of blood-splattered 265
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson walls and beatings of prisoners with steel rods. Photographs recorded evidence of torture and a worker’s wrecked furniture after a Brownshirt raid. Wilkinson revealed how doctors were ambushed and beaten for helping those that the Nazis had tortured. She recounted the unpunished murders of Jews, Communists and socialists whose corpses would appear on waste ground or in woodland, documenting one victim’s case whose loved ones were courageous enough to provide the details. In other cases, fearful relatives refused to identify the corpses or go to the funerals. She exposed the abuse and torture of women, adducing the case of a 26-year-old socialist woman. During her interrogation to ascertain the hiding-place of a fellow socialist, the Nazis undressed, beat and humiliated her. A signed medical certificate attested to her lacerations and festering abscesses – one the size of a fist – as a result of her treatment. Wilkinson then outlined the RCGVF’s work. Inside Germany, the committee helped the dependents of those spirited away to the prisons, SA barracks, or concentration camps, and assisted those who had been dismissed for their Jewish faith or political persuasion. Outside Germany, the RCGVF helped the growing number of refugees. She asked readers to imagine themselves in the same boat; after all, Germany and England were too like to believe that ‘Englishmen do not do such things’, especially after events in Ireland and India. She conjured the realities of a Nazi takeover: Imagine a group of licensed hooligans in uniform coming into your house or flat and proceeding to break everything that is in it … stealing anything of value, before proceeding to beat you with a heavy rubber truncheon or a steel reinforced whip. With blood streaming down your face, imagine yourself saying good-bye to your wife and children, not knowing if you will ever see them again, your wife knowing well that she may be called in a day or two to identify your body among others in the mortuary.105
Appealing for funds she asked her readers to contemplate the refugee’s plight: … you have managed to get out of the country and you are in France or Holland without a cent, not knowing the language, not having had a meal for hours. You have the address of the Relief Committee, that is all.106
The power of Wilkinson’s pamphlet stemmed from her journalistic talents, her credibility, her ability to connect with an audience and mobilise sentiments of injustice as she had done in the movements.
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A journey through the crisis years RCVGF in 1934 In early 1934, the WCWF’s Paris secretariat worried about the British campaign’s faltering momentum after the Leipzig trial. The pressure had abated for the release of Rueß, Torgler, Dimitrov and Thälmann. Frustrations emerged between Marley and the secretariat.107 The campaign in Britain continued to rely on Wilkinson to compensate for Marley’s perceived inadequacies. Alongside her journalism, pamphleteering and organisational work, Wilkinson also served the RCVGF as a public speaker. She spoke at a conference in Essex Hall, London on 12 January and in Sheffield on 20 January 1934.108 A week later, she highlighted the global menace of German fascism at a meeting organised under the auspices of the Grays Co-operative Society in response to a talk recently given by a Nazi stormtrooper in nearby Purfleet.109 She was keen to maintain her association with the Paris circle, writing to Katz on 14 February, inquiring about the committee’s progress, saying that she had been in touch with Dora Fabian and Kantorowicz and passing her regards to ‘Willi’, ‘Ilse’ (Katz’s wife) and Regler. Fabian, Marley’s German-speaking secretary, had moved in next door to Wilkinson at 19 Guildford Street (and later died in mysterious circumstances).110 On 23 April 1934, Katz returned to Britain. The actor Peter Lorre – whose real name was László Löwenstein – accompanied him and was trying to get to Hollywood. Wilkinson welcomed the pair at Victoria Station. Then ‘the aliens and Miss Wilkinson’, as the Special Branch surveillance put it, dined at Chez Viviani and visited her Guildford Street flat, presumably discussing the German situation, and the latest news from the World Committee, before Katz and Lorre went to their hotel.111 After breakfast the following day, Katz and Lorre returned to 18 Guildford Street leaving at noon. At this point, Wilkinson left in a taxi with a heavy suitcase and her guests went next door to Fabian’s.112 Katz again visited Wilkinson on Wednesday morning in her flat. When Katz next sought entry into Britain but was refused, he turned to Wilkinson. She called in a favour from Lord Lothian, to whom she had introduced Katz at the time of the Reichstag trial. She indicated to Lothian that Katz was Éditions du Carrefour’s managing director, publishing books on the German situation, including The Brown Book and a novel by a young exile Anna Seghers. Carrefour were negotiating with John Lane Ltd to publish their books in English. She ended with the observation that a word from him would make all the difference because ‘there now seems no possibility of my being believed when I assure the HO [Home Office] that Katz is really not engaged in any deep scheme for the undermining of the British Constitution’.113
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson From 1925, Wilkinson had a flat in Bloomsbury. She developed a great affection for WC1, the Montparnasse of London: ‘the muddled, down-atheel, rather slummy, racked-rented district … a colourful area the more so since the most interesting of the refugees tend to gravitate there’.114 Wilkinson’s Bloomsbury was a significant locus to receive, place and integrate refugees from Nazi Germany. Circuits of dinner and cocktail parties – of which Wilkinson was a noted host – allowed free networking of a ‘queer mixture of people’: artists, political radicals, wealthy patrons, publishers, journalists, politicians and academics.115 She was part of ‘the Bloomsbury set’ which included people like Bertrand Russell, Cyril Joad, Harold Laski and Kingsley Martin.116 Conze recalled meeting many people through these occasions. In Grete Fischer’s account of the itineraries and networks of German left-wingers refugees, Wilkinson and Margaret Goldsmith were at the heart of organising the reception and placement of a small colony of refugees in Bloomsbury, including, notably, Berthold Brecht.117 In her journalism, Wilkinson tried to convey the horror refugees faced to uncomprehending British readers, bringing attention to the plight of prisoners Dimitrov, Torgler, Mühsam and von Ossietzky.118 She poignantly quoted the exiled woman Reichstag deputy Toni Sender, ‘Now I know what cut flowers feel like.’119 Moreover, Marley and Wilkinson met the League of Nations Commissioner for Refugees, during his trip to London on 15 December 1933. Marley was discussing German refugees and proposing support for a Jewish autonomous region in the Soviet Union, which some were suggesting could be an alternative to the Zionist project in Palestine.120 With the night of the long knives of 30 June 1934, which Wilkinson only discovered on her return to London after a weekend in an Essex cottage writing Why Fascism, she reflected on the rival explanations of Hitlerism. She rejected the idea that Hitler was simply a cipher for the interests of big business. Instead, Nazism was a movement in which reactionary and socialist elements were in constant friction. The killing of the SA leadership indicated that there would be no socialist revolution. Hitler was neither ‘master’ nor ‘mascot’. His dictatorship was less the whim of one man than a ‘sensitive registering apparatus’ of fluid social forces.121 Shortly after the SA purge, she and John Strachey visited Berlin on a mission concerning Thälmann’s trial. Although Germany seemed pleasant enough to tourists, Wilkinson sought out the insider knowledge of informed opinion amongst foreign correspondents just as she had over the coup of 20 July 1932. Some journalists believed the regime’s claim of a brownshirt plot, others saw this as a smokescreen for murder. Gauging opinion where she could amongst random acquaintances and her contacts, she concluded that German middle-class opinion accepted 268
A journey through the crisis years Hitler’s explanation but that on visiting ‘old friends’ in working-class Neukölln, attitudes were more sceptical. She contrasted the outward appearance of a peaceful country with a generalised uncertainty and ‘neuralgic anxiety’ underneath, as people worried about the return of the stormtroopers, the potato harvest and Germany’s encirclement.122 She reflected on the absence of uniforms compared to her previous visit when ubiquitous stormtroopers thrust collection boxes menacingly in one’s face. She found Hitler’s prevarication and the SA’s hatred for the SS were palpable. The enforced holiday for the SA, which was both an asset and a liability for Hitler, was due to end on 1 August and Wilkinson expected that this would be a critical moment for the regime.123 As on other occasions, this visit also functioned as a means to build an anti-fascist movement at home, seeing the connection between the growth of fascism abroad and the reality of the domestic threat. Back in Britain on 30 July 1934, Wilkinson, Conze and Strachey shared a RCVGF platform in the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. Her work to build a British anti-fascist movement stretched back at least a year. She had spoken for the Wood Green and Southgate United Front Committee alongside Pollitt and Woodman on 30 July 1933.124 By October 1933, she was arguing that – barring an improbable reversal of Labour policy – fascism would come to Britain, unless people ‘get up and do something’. As someone who had been observing German events very closely since July 1932, she could not subscribe to the ‘comfortable boarding-house assurance’ that fascism was un-British as this showed ignorance of events in the NWFP or the actions of the Black and Tans or Chief Tshekedi.125 She believed that British capital would mount opposition to a workers’ government along the lines of German and Austrian precedents.126 A Cambridge student Philip Gaudin recalled speaking at the Guildhall alongside Wilkinson, Ernest Toller, Gaetano Salvemini and Joseph Needham. The meeting was packed and there was a sizeable group of fascist students determined to disrupt the meeting. Despite having had a bumpy trip back from Paris that day, Wilkinson faced merciless heckling. Gaudin depicted the scene: There was this little slip of a woman, standing up rather awkwardly with her legs crossed and the mop of her red hair she kept tossing back, and with a foghorn voice shouting down her interrupters with brilliant wit and repartee. I have never seen any political speaker deal so coolly and successfully with really nasty opposition.127
The campaign intensified in the autumn of 1934. On 5 August 1934, she spoke at a demonstration against fascism in Hyde Park, together with Bridgeman, Brockwell, Campbell, Springhall, and Strachey. At the same time, she sponsored an appeal that appeared in Fight (the Committee 269
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson against Fascism and War’s journal), calling for a united anti-fascism organisation.128 Wilkinson also sponsored a counter-mobilisation against a British Union of Fascists demonstration in Hyde Park on 9 September. On this occasion, however, the NJC denounced the counter-demonstration as a Communist front. Lord Marley challenged this in the press highlighting such non-Communist supporters as Wilkinson, Pritt, Maxton, Strachey, and Professor Levy.129 Marley appealed to workers to attend so these people would not be open to physical attack from the Blackshirts. Wilkinson’s non-appearance on the day may have been the result of the official pressure from the Labour leadership. Considering whether Mosley posed a fascist threat in Britain, Wilkinson replied not while he read Burke and wore double-breasted waistcoats. She did think that his lieutenants were dangerous as their demagogy appealed the ‘restless boredom of youth’ pointing to the hardships of the means test and the contradictions of the ‘machine age’.130 Realising fascism’s need for a masculine hero myth, Wilkinson debunked James Drennan’s paean to Mosley.131 While some could amuse themselves with the myth’s absurdity, those who knew him like her ‘will want to close the book half way through and retire to the bathroom and be quietly sick’.132 She ridiculed Drennan’s language of the ‘regency buck’ restoring the ‘aristocratic principle’ to ‘flaccid bourgeois’ politics. She also challenged Mosley’s apparently heroic departure from the Labour government. Though Mosley’s resignation speech was impressive enough, he had been repeating it ever since and Allen Young had written the original anyway. It was Mosley’s own incompetence – rather than J.H. Thomas’s jealousy – that thwarted his plan to conquer unemployment; he could even not confirm whether this would cost £70 million or 700 million. Again, shortly after Cable Street, when the left and the Jewish community prevented a Blackshirt march through East London, she described Mosley at a youth rally in Edinburgh, as a kite that the ruling class flew occasionally to test the sympathy for fascism in Britain. To loud applause, she observed that they had tested the feeling in the East End of London the other day.133
Southport and expulsion threat Her association with the RCVGF nearly cost Wilkinson her Labour Party membership. The decade had opened with Jennie Lee’s expulsion and ended with those of Cripps and Bevan. Shinwell later remarked that the 1930s ‘was not a distinguished period in Labour Party history for … the wisdom which derives from tolerance’.134 Labour Party officials spied on RCVGF meetings as far back as 27 May 1933. They took particular interest in both Marley and Wilkinson’s involvement. In a report 270
A journey through the crisis years presented to the Labour leadership, the ‘first impression’ was that the RCVGF was a ‘Communist frame-up’.135 The NEC of 28 June resolved that the International Sub-Committee should interview Marley about the RCVGF.136 On 6 September, the NEC remitted the LSI’s opposition to the RCVGF to the International Sub-Committee.137 NEC scrutiny of Wilkinson increased in late September 1933. Wilkinson received a damaging letter forwarded by former SPD Reichstag deputy Marie Juchacz whom Wilkinson had met in Saarbrücken. Asking why Wilkinson had not sent funds, Else David expected monies to be sent directly to her at the Arbeiterwohlfahrt für das Saargebeit (Saar workers’ welfare centre).138 Two days after sending the letter to Wilkinson (addressed to the Labour Party headquarters), Juchacz wrote to Jennie Adamson, the NEC member.139 The International Sub-Committee then decided to ask Wilkinson what had happened, noting Wilkinson’s role in the RCVGF.140 After a week, Annie Wilkinson replied. Apologising for the delay, she explained that her sister had contracted bronchitis and laryngitis during the Kilmarnock by-election and that Ellen would be attending to business when she had recovered.141 Replying to Middleton, Wilkinson explained that Juchacz had conflated her expression of sympathy and her role on the RCVGF. She was not on the RCVGF Grants Sub-Committee and therefore was in no position to allocate funds. Voigt was the sub-committee’s chair, whom Juchacz knew well. RCVGF monies were going principally to the children’s homes in the Saar and in Paris as well as to concentration camp prisoners and their families. She ended by saying that the committee were overwhelmed by requests and that their funds were inadequate.142 The matter did not stop there. Middleton forwarded this correspondence to Alder at the LSI. In his accompanying letter, Middleton indicated that Voigt had visited him confidentially. Voigt had told Middleton that monies were not distributed exclusively to the Communists but that Münzenberg, Gibarti and Katz allocated the funds. While the committee had collected about £2,000 in Britain, Voigt had only been responsible for the distribution of £200. Voigt assured the Labour Party secretary that, in future, relief would be distributed in Germany. Middleton concluded that they were now convinced that it was a purely Communist affair.143 The NEC’s International Sub-Committee interviewed Marley on 7 December 1933. While he accepted party decisions about work with Communist organisations and stated that he was not involved in anti-fascist or anti-war movements, he argued that the RCVGF was a non-political and charitable organisation.144 At the next NEC, George Lathan reported that Marley had been ‘exceedingly helpful’.145 By August 1934, Brown, Katz and Münzenberg were becoming very concerned that Labour Party conference might rule the RCVGF 271
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson off limits for its members.146 As the anti-Communist campaign in the Labour Party gathered momentum, Wilkinson confided in Katz that she thought she would be able to muster very useful support against the NEC.147 Katz then rang Wilkinson indicating that Münzenberg wanted her to come to Paris to discuss the situation as they were turning their attention to the Saar, which had a plebiscite on possible incorporation into the Third Reich looming.148 The NEC’s report to the annual conference in Southport stated that RCVGF members were ineligible to be members of the Labour Party, delegates to its conferences, or candidates for parliamentary or local government office.149 Delegates challenged two sections of the report dealing with the united front and the proscribed organisations. Sensing the possibility of winning one but not both, Wilkinson proposed the reference back of the report in two parts: first the part dealing with the united front, and then the RCVGF’s addition to the list of proscribed organisations. The first part was heavily defeated but a debate ensued about the second. Speaking of his and Wilkinson’s loyalty to the movement, Laski opposed a heresy hunt, explaining that without remission they might be expelled. Marley gave his assurance of the RCGVF’s non-political character, reading from a letter from the journalist responsible for the distribution of funds inside Germany to that effect. Herbert Morrison led the attack against ‘Labour peers and parliamentary candidates’ (i.e. Marley and Wilkinson) over RCVGF involvement and its Comintern links. Riled by interruptions from Marley, Morrison highlighted the relationship with WIR (which Marley denied), naming Münzenberg, Gibarti and Katz as its key figures. He denounced both Marley and Wilkinson explicitly for adding their names to RCVGF circulars, alongside ‘enemies of our Party’. 150 He suggested that if the Labour Party rank and file were observing such discipline, then so should Marley and Wilkinson.151 Morrison carried conference, 1,347,000 to 195,000 on a card vote. Wilkinson also seconded a motion on the right to asylum of political refugees, mentioning the Home Secretary’s double standard that allowed titled refugees from Russia or prominent Nazis entry without question, but barring Communist and socialist refugees from Germany and Austria. Ironically, given that this was precisely the work that she was conducting under the aegis of the Relief Committee, the motion passed unanimously. The Southport decision imposed an institutional obstacle to Wilkinson’s relationship to unemployed and anti-fascist movements and a serious threat to her career and livelihood. Wilkinson had protested against this to the press.152 Leah Manning later reflected that Morrison was ‘the head and front of all the blether’ from Transport House.153 With a mandate from Southport, the NEC sent twenty-eight ultimatum letters 272
A journey through the crisis years to members associated with the RCVGF, including Marley, Aneurin Bevan and Wilkinson on 28 December 1934.154 Wilkinson’s difficulties with the NEC increased after a trip to Spain in November 1934. The NEC had received letters on Wilkinson’s visit from Ernest Robinson, a former Labour Party agent living in Spain. He believed her actions to be ‘badly conceived and worse in its execution’. This prompted the Labour Party to pursue Wilkinson about her involvement with the RCVGF.155 The NEC released Robinson’s first letter to the press to justify their case.156 This letter reported how a Spanish newspaper had presented Wilkinson’s and Lord Listowel’s visit as an official Labour Party commission. Robinson complained on the basis of second-hand opinion from ‘trade unionists’ who believed that the British pair should not have interviewed Lerroux. He recalled criticism of Wilkinson at the previous Labour Party conference arising from her visit to Vienna. He was concerned about the damage to the Labour Party’s reputation amongst Spanish workers and concluded by offering to report on the Spanish situation for the Party.157 The party assistant secretary replied, confirming that Wilkinson’s visit was unofficial and appended the Southport conference report.158 Robinson then sent a second letter. He observed that ‘I presume they came on behalf of the Committee to which members of the Labour Party are not allowed to belong’. He also related hostile press coverage in Spain. Robinson then speculated that those who helped to organise the visit within Spain were likely to get arrested. He concluded vitriolically: Personally I think they only came to have a joy ride at other peoples [sic] expense and then be able to return to England to talk about it and get fees for lecturing. You may think that this view point is rather strong, but I am on the spot and can appreciate the feelings of the workers here about this visit.159
Robinson’s third letter underlined the general suppression of information in Spain and the scale of the arrests which included Caballero and Azaña.160 The International Sub-Committee (ISC) agreed to send a copy of Robinson’s second letter to Joseph Hallsworth, NUDAW’s Industrial General Secretary, Wilkinson’s employer.161 The same meeting discussed the responses to the ultimatum about the RCVGF from Laski, Jagger, Naomi Mitchison and Mrs Bentwich confirming that they had severed links. To deflect criticism, the ISC also appointed a small committee to examine support for the victims of fascism. Two days later, the full NEC approved the release of a summary of Robinson’s correspondence to the press.162 Irrespective of the opinions of leading Spanish socialists such as Caballero and del Vayo, the Labour Party privileged the views of an obscure member living in Spain. The visit and Robinson’s 273
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson letters provided a pretext to discipline Wilkinson over her support for the RCVGF. It was ironic therefore that Robinson’s own article in the official press of the Labour Party highlighted the gravity of the fascist threat in Spain and the likelihood of another revolution to stave off that menace.163 Pressure was now exerted from all quarters. Jagger had recanted. The NUDAW executive council of 16 December 1934 discussed Wilkinson’s Spanish visit, confirming the disciplinary action that Hallsworth had taken and instructing her to cut all connections with proscribed bodies.164 At the next month’s executive, Hallsworth read Wilkinson’s (presumably contrite) response to the accusation of participation in banned campaigns.165 The meeting instructed Hallsworth to compile a report on Wilkinson’s activities during 1934.166 It concluded: Miss Wilkinson assures me that during 1934 she had very many requests from Labour Party headquarters for work at by-elections or at demonstrations, and these were, of course, accepted when forwarded through the Central Office. Subsequently I went very closely into the question of Miss Wilkinson’s future work, and gave directions for the satisfactory allocation of her time, having regard to the claims of her constituency, Labour Party calls, and other work of an industrial nature in London and other Divisions of the Union.
Wilkinson was in too vulnerable a position to resist and broke her formal association with the RCVGF. Her distaste for doing so is hinted at by the fact her sister Annie wrote the statement about breaking her RCVGF links, though the excuse for this was a trip to the USA. By the end of February all but four recipients of the NEC’s letter had replied. By late February 1935, Wilkinson was neither the RCVGF treasurer nor on its list of supporters.167 Despite this, Wilkinson sought to maintain these transnational anti-fascist connections, adapting her behaviour to prevent further disciplinary action. While she withdrew from formal positions in campaigns that she had been involved in, she lent her name to new campaigns and worked informally with RCVGF. Wilkinson publicised suspected Nazi foul play when German refugees Dora Fabian and Matilda Wurm were found poisoned in their London flat in April 1935.168 She continued to work in international campaigns for individual Communist victims of repression.169 In September 1935, Wilkinson visited Helsinki in support of Toivo Antikainen who languished in the ‘grim prison’ at Turku.170 He was accused of roasting a prisoner alive during the Civil War in a rigged trial, in which the judge bullied witnesses, several of whom were Swedish speakers and could not fully understand the Finnish proceedings. She maintained that his case was a pretext for efforts to restore the death penalty. Finland was not as democratic as the tourists believed. 274
A journey through the crisis years Wilkinson reported speaking with a Helsinki University lecturer whose job was at risk and who lacked basic academic freedom. She also met the peasant novelist Pentti Haanpää whose anti-militarist fourth novel about peasant reactions to military service had halted his literary career.171 Wilkinson wrote of the menace of fascism in Finland after a second trip in March 1936.172 She painted a picture of a country haunted by the memory of a bloody counter-revolution and the landlords’ fear of workers seeking revenge; all competed for the sullen land-hungry peasantry’s allegiance. With Nazi Germany’s increasing influence and Finland’s strategic importance, Antikainen’s trial was the ‘struggle for what remains of democracy in Finland’. After that visit, Wilkinson encouraged her former secretary Diana Hubback to go to Finland to report on the trial for the Manchester Guardian.173 Wilkinson worked behind the scenes using her political knowledge, contacts and influence to gain visas for Katz as well as rights of passage or asylum for political refugees. This is not to say that Wilkinson’s relationship with the Münzenberg circle remained static. Thus, on 24 May 1935 Isabel Brown replied to a letter from Katz suggesting that he leave the ‘actual political fight against her line [on war] to us here in England’. Katz and Brown agreed that Wilkinson was moving to the right but Brown observed that Wilkinson’s ‘usefulness for our movement has not yet finished’.174 It was around this time that Wilkinson complained to Katz about the CPGB subjecting her to ‘continuous vicious personal attacks’. She indicated that she was planning to write to Münzenberg and asking Katz to translate.175 MI5 files reveal that Wilkinson’s associations with Katz persisted, and even deepened during the Spanish Civil War. Indeed, her last documented dealing with Katz was in relation to his visit to Britain in March 1946 en route from Mexico, where he had spent the war, to Czechoslovakia. He was allowed to stay for fourteen days as a result of Wilkinson’s intervention. In Southampton, Katz, who was travelling with Kisch, was able to produce a telegram from Wilkinson asking him to phone on his arrival in the country.176
Why Fascism? During 1934, Wilkinson and Conze wrote Why Fascism?, contributing to the debate that followed the destruction of the German labour movement. In November 1934, Selwyn and Blount published Why Fascism? for the Plebs League, reflecting its non-doctrinal Marxism. It was a major analysis of both the nature of fascism and the means to combat it. Though jointly authored, it also provides the longest exposition of Wilkinson’s political ideas.177 The first section provided an explanation of how fascism came to power in Italy and Germany. The second section 275
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson tried to identify ‘what fascism does’. This provided a nuanced Marxist account of fascism in power. Why Fascism? compares favourably with Rajani Palme Dutt’s Fascism and Social Revolution in the same year. In line with the Comintern formulations, Dutt viewed fascism instrumentally as ‘financed and directed’ by capital.178 Silent about the KPD’s strategic errors, his analysis blamed social democracy for allowing fascism to come to power in Italy, Germany and Austria. Why Fascism? ended with a consideration of political strategy designed to challenge fascism, criticising existing strategies of the left: the Comintern for its subservience to Russian interests and the Labour Party for its commitment to gradualism, parliament and reform. Given the connection between fascism and the capitalist system, only a revolutionary response from workers and technicians could prevent the deepening cycles of economic crisis, fascism and war. These threats should be taken seriously because ‘Britain cannot remain isolated from the great economic forces that are sweeping the world.’179 This revolutionary logic confirms the second radicalisation during the early 1930s of Wilkinson’s political trajectory, consistent with her reporting of events in Germany and Spain. Why Fascism criticised the Labour Party’s amnesia of incessant mass propaganda that had given birth to the Labour movement. The authors focused on the movement in the ‘factory, workshop and field’ rather than a top-down appeal from parliament. They identified socialism with planning and workers’ control of industry (redolent of her guild socialist days) rather than public ownership based on the model of the Post Office or municipal services. Although calling for a revolutionary socialist party, they saw the basis for this being the Labour and trade union movement, which was ‘so strong in its mass, so weak in its present dependence upon capitalist organisation.’
Visit to the USA in 1935 In March 1935 Wilkinson visited the USA, combining a lecture tour with work for the League for Industrial Democracy (LID), the socialist student organisation, that paid her wages and expenses.180 She secured an eight-week leave of absence for her visit from NUDAW on the grounds that Susan Lawrence was keen for her to go and that Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party presidential candidate was the LID president. Lawrence had told her that ‘the awakening Labour Movement in the USA is hungry for speakers with actual trade union experience’. Having been told by New Yorkers that the unions were dead and the AFL too conservative to fight, she gravitated towards the militant trade union action of the Midwest. She brilliantly evoked the sights, sounds and feelings of the industrial battles of New Deal America for 276
A journey through the crisis years readers of New Dawn. In Cleveland, the great manufacturing city on the banks of Lake Erie with its engineering, chemicals and textile industries, she discovered that unions were ‘alive – and kicking hard’.181 From the train station, she was taken directly to a dressmakers’ strike in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union campaign against sweat shops. Pay was less than a dollar a day, significantly below the National Recovery Act code, and the company had used an efficiency expert to ‘sweat six extra dollars out of the women’. The union had to contend with a multiplicity of languages and nationalities, notably Italians, Poles and Slovaks. The scientific management expert has acted, Wilkinson wryly noted, as a marvellous catalyst of unity. There was not a single strikebreaker among the women, despite only a third being in the union, a court injunction restricting picketing to three and police harassment. They had won the admiration of the town. After a meeting with the strikers, Wilkinson visited their picket line delighting in their songs satirising the New Deal. To members of NUDAW, she recounted the chorus (sung to the tune of My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean): I saved fifteen bucks with my banker, To buy me a car and a yacht, I went down to draw out my future, And this was the answer I got: Soo-up, Soo-up, They gave me a bow-owl of soup.
On the arrival of the efficiency expert, ‘a supercilious well-dressed man’, a clash between the female pickets and the police ensued. As with previous visits, she also made connections with the US women’s movement. In Syracuse, she addressed a WILPF meeting at the Park Central Presbyterian Church, speaking on the topic of ‘women and the struggle against war’. She believed that Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act had failed because it did not go far enough and had not significantly raised purchasing power. Consequently, she argued the USA faced the inescapable choice between inflation and war for greater markets.182
Visit to Germany in early 1936 In early 1936, during the parliamentary recess, Wilkinson visited Berlin for the Sunday Referee.183 Wanting to gauge the atmosphere and meet one or two former acquaintances, she found that death and imprisonment had dispersed several of her contacts. The Referee’s headline presciently warned: ‘Hitler prepares to march on Rhine: “we can mobilise in 24 hours”: Wilkinson flies to find the truth.’ A certain dash of sensationalism was added to the description of Wilkinson’s trip: 277
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson … red-headed, pocket-sized MP … took her life into her hands when stopping only to cast her vote in the House of Commons division, she flew to Germany on a special mission of investigation … [She] was forbidden entry into Germany for speaking the truth about the Nazi regime – defied the ban to go …
Wilkinson flew from Hendon, early on a Friday morning. The paper noted the Third Reich’s surveillance of her and the threat of arrest and expulsion. Armed with only her notebook and pencil and ‘a native ability for calling an opponent’s bluff’, she returned to Berlin after a year’s absence. Terror had intensified with a recent wave of arrests. She met up with an acquaintance, whom she had first met at an international student congress in 1921. He had since become a Nazi and was working in a ministerial office in Wilhemstraße. War filled his imagination, anticipating a re-division of global geopolitics in which Japan would seize territory from the Soviet Union and Germany would be ready for a conflict after only another year’s preparation. He explained that the regime had the detailed plans to march into the Rhineland and although this would not happen until after the summer Olympics in Berlin, they were ready at 24 hours’ notice and would certainly do so that year. He expected the French government to protest vociferously but not to mobilise without British support. Three weeks later, the Wehrmacht did indeed march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the terms of the Versailles Treaty, just as Wilkinson had warned. She heard further evidence of Germany’s military intentions with Hitler’s speech at an international car exhibition where he boasted of Germany’s new technical advances in synthetic rubber and petrol; as Wilkinson reflected ‘the two great essentials in modern warfare. … We are nearer the abyss than we think.’ Years later, Victor Thompson revealed that she had telephoned the article to her editor under her bedclothes as she suspected that her hotel room was under surveillance. She started packing immediately after the call.184 In New Dawn, she noted the contrast in Berlin’s bohemian quarter, whose lively cafés were transformed, with their intellectuals now scattered across the concentration camps. She then searched for an old trade union friend, doubling back on herself to ensure that she was not being followed. She found him ‘shrunken and grey’ as a result of a year in a concentration camp reduced from the typical ‘big, bouncing, jovial’ German working man. With the shop that he was working in empty, they were able to go into the sitting-room in the back; his wife closed the blinds. He was pessimistic. The Nazis were adept at using the distribution of jobs and winter relief to divide the workers. With a joke about Hitler’s visit to a big factory, Wilkinson’s friend highlighted the regime’s contradictory support. Asking how many socialists, Communists and 278
A journey through the crisis years democrats worked in the factory, Hitler was told 40%, 40% and 20% in turn. A terrified Hitler – demanding ‘were there no Nazis then?’ – was informed that they were all Nazis, of course. ‘Breitmann’ asked her whether she thought Hitler would last.185 She observed that the curious silence of the German working class could only be understood in the context of censorship and press conformity. He then told her of a veteran trade unionist who kept a duplicator and produced illegal socialist literature. Discovering this, his son took the machine to protect his father but was denounced and died from the beatings that he received in the police station. Wilkinson contrasted for New Dawn’s audience the accusation of sensationalism that greeted such stories in Britain, with the sheer routine and mundane character of these grim realities for her old trade union friend. ‘Breitmann’s’ wife was becoming anxious lest they were discovered so Wilkinson had to leave. Reflecting upon the war threat, despite the difficulties of censorship, Wilkinson believed that efforts to contact and spread an anti-war message amongst German workers were essential. She was able to draw upon the experience of her visits when she addressed the international conference in Brussels to expose Nazi brutality on 6 July 1936. She documented the torture inside Nazi Germany’s 105 concentration camps, describing their torture instruments and such practices as the case of a 22-year-old woman imprisoned in a dark hole too small to stand up in for six days.186 A horrified and astonished Diana Hubback – Wilkinson’s secretary who was working closely with her at this time – believed that events were overwhelming all Wilkinson’s efforts.187 It was a nightmarish situation in which she was ‘working hard – much too hard. Matters which seemed all important a few weeks ago … have given way to even more important affairs which have to be attended to.’188
Visiting France’s ‘June 36’ During the 1936 Whitsuntide parliamentary recess, Wilkinson visited Spain and France. On her return from Spain, she witnessed the wave of strikes and factory occupations that had spread with great speed and force across France. These strikes accompanied the election of the Popular Front government (a coalition of the Radicals, French Socialist Party (SFIO) and the Communist Party (PCF)). The workplace occupations were a dramatic formative moment in French labour history and their memory persisted across the decades. At their height, around 2 million were on strike and the agreement between the unions, employers and government elicited substantial improvements in the conditions of labour with a fortnight’s paid annual holiday, a 40-hour week and 279
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson wage increases. The mass strike gathered such momentum that it drew into its ranks groups of workers previously unorganised or at the margins of the labour movement. One critical element of this was the mass participation of women and the momentary euphoric reverses in power relations that collective action entailed. The photographs of the movement attest to this phenomenon. The June edition of French magazine of the World Committee of Women against Fascism and War, an organisation that Wilkinson had helped to found, was devoted to women’s participation in the strikes. It pictured scenes of jubilant striking women at Suchard Chocolates, Huntley et Palmers biscuit factory, Cellophane at Bezons, Rateau at Courneneuve. It featured a mass ball at the Hotchkiss engineering factory in Saint Denis, and remarkable pictures of Miss Paris addressing the occupied department store workers of Printemps and strikers dancing to accordions in the workshops of La Samaritaine.189 As Wilkinson drove north via Toulouse to Paris, every factory and workplace displayed the tricolor and the red flag, advertising the fact that within their doors there was a stay-in strike in progress. On her arrival in Paris, Wilkinson attended the great Popular Front demonstration at the Mur des fédérés where Blum, Cachin, Thorez and Marty spoke and the rally at the Vel d’Hiv (winter velodrome).190 Wilkinson applauded working people taking matters into their own hands irrespective of what the politicians thought. On a visit to the French parliament, she noted the annoyance of left-wing politicians, especially the Communists, at the inconvenient timing of the strikes, embarrassing the new Popular Front government. In this regard, despite the PCF being a major beneficiary of the strike movement, Wilkinson struck upon a more subtle aspect of the situation and the crucial role that the PCF and its leader Maurice Thorez played in bringing the strike to a close. Her interest lay with the strikers and particularly the women workers in the great department stores, with which in Britain she had had such frustrating experiences as a trade union organiser. She now revised her conclusion that it was fruitless trying to unionise the big department stores. These palaces of modernism, with the art deco interiors, their swirling wrought-iron staircases, multi-storey perspectives and their smart clientele who expected attentive service, provided a vivid illustration of the transformative character of the June 1936 strikes. 191 Almost all the department stores – La Samaritaine, the Louvre, Printemps, Galleries Lafayette, Trois Quartiers – were occupied.192 The only exception, she reported, was Bon Marché where the workers were locked out on full pay to avoid a stay-in! The workers at Printemps had displayed their pay demands on a sign outside the building. To provide a transnationalism of the imagination, Wilkinson invited readers of New Dawn to compare these rates to their own. She was determined to get 280
A journey through the crisis years inside one of these occupations. On the Boulevard Raspail, an enormous grocery and provision department store for the fashionable St Germain area opened its doors to the British MP. She had approached and passed her card to a picket. When the secretary of the strike committee recognised her name, Wilkinson gained admittance and was warmly welcomed. She entered an unfamiliar world: ‘my weirdest experience in the private trade’. Again Wilkinson provided her readers with ready points of reference, asking them to picture a store of the size of the Leeds or Manchester Co-op department store: inside, the committee was producing a strike bulletin, many of the women were knitting and the place was clean and tidy throughout. They had been there for three days and two nights. Upstairs, in three rooms, lunch was being taken on the basis of an agreement with the management that they would only eat perishable food, which was being observed to the letter. She presented a vision of workers’ control: ‘The strikers were demonstrating that they could run the shop perfectly.’ When Wilkinson told the strikers that she organised shop workers herself, they were delighted and asked her to make a speech. She obliged in French (‘fortunately they were very kind about my accent’), saying how British workers were watching their fight and hoped that they would win. Shortly afterwards, a CGT (General Confederation of Labour) union official arrived. He discussed the difficulties of the movement: the isolation that the occupiers can feel, the difficulties that striking women’s husbands could cause and the attention that disproportionately went to the big metalworking plants. The official was a 35-year-old waiter who, after a spell of unemployment, had started to organise in the food and grocery trade. Despite looking ‘dog tired’, he could report to Wilkinson, as he opened his bag stuffed full of forms, that his union section was recruiting a hundred new members a day. ‘It’s my idea of paradise’, Wilkinson replied with a laugh. In a return visit to Paris in August 1938, Wilkinson witnessed the employers’ attempt to profit from the fear of war by overturning the 40-hour week. She reported to a meeting of the Rusholme Divisional Labour Party that a two-day strike wave halted this effort. She admired the unity of French workers and wished that British workers would emulate them. For her, the workers’ conquest of power and the fate of peace were entwined. She had also encountered a young German who had escaped from a concentration camp who told of deep dissatisfaction amongst German workers over working hours and conditions. She argued that it was important to communicate to German workers that the British working people were against the Chamberlain government, war and the capitalist system.193
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson The 1936–37 US visit: the General Motors (GM) sit-down strike Wilkinson visited the USA again during winter 1936–37. With enough speaking engagements to pay for the trip, she left for the USA during parliament’s Christmas recess. Arriving in New York, she marvelled at its skyline and the perfect flats in its modern apartment blocks. There, Edward Murrow, Columbia Broadcasting chief, invited her to his flat, where she met the journalist John Gunter, who had recently penned the best-seller Inside Europe, detailing the rise of dictatorship across the continent. American modernity fascinated her: its broadcasting, its newsreels, its architecture, its cars and its crime. From Michigan and Indianapolis, she went to Chicago, visiting in turn one of Jane Addams’s social work settlements in the ‘bloody twentieth’ district; a juvenile court where youths of fourteen were already ‘tough guys’; and a Civilian Conservation Corps camp for the out of work.194 She also inspected a great meat-packing plant, which, she joked, converted her to vegetarianism once again. She was shown the Minnesota state legislature with its Farmer-Labor Party majority and was embarrassed when they stopped business and asked her to speak. For her, US modernity comprised compelling appearances and deceptive realities. In the Nebraska legislature, seemingly a modern paradise, where Senator Norris was the ‘star turn’, she spoke to an ‘elevator girl’, who had not been paid for two months. Wanting to know more about the eleven or so million unemployed, Wilkinson visited the University of Minnesota’s sociology department. There she was shown a Works Progress Administration (WPA) artists’ exhibition. She admired the new American realism ‘fresher, more American, free of the tyranny of the Parisian studios’ that was blossoming under the project where the subsidised artist, with the city as his subject, might paint ‘slums and hoboes, its great bridges or the local postman, he was painting in his own times for his own people’. She also came across a WPA theatre group that had adapted Sinclair Lewis’s anti-fascist novel Oh Say You Can Sing. She marvelled at the car industry’s transformation and the contrast with three years earlier when its factories were almost entirely unorganised. Now, with Roosevelt’s legislation and John Lewis’s union, Flint was ‘practically being run by the strikers’ with the sheriff apoplectic that Michigan’s young governor would not allow him to use tear gas. In contrast, she recalled seeing a ‘nerve squad’ patrolling an assembly line to prevent men sabotaging the machinery because the speed of production was so stressful. She first went to the Fischer Body plant strike in Cleveland. A labour organiser Wilkinson had met in Cleveland had encouraged her to return because ‘you won’t believe the spirit of the autoworkers you 282
A journey through the crisis years saw down-and-done-for three years ago’.195 She described the picket lines at every entrance to the plant where workers sheltered in small huts against the cold from Lake Erie. The police were trying to pull them down. The quality of the strikers’ clothes was remarkable as were their many languages. The strike committee were turning the latter to their advantage. Every day a nationality took the responsibility to feed the strikers and this facilitated the participation of strikers’ wives. As ever, Wilkinson rendered women visible in struggles that she witnessed across the world. The neighbourhood church groups also contributed on their national days. Wilkinson arrived on Slovene day and a ‘large and prosperous matron’ who ‘embraced me expansively’ served her a ‘magnificent goulash’ from a giant cauldron. In this woman, Wilkinson saw the epitome of American labour’s future: whereas before ‘hoboes’ and ‘hunkies’ had launched strikes now even well-paid church-going workers participated in the movement. The scene fired her socialist imagination: ‘The efficiency of that kitchen cafeteria made me wonder why slave-driving foremen are considered necessary.’196 Wilkinson also travelled to Detroit, where – despite only 20% being unionised at the outset – the Cadillac and Chevrolet plants were striking. As a centre of craft unions hostile to industrial unionism, the situation was much tenser than Cleveland. As ‘the big news story’, Wilkinson wrote that she was ‘dashing off into the vortex’ of the strike.197 Auto town Flint was its centre. This was a pivotal moment in US labour history, leading to national collective bargaining in GM. She visited both the Cleveland sit-down, which had begun on 28 December, and the Flint one, which started two days later. Thirty-seven thousand strikers were able to halt production across GM’s seventeen plants, leaving its 130,000 employees idle as a result. On 11 January, workers took part in a pitched battle to prevent the eviction of the Fischer no. 2 plant, with the police using tear gas.198 Yet, it was the capture of the Chevrolet no. 4 plant, GM’s largest factory on 1 February (to which Wilkinson referred) that proved the decisive turning point. Having been told that ‘no woman would be allowed in among such fierce and terrible men’, Wilkinson gained access to the Flint Fischer Body no. 1 plant. She was hauled through a first floor window (because company security guards controlled the ground floor).199 Evidently told the story from inside the plant, Wilkinson vividly recounted the strikers’ battle with the police and the vigilantes using nuts, bolts and high-pressure lacquer sprays. She found the great plant’s eerie silence, organisation and cleanliness remarkable. After her speech, sitting in a half-built car, she was eagerly questioned about England, Hitler, Spain and Léon Blum. Life magazine’s photographer captured an animated Wilkinson enthralling her audience of GM sit-in strikers.200 She called 283
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson the strikers ‘heroes’ and the representatives of the company ‘economic royalists’. For Daily Herald readers, she described the wave of unionisation as the ‘miracle of Michigan’ with the loss of human control over modern production as its cause.201 A new type of brainy workers’ leader using the sit-in tactic was organising the strikes. The sit-in was the ‘nemesis of mass production’, frustrating all the employers’ trusted weapons: the spy system, vigilantes, tear gas and company loyalty oaths. Wilkinson attended an all-night sit-in strikers’ committee meeting. The Chevrolet no. 4 plant – the last local plant still working – would determine the outcome of the strikes. The police would certainly use violence against the strikers. Flint was also full of vigilantes saying Chevrolet no. 4 must not stop. The committee were young and decision-making was in local hands. Bud Simons was ‘straight from the bench and as fascinating an Irishman as ever slugged a scab for the good of his soul’.202 Bob Travis and Powers Hapgood left for three or four hours sleep before the picketing the following morning. When Wilkinson returned to the Dresden Hotel, she overheard National Guard officers saying ‘Of course, if there’s trouble tomorrow, we must get Bob Travis’, and she added: ‘And I knew what “get” means in an American strike.’203 She reflected: As I stood by my window looking down on the frozen street I thought of all the men of my generation and younger, Mairin [sic] and de Pablo shot in Spain with thousands of others, André tortured and axed in Hamburg, Nehru in India, brave Antikainen with his life sentence in Finland, and then ‘We must get Bob Travis.’ The class war is being fought relentlessly across the world – and yet Labour having to allow the national armaments to be piled up. Perhaps it is good for a Labour politician to stay only in his own country. There one can live happily in blinkers and concentrate on pension cases. Perhaps one can see too much.
Within a few days, the final settlement was signed on 11 February and had a dramatic effect. The Union of Auto Workers went from 88,000 members in February to 400,000 in October and in that year there were 477 sit-downs, involving 400,000 workers. On her return to Britain, Wilkinson was subject once again to considerable sniping for her absence. After her trip to Spain in the spring, John Shaw of the Sunderland Conservative Association publicly said that she was everywhere apart from Jarrow. There was also disquiet about her travels within local Labour ranks.204 She felt it necessary to defend her record, giving an interview in the local press and justifying herself in her own journalism. She observed that while her Conservative predecessor Pearson did not hold public meetings other than at election time, she had, since being elected, held one public meeting every three weeks. She rebuked her accusers for their insularity and remarked that Conservative MPs also travel but largely to the Riviera or Miami 284
A journey through the crisis years beach on luxurious holidays, rather than attempt to understand what was going on in the world.205 She countered that those MPs who ignored foreign affairs were the ‘most useless’ type and that the world was ‘too closely knit these days for that kind of parochial outlook’.206
The Town That Was Murdered (1939) In Wilkinson’s last book, The Town That Was Murdered, just as she always connected her travels to domestic politics, so she situated her constituency of Jarrow within a global crisis of capitalist modernity. This sought to demonstrate how capitalism can ‘sweep away the livelihood of a whole town overnight, in the interest of one powerful group, who need take no account of the social consequences of their decision’. Jarrow underwent the life-cycle of origins, the rise of capitalist industry and rationalisation after the First World War. She applied her training as a historian to produce a brilliant polemical against unemployment and poverty under capitalism. In her view, the text was neither a guide book nor a complete history of the town, but a ‘biography with a thesis’ or a ‘life history of Jarrow’. Written for the Left Book Club (LBC), she encouraged local LBC groups to study their own town in like fashion. She viewed Jarrow with its strike movements and its martyrs as ‘an illustrated footnote to British working-class history’.207 Written in a race to finish before Hitler launched war, the book is a remarkable feat of research.208 She avoided parochial narrowness by situating Jarrow globally and in terms of epochal social formations. Her history of Jarrow stressed the town’s Roman origins and its openness to Continental influence at the time of Bede, the pirate raids and the Norman Conquest: Jarrow was a ‘centre of learning known throughout Europe’; the Gregorian calendar was introduced to England via its scholars; and its missionaries were vital to the Christianisation of the Germanic peoples.209 The monks of Jarrow struggled to maintain the memory of Bede, overshadowed by the powerful Bishop of Durham, until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1540 when Henry VIII expropriated their monastic manor and handed it to Lord Eure. The Town That Was Murdered examined Jarrow’s first phase of capitalism: the expansion of the north Durham coalfield in the early nineteenth century. The employers – as they continued to do in the 1930s – shunned regulation, proper drainage and did everything in their power to underpay the miners, through low wages, fines and other means. The miners were hired via the archaic custom of the annual bond which tied them to an employer for an agreed wage and a cottage. Locating the oppression of the mining population in a contemporary and anti-imperialist comparison, the coal owners, the Anglican hierarchy and the magistrates 285
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson wielded power in county Durham and they acted ‘in a continual state of panic, as though they were surrounded by hordes of savages’.210 During the 1832 and 1844 strikes in the Durham coalfield, this local ruling elite used the same language and techniques of class warfare that the Colonial Secretary was using against Uriah Butler’s striking Trinidadian oil workers in her day. Shot through with subtle contemporary references, Wilkinson noted the phoney sympathy of the mine owners for slaves in America and their callousness with regard to atrocities in their own pits ‘a habit the English still maintain to the annoyance of other nations’. She reconstructed the coalfield’s disputes through her familiar trope of the humble anonymous heroes of which movements are made. A materialist approach and organic metaphor underpinned her analysis of those heroes. Solidarity and class struggle did not come from theory but practical necessity: ‘The courage that was born of facing death daily in the slaughter-pits of this period was need by the leaders, who were grown in the ranks of the miners.’211 They faced victimisation, persecution and historical oblivion. In a sense, The Town That Was Murdered sought to revive and transcribe working-class oral culture of Jarrow’s past for one generation just as Alan Plater’s Close the Coalhouse Door (1968) did for the following one. Bringing together the past and the present, Wilkinson turned to personal anecdote to conclude the chapter on ‘Jarrow Colliery and its Martyrs’. Visiting miner’s leader Thomas Hepburn’s grave in St Mary’s Church, Heworth, she encountered an old man sitting in the sun. He reflected on Hepburn’s heroic virtues that belonged, he believed, to a bygone era. The Jarrow MP replied that a local lad called Jobling had recently died in Spain with the International Brigade. The old man agreed ‘perhaps there are working-class heroes today, too’.212 After the closure of Jarrow’s colliery, the rise of Palmer’s shipyard signalled Jarrow’s great capitalist revival. Charles Mark Palmer was initially a colliery manager with John Bowes, becoming a partner in 1847. Through developing the steam-powered iron ship to reduce transport costs and overcome sail’s dependence upon the weather, Palmer saved the London market for the north-east coalfield and laid the basis for iron shipbuilding on the Tyne. The first of these ships the John Bowes was launched in 1852. Palmer also helped to pioneer naval armour-plating with his ‘iron clad’ ships. As the business expanded, Palmer sought to integrate the shipbuilding process ‘from ore to the finished ship’, locating blast furnaces, and then rolling mills on his Jarrow premises. With expansion, the nature of the business underwent a transformation facilitated by changes in company law and limited liability; from being a personally owned business animated by a ‘man of enterprise’ 286
A journey through the crisis years it became a joint stock company possessed by wealthy shareholders outside Jarrow. In 1865, Palmer’s Shipbuilding and Iron Company was floated on the stock market. Palmer received a personal fortune, shares in the new company, an annual salary and remained the chairman until 1893 when he retired. The company acquired an injection of new capital for investment but it did mean that control of the works was in the last analysis no longer in Palmer’s hands. During Jarrow’s new phase of capitalism, its population leapt from 3,500 in 1851 to 33,000 in 1891. Its local government was a ‘committee of local grafters’ and Jarrow’s new inhabitants were victim to speculative builders. In 1874, the parliamentary division of Jarrow was established and Palmer became its first MP, retaining the seat until his death. Challenging the image of Palmer cultivated over the decades as a great benefactor, Wilkinson observed that he saw no obligation to provide his company town with decent housing or social amenities. There was no water supply until 1864. This was the ‘pirate period of nineteenth century capitalism’ with squalor, epidemics and slums. The Town That Was Murdered charted the development of Jarrow during its half century as a company town. Skilled men from the Midlands and Irish labourers arrived during the good times of expansion. The town’s new phase of capitalist growth was chaotic and interrupted by ‘bad times’. During these, unemployment and hardship grew, families crowded together under the same roof and malnourishment increased. Ill health and epidemics of infectious diseases followed. Wilkinson presented a picture of a company able to exert local political control, pulling the strings of the local council. It used this influence to resist the increases in the rates necessary to improve health and education. The price was a ‘heavy toll of human sacrifice’ with above average death rates worsened by the absence of an infectious diseases isolation hospital and by inadequate sanitation in the town. Diarrhoea killed large numbers of children due to ‘privy middens’ (old-fashioned toilets). Palmer’s entered the First World War with debts and having skipped dividend payments. For Wilkinson, the war provided an object lesson in the deficiencies of capitalism with its competitive scramble between private interests. The government was forced to compensate for this with greater intervention through the appointment of controllers of shipping to coordinate with shipbuilders to maximise output. The war reversed the Jarrow shipbuilder’s fortunes: its debts were paid off, dividend arrears restored and profits soared. However, while Palmer’s was paying off its debts, other firms were accumulating sizeable reserves. At the same time, the war brought an influx of labour, overcrowding, rationing and food queues. Moreover, Jarrow was victim to an air raid in 1915 that targeted Palmer’s and cost lives in the machine and engine 287
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson shops. With her motif of memory and forgetting, Wilkinson reflected wistfully that when the yard was eventually closed and the machines sold for scrap, two ‘discoloured and corroding tablets’ still adorned the walls, commemorating the sacrifice of those killed in the air raid and those from Palmer’s who had died at the front. Wilkinson concluded the ‘fifty years of Palmerstown’ with war’s end. She evoked the town’s optimism that accompanied peace and victory. The knowing contrast and the devastating emotional reversal to come cleverly framed the reader’s sense of injustice at Jarrow’s decline. The story of Palmer’s after the war provided a telling indictment of the capitalist system. Wilkinson dramatised the hubris of the modern industrial colossus. The post-war period began with a boom during which the firm diversified into mining, constructing a new dock in Swansea and shareholding in engineering and ore-mining in Spain. The company thereby contracted debts which became a significant drain on future profits. Ship owners purchased ships during the boom because the freight rates were high and when these dropped, orders dried up. During the boom, the company rewarded shareholders with bonus dividends, encouraging new investors. Yet when the boom ended, so too did the dividends, and the small investors – including many of Palmer’s workers – lost their life’s savings when the clever money deserted the firm. For the workers, the acquisition of shares in Palmer’s was an investment in something real, in their own town and in their futures; it was inconceivable to them that this might fail. For the rich, Wilkinson observed, the motive was simply greed. Wilkinson emphasised that Palmer’s remained a sound shipbuilder with a high reputation that was able to secure its share of available work remaining the second largest shipbuilder on the Tyne. The vagaries of the financial side of its operations were the problem. Thus, private capitalism failed to safeguard an industry vital for the supply of foodstuffs or raw materials. Moreover, the defence of an island nation and a maritime Empire depended on shipbuilding in the face of the contemporary threat that fascism posed to international security. In making this last argument, The Town That Was Murdered disclosed Wilkinson’s drift from internationalism to national and imperial defence. Having presented the historical backdrop, Wilkinson then explained the closure of the yard. The industry set up the National Shipbuilders Security Ltd (NSS) to restore prices through cutting shipbuilding capacity. The NSS decision to close Palmer’s entailed a 40-year moratorium on shipbuilding at the yard. Wilkinson then recounted the cruel drama of the denial of a modern steelworks for Jarrow blocked by the steel industry and the banks. In a case that she rehearsed in public meetings the length of the Jarrow Crusade, big business in the shape of the 288
A journey through the crisis years organisations of steel and shipbuilding employers had conspired to ‘murder’ Jarrow. The consequences for the town were devastating. She carefully spelled out Jarrow’s social conditions: the inadequate relief, the difficulties for the council to raise money from the local rates, the exceptionally high maternal and infant mortality and slum housing. Connecting Jarrow’s story to the case for socialism, she concluded that, though profiteers might ravage a town and move on elsewhere, the workers remain: They were crowded into hovels, their children starved and died, and on their sacrifice great capital has been accumulated. It is now time that the workers took control of this country of ours. It is time that they planned it, organised it and developed it so that all might enjoy the wealth.213
Conclusion Wilkinson responded to the crisis of global capitalism during the 1930s with an engagement in anti-fascist and anti-capitalist social movements. Most notably, this meant work with transnational anti-fascist networks of solidarity and propaganda centred on Münzenberg and Katz in Paris and with protest movements of the unemployed in Britain. She liked to describe herself as a ‘practical politician’ and this shifting meaning of her self-understanding helps to explain her political itinerary. On one level, this meant being an activist and this consumed considerable amounts of her intellectual and emotional resources. Despite the trope of the indefatigable fighter, just as with social movements themselves, Wilkinson expended bursts energy and optimism in public followed by lethargy, recuperation, illness and moments of private despair. At another level, being a practical politician meant spurning political abstraction and sectarian dogma for effective communication of the injustices that could mobilise a mass movement. Much of Wilkinson’s journalism and oratory during this period should be understood as an ‘injustice frame’. Her sense of injustice against capitalism or fascism was communicated via recognisable and familiar language: of life and death, of everyday or personal experience, of heroes and martyrs. This rendered her journalism and oratory particularly effective and accessible. Her greatest achievement in this regard was undoubtedly The Town That Was Murdered. This was one of the most powerful indictments of capitalism of the 1930s, using the local to illustrate the global and the past to illuminate the present. Wilkinson’s experiences of the early 1930s furnished her with a renewed revolutionary outlook. The rise of fascism in Germany and across Europe brought about a second radicalisation of her political 289
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson thought. She once again talked explicitly of the need for revolution. Yet the grounds for this changed. In the early 1920s, Wilkinson impatiently condemned the futility of reformism, optimistically expecting imminent revolution, spreading from the youthful Soviet Union. In the 1930s, darker horizons of crisis, fascism and the threat of war rendered revolution necessary. Partly, this was premised upon her travels to the USA which provided the most dramatic illustration of modern capitalism and its failings, including that of a New-Deal style rescue. Her odyssey also traversed moments of hope and the revolutionary potential of mass mobilisation in Paris, Flint and Asturias. The events of the 1930s, however, loosened the moorings of Wilkinson’s second radicalisation. By the end of the decade, there was a marked drift in her ideas showing that her second radicalisation was a temporary phenomenon as she had to grapple with the great dilemmas that confronted activists who were against both fascism and war. For her and some of her circle, Spain became the principal terrain upon which this contradiction was played out.
Notes 1 Time and Tide, 16 April 1932. Ibid., 14 July 1934. 2 3 Gerd‐Rainer Horn, European Socialists Respond to Fascism: Ideology, Activism, and Contingency in the 1930s, New York, 1996. 4 Daily Sketch, 19 December 1930. Sheffield Mail, 9 February 1931. 5 6 Herald Post (Louisville, KY), 7 January 1931. 7 Aberdeen Evening Express, 12 February 1931; North Eastern Daily Gazette, 12 February 1931. 8 News (Detroit, Mich.), 28 January 1931 Labor’s News, 10 January 1931. News Chronicle, 20 January 1931. 9 10 Standard Union, 22 January 1931. 11 Cornish Post, 7 February 1931. 12 News (Baltimore), 26 January 1931. 13 Colonist (Victoria, British Canada), 27 January 1931; Chronicle Telegraph, 30 January 1931; Daily Star (Montreal), 16 February 1931. 14 Gazette (Vancouver), 5 February 1931. Patriot, 4 December 1930 and 19 February 1931. Using the same material, the Industrial Defence Association of Boston circulated Radical History of Miss Wilkinson, of England. 15 Labour’s News, 10 January 1931. 16 New Leader (USA), 10 January 1931. 17 News (Baltimore), 16 January 1931. 18 News (Limo, Ohio), 11 and 18 January 1931. Transcript, 10 January 1931. News (Detroit, Mich.), 25 January 1931; Free Press (Detroit, Mich.), 28 January 1931. 290
A journey through the crisis years 19 Evening Ledger, 24 January 1931; Enquirer, 25 January 1931. 20 Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 7 February 1931; Bristol Evening News, 7 February 1931. 21 Notts Evening News, 7 February 1931; Newcastle Sunday Sun, 8 February 1931. Daily Dispatch, 12 February 1931. 22 Daily Dispatch, 20 February 1931. 23 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 16 February 1931. 24 Time and Tide, 25 February 1933. 25 Glasgow Bulletin, 11 February 1925. Horsham Times, 2 March 1928. Manchester Guardian, 1 January 1931. 26 Stefan Berger, British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 1900–1931, Oxford, 1994, pp. 231–232. 27 Northern Daily Mail, 30 June 1932. 28 LPASC ID GER 7 11 Voigt to Wilkinson, n.d. 29 LPASC ID GER 7 3–5 Telegram Hilferding to Wilkinson, 27 June 1932; Telegram Breitscheid to Wilkinson, 28 June 1932; Telegram Voigt to Wilkinson, 30 June 1932. 30 Volksblatt, 16 July 1932. 31 LPASC ID GER 7 21 Copy of telegram Mary Sutherland to Crispien, 18 July 1932. Gillies wrote to Crispien on 15 July to notify him of the decision, LPASC ID GER 7 20 Gillies to Crispien, 15 July 1932. 32 Daily Herald, 22 July 1932. 33 Northern Daily Mail, 30 June 1932. 34 Conze, Memoirs of a Gnostic, p. 15. 35 Northern Daily Mail, 30 June 1932. For photographs of the trip, IISG (SPD) BG A30/603 Photograph of Wilkinson and Franz Künstler, 19 July 1932. IISG (SPD) BG B4/551 Text on the back: “Beauftragte der Labour Party zur Übereichung einer Fahne für die Eiserne Front. Berlin, 16 July 1932. IISG (SPD) BG A29/859 (Negative number I 370/14) Massenkundgebung in “Neue Welt”. Rudolf Breitscheid speaking and behind the table, Künstler and Wilkinson. 36 Léon Schirmann, L’Affaire du ‘Dimanche Sanglant d’Altona’: Autopsie d’un Crime Judiciaire organisé par des Magistrats 1932–1997, Paris, 1997, pp. 11–14. 37 The Star, 20 July 1932. 38 Thameside Mail, 2 February 1934. 39 Daily Herald, 22 July 1932. 40 The Star, 23 August 1932. 41 Labour Magazine, August 1932. 42 Time and Tide, 4 March 1933. 43 Stephen Koch, Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Münzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals, London, 1995. This argues that there was a degree of complicity between Stalin and Hitler and a pre-arranged deal was struck so that Dimitrov would be released. Sean McMeekin, The Red Millionaire: a Political Biography Of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar In The West, 1917–1940, New Haven, CT, 2003. Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from 291
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Lenin to Gorbachev, London, 1990. Fritz Tobias, The Reichstag Fire, New York, 1964. 44 So thought Hannen Swaffer, Daily Herald, 3 July 1933. 45 Arthur Koestler, Invisible Writing: an Autobiography, London, 1954, pp. 209–211. 46 Ibid., p. 198. 47 Bibliothèque Marxiste de Paris (BMP) FB Le Congres Mondiale Contre la Guerre Impérialiste [report], p. 20. 48 The Star, 15 December 1933. 49 New Statesman and Nation, 17 February 1947. 50 Clarion, 9 June 1934. 51 TNA KV2 1382 43 Letter Wilkinson to Ivor Montagu, 26 June 1933. 52 RUSC AP Wilkinson to Astor, 11 April [1933]. 53 LPASC NJC minutes, 23 May 1933. 54 LPASC NJC minutes, TUC GC press statement, 24 May 1933. 55 LPASC LP ID CI 26 7i Report of the Conference of the Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism, Essex Hall, 27 May 1933. 56 In an emergency resolution on fascist terror in Germany and Austria, Wilkinson was reflecting upon the division of the German left and the danger of fascism in Britain, Report of the 14th National Conference of Labour Women, West Hartlepool, 23–25 May 1933, London, 1933, p. 64. 57 Brackets in original. LPASC LP ID CI 26 7i Report of the Conference of the Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism, Essex Hall, 27 May 1933. 58 Time and Tide, 17 June 1933. 59 TNA KV2 1382 42a GML to Major V. Vivian, 23 June 1933. 60 World Committee for the Victims of German Fascism, The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag, London, 1933. 61 Koestler, Invisible Writing, p. 199. 62 Fritz Tobias, The Reichstag Fire, New York, 1963. 63 Hans Mommsen, ‘The Reichstag Fire and its Political Consequences’, in Hajo Holborn, Republic to Reich: The Making of the Nazi Revolution, New York, 1972, pp. 129–222. 64 Gustav Regler, The Owl of Minerva: the Autobiography of Gustav Regler, London, 1959, p. 164. On the division of labour of The Brown Book, JeanMichel Palmier, ‘Quelque remarques sur les techniques de propagande de Willi Münzenberg’, in Willi Münzenberg: un Homme Contre, Aix-enProvence, 1993, pp. 47–48. 65 RUSC AP Wilkinson to Astor, n.d. 66 TNA KV2 1382 43b letter Wilkinson to Katz, 27 June 1933. 67 Tribune, 14 February 1947. 68 Daily Herald, 1 and 3 July 1933. 69 LPASC LP ID CI 26 Notes of the meeting of the Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism, Kingsway Hall, 30 June 1933. 70 Daily Herald, 1 July 1933. At NUDAW’s ADM, she was to say, ‘I have seen lads like you with their eyeballs smashed by steel whips.’ Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), 10 August 1933. 292
A journey through the crisis years 71 TNA KV 2 1382 45c Extract: German Relief Meeting at Essex Hall 1 July 1933. 72 TNA KV 2 1382 46b Special Branch to MI5, 3 July 1933, pp. 2–3. She also attempted to lose the Special Branch tail on Katz’s next visit a month later. TNA KV 2 1382 52b Inspector’s report on Katz, 4 August 1933. 73 TNA KV 2 1382 46c Letter Wilkinson to Katz, 5 July 1933. She also spoke at the RCVGF meeting in Manchester on 29 July, Daily Worker, 27 July 1933. 74 The Star, 15 December 1933. 75 Time and Tide, 2 September 1933. 76 ‘Einstein is being held responsible by the Nazis [for The Brown Book]’ TNA KV 2 1382 62c MI5 to Home Office re Katz, 6 August 1933. Manchester Guardian, 16 September 1933. 77 LPASC LP ID CI 8 43 Labour Party, Communist Solar System, London, 1933, pp. 21–22. 78 Western Australian, 23 September 1933. 79 Manchester Guardian, 23 September 1933. 80 Völkischer Beobachter, 6 September 1933, 11 September 1933, 12 September 1933, 14 September 1933. 81 News Chronicle, 1 September 1933. 82 Anon, Reichstag Fire Trial: the Second Brown Book of the Hitler Terror, London, 1934, p. 31. 83 LPACR, 1933, pp. 142. 84 Ibid., pp. 221. 85 Völkischer Beobachter, 16 September 1933. For confusion amongst NSDAP chiefs, Hans Mommsen, ‘The Reichstag Fire and its Political Consequences’, in Hajo Holborn (ed.), Republic to Reich; the Making of the Nazi Revolution; Ten essays. New York, 1972, p. 130. 86 LPASC LP ID CI 13 7 Wilkinson to Gillies, 12 September 1933; LP ID CI 13 14 Wilkinson and Montagu, 18 December 1933. University of Illinois Library Wilkinson to H.G. Wells, 8 September 1933. 87 IISG Albert Grzesinski Paper Correspondence 167 Paris office of the Reichstag fire commission letter to Grzesinski, 11 September 1933 and Wilkinson letter of invitation as a guest of honour to Grzesinski, 12 September 1933. 88 Time and Tide, 25 August 1934. 89 Ibid., 1 September 1934. 90 Koestler, Invisible Writing, p. 200. 91 Anon, Reichstag Fire Trial, pp. 32–38. Although he had coldly refused to cooperate with the Commission in December 1933, TNA KV2 688 minute sheet, 28 December 1933, reporting on a letter from Wilkinson to Katz. 92 Helen Bagiscowa, or Dimitrova visited Stafford Cripps and Wilkinson mid-November 1933, TNA KV2 688, minute sheet entry, 16 November 1933. Wilkinson spoke alongside her in Kingsway Hall on 17 November, Daily Worker, 16 November 1933. 93 Daily Herald, 8 September 1933. 94 TNA KV 2 1382 69c Letter Wilkinson to Isabel Brown, 22 September 1933. 293
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 95 TNA KV2 1664 11a Port of Dover Special Branch report, 15 September 1933; Special Branch report, 16 November 1933. 96 BLPES Lansbury Papers MF364 Wilkinson to Lansbury, 2 January 1934. 97 TNA KV2 1664 40 Colonel Sir Vernon Kell to Holderness (Passport Control Office), 16 July 1934. 98 Anon, Reichstag Fire Trial, p. 244. 99 Wilkinson was in Hungary in mid-August 1933, returning via Milan, Geneva, Paris, McMaster University Archives George Catlin papers (MUA GC) Wilkinson to Catlin, 16 August 1933. 100 MUA GC Wilkinson to Catlin, 29 December 1933. 101 The Star, 10 January 1934. 102 LPASC LP ID CI 29 14 translation of Völkischer Beobachter report on the Labour Party Conference. Time and Tide, 21 July 1934. On a black list for German occupation, SS-General Walter Schellenberg, Invasion 1940: the Nazi Invasion Plan for Britain, London, 2000. 103 Koestler, Invisible Writing, p. 206. 104 Ellen Wilkinson, The Terror in Germany (London, n.d.), p.4. She wrote another pamphlet, LPASC LP ID 26 27 Wilkinson, German Relief: Feed the Children: What Is Being Done to Relieve the Victims of the Fascist Regime (London, n.d. [1933]). 105 Wilkinson, Terror, p.19. 106 Wilkinson, Terror, p.20. 107 BMP FB 58 5 686 Amsterdam-Pleyel secretariat, compte rendu, 1–15 January 1934. TNA KV2 1384 97b Marley to Gilmour, 19 April 1934; TNA KV2 1384 97a Marley to Münzenberg, 19 April 1934. 108 Daily Worker, 23 January 1934. 109 Thameside Mail, 2 February 1934. 110 Charmian Brinson, The Strange Case of Dora Fabian and Mathilde Wurm, Berne, 1997. 111 TNA KV2 1384 105 Special Branch surveillance report, 24 April 1934. 112 TNA KV2 1384 105 Special Branch surveillance report, 25 April 1934. 113 TNA KV2 1384 125a Wilkinson to Lord Lothian, 11 July 1934. 114 Time and Tide, 7 December 1935. 115 The Star, 27 May 1932. 116 Francis Meynell, My Lives, London, 1971, p. 188. 117 Grete Fischer, Dienstboten, Brecht und andere: Zeitgenossen in Prag, Berlin, London, Olten, 1966, pp. 250–255, 270–273 and 306–309. Bertha Bracey of the Society of Friends’ German Emergency Committee recalled a distressed Wilkinson seeing her about German refugees. NUSC TDWR Bracey to Reid, 8 September 1975. 118 Time and Tide, 22 October 1938. Clarion, 14 April 1934. 119 Clarion, 12 May 1934. 120 James G. MacDonald, Advocate for the Doomed: The Diaries and Papers of James G. MacDonald, 1932–1935, Bloomington, IN, 2007, p. 225. 121 Time and Tide, 7 July 1934. 122 Ibid., 21 July 1934. 123 The Star, 24 July 1934. 294
A journey through the crisis years 124 125 126 127
Daily Worker, 1 August 1933. Time and Tide, 7 October 1933. NUSC TDWR Wilkinson to Mitchison, 16 September [1932]. NUSC TDWR Philip Gaudin to Reid, 1 July 1974. The event took place in 1933 or 1934. 128 Fight, August 1934. Other signatories were Pritt, Maxton, Marley, Strachey, Professor Levy, Reginald Reynolds, and Naomi Mitchison. 129 TNA MEPO 2 3074 Daily Telegraph, 23 August 1934. 130 The Star, 8 August 1933. 131 James Drennan, BUF: Oswald Mosley and British Fascism, London, 1934. 132 Time and Tide, 3 March 1934. 133 Greenock Telegraph, October 1936. 134 Emanuel Shinwell, I’ve Lived Through It All, London, 1973, p. 28. 135 LPASC LP ID CI 26 7i Report of the Conference of the Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism, Essex Hall, 27 May 1933. 136 LPASC LP Executive minutes, 28 June 1933. 137 LPASC LP Executive minutes, 6 September 1933. 138 LPASC LP ID CI 27 2 ii David to Wilkinson, 28 September 1933. 139 LPASC LP ID CI 27 2 i Juchacz to Jennie Adamson, 30 September 1933. 140 LPASC LP NEC minutes, International Sub-Committee minutes, 11 October 1933. LP ID CI 27 2 iv Assistant secretary to Wilkinson, 12 October 1933. 141 LPASC LP ID CI 27 3 Annie Wilkinson to Middleton, 17 October 1933. 142 LPASC LP ID CI 27 4 i Wilkinson to Middleton, 21 October 1933. 143 LPASC LP ID CI 27 5 i Middleton to Dr Fr Adler, 6 November 1933. 144 LPASC LP NEC minutes, International Sub-Committee minutes, 7 December 1933. 145 LPASC LP Executive minutes, 20 December 1933. 146 TNA KV2 1384 135 Isabel Brown to Katz, n.d. August 1934. 147 TNA KV2 1384 134a Wilkinson to Katz, n.d., Tuesday August 1934. 148 TNA KV2 1384 133b and c Wilkinson to Isabel Brown, 14 August 1934. 149 LPACR, 1934, pp. 12–13. 150 Ibid., pp. 137–138. 151 Bernard Donoughue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician, London, 1973, p. 227. 152 LPASC LP ID CI 26 press cutting, title of paper unknown, 22 September 1934. 153 Manning, A Life for Education, p. 108. 154 LPASC Arthur Henderson’s letter cited in the Labour Party NEC minutes, 28 December 1934. 155 LPASC LP NEC, International Sub-Committee, 26 November 1934. 156 Sunday Chronicle, 16 December 1934. 157 LPASC LP WG SPA 56 Ernest Robinson to Middleton, 15 November 1934. 158 LPASC LP WG SPA 57 i Assistant secretary to Ernest Robinson, 17 November 1934. 159 LPASC LP WG SPA 58 Ernest Robinson to Middleton, 17 November 1934. 160 LPASC LP WG SPA 59 Ernest Robinson to Middleton, 19 November 1934. 295
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 161 With W.A. Robinson, Mrs Adamson, Attlee, Joseph Compton, George Dallas, Hugh Dalton, George Lathan, W.R. Smith, Arthur Henderson, Jim Middleton and William Gillies attending. 162 LPASC LP NEC, 28 November 1934. 163 Labour Magazine, December 1934. 164 USDAW NUDAW executive council minutes, 16 December 1934. 165 USDAW Industrial General Secretary’s report to NUDAW executive council, 13 January 1935. 166 USDAW Industrial General Secretary’s ‘Report on Miss Wilkinson’s Work for the Year 1934’ to NUDAW executive council, 14 April 1935. 167 LPASC LP NEC minutes, 4 September 1935. Thus, Woodman provided prefaces for a number of Editions du Carrefour publications, including one dated 1 September 1934, for Hitler treibt zum Krieg: Dokumentarische Enthuellungen ueber Hitlers Geheimruestungen, Paris, 1934. Also, Hitlers Luftflotte startbereit. Enthüllungen über den tatsächlichen Stand der Hitlerschen Luftrüstungen, Paris, 1935. 168 Canberra Times, 6 April 1935. 169 Including Velcheff and Stancheff (Bulgarians with death sentences commuted to life imprisonment), Edgar André executed in November 1936, the Stuttgart anti-fascist Liselotte Hermann who was executed in June 1938, the former Reichstag deputy Robert Stamm and Adolf Rembte executed in November 1937, and Ernst Thälmann, Manchester Guardian, 4 March, 26 June, 13 October 1936, 3 September and 6 November 1937. NUSC TDWR DCL 5 1 Ronald Kidd to Wilkinson, 24 November 1937; Wilkinson to Kidd, 26 November 1937. 170 Letter to Manchester Guardian, 3 September 1935. Gloucestershire Echo, 12 August 1935. Daily Worker, 31 October 1935. 171 Time and Tide, 21 September 1935. 172 BCSC AvT III V H313 Hubback to von Trott, 5 March 1936; National Library of Scotland, Special Collections, ACC5120 additional papers box 4 (10) draft article on Finland, n.d. 173 BCSC AvT III V H313 Hubback to von Trott, 10 April 1936. H317 Hubback to von Trott, 3 June 1936. Hubback, Memoir, p. 75. 174 TNA KV2 1384 161 Isabel Brown to Katz, 24 May 1935. 175 Wilkinson had already written in July 1934 to Katz ‘surprised at his tone’ in a letter to her over funds. TNA KV2 1384 131 Wilkinson to Katz, 27 July 1934. TNA KV2 1384 160c Wilkinson to Katz, n.d., c. early May 1935. 176 TNA KV2 1384 394 report from Southampton, 7 March 1946. In February 1944, Katz cabled Wilkinson for a visa for Trinidad on his journey to a conference in Montevideo, and the latter considered him to be a ‘reliable and trustworthy individual and a true friend of the allied cause’, TNA KV 2 1384 366c K.P. Witney (Ministry of Home Security) to Mrs Beamish, 12 February 1944. Wilkinson also looked into the case of Bruno Frei (Benedikt Freistadt) after a request from Katz, TNA KV2 1384 333b Rudolf Feistmann to Jürgen Kuczynski, 6 June 1941. 177 TNA KV2 1384 125a Wilkinson to Katz, 11 July 1934.
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A journey through the crisis years 178 R. Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, London, 1934, p. 82. David Beetham (ed.), Marxists in Face of Fascism: Writings by Marxists on Fascism from the Inter-war Period, Manchester, 1983, pp. 157–160 and 179–186. 179 Wilkinson and Edward Conze, Why Fascism? London, 1934, p. 317. 180 Independent Woman, March 1935. NUDAW Industrial General Secretary’s Reports, 15 April 1934. 181 New Dawn, 9 March 1935. Living Age, May 1935. 182 Syracuse Herald [press cuttings], n.d.[1935]. 183 Sunday Referee, 16 February 1936. 184 Daily Herald, 1 November 1945. 185 New Dawn, 4 April 1936. 186 Advocate, 7 July 1936. 187 BCSC AvT III V H313 Hubback to von Trott, 29 February 1936. 188 BCSC AvT III V H313 Hubback to von Trott, 11 March 1936 189 Les Femmes dans l’action mondiale, June 1936. 190 Time and Tide, 17 July 1937. 191 Also reporting on the Parisian department store occupiers, VU, 17 June 1936. 192 Patricia Latour, Le 36 des Femmes, Paris, 2006, p. 230. 193 Manchester Guardian, 29 August 1938. 194 Sunday Sun, 21 February 1937. 195 New Dawn, 20 March 1937. 196 Daily Herald, 16 February 1937. 197 Time and Tide, 13 February 1937. 198 Roger Keeran, The Communist Party and the Auto Workers’ Unions, New York, 1986, pp. 148–184. See also, Michael Torrigan, ‘Occupation of the Factories: Paris 1936, Flint 1937’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 14, 2 (1999), pp. 324–347. 199 Time and Tide, 20 February 1937. 200 Life Magazine, 15 February 1937. 201 Daily Herald, 16 February 1937. 202 Daily Herald, 16 February 1937. 203 New Dawn, 20 March 1937. 204 Jarrow Labour Party Records, Hebburn Labour Women’s Section Minutes, 20 July 1937. 205 Sunday Sun, 30 May 1937. 206 New Dawn, 27 June 1936. 207 Ellen Wilkinson, The Town That Was Murdered: the Life Story of Jarrow, London, 1939, pp. 7–9. 208 She had some assistance from George Bishop (who was working with her on Spanish work) regarding the chapters on shipping and iron and steel. Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library Princeton University (SGMML) Louis Fischer Papers (LF) Box 13 folder 16 Wilkinson to Louis Fischer, 14 January 1939. 209 Wilkinson, Town, pp. 11–12. 210 Ibid., p. 20.
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 211 Ibid., p. 28. 212 Ibid., p. 41. William Jobling was gibbetted during the miners’ strike of 1832. 213 Ibid., p. 284.
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7 ‘The hope of the world’: Spain in revolution and war, 1933–39
Wilkinson visited the Iberian Peninsula on at least six occasions in the 1930s. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), the young Second Republic became an international cause célèbre and a focus of a major campaign for the British left. As Wilkinson had predicted at the time, the Spanish tragedy foreshadowed the Second World War. Conscious of the transnational threat of fascism, Wilkinson’s interest in Spain preceded its war and had a profound effect upon her. Since many key participants in the Spanish drama were personal acquaintances, few in the Labour Party were as familiar with Spanish matters as her. When Irene de Falcón, the future secretary of Dolores Ibárruri, interviewed Wilkinson, the latter described herself as an admirer of Spain, its food and remarked that she had set a passage in her novel in Martinez, the Spanish restaurant.1 In these tumultuous years, Wilkinson found her involvement in Spanish events a ‘tremendous stimulant’, an intoxication brought on by ‘continual danger’ and ‘the sense of being with people who knew what they were fighting for’. On leaving this arena, she noted ‘the curious feeling of deflation and depression’.2 The Spanish Civil War has lingered in the institutional memory of the British Labour movement.3 Sections of the British left celebrated those who volunteered to fight for the Republic and commemorated those who fell. Estimates put the figure of those who volunteered from across the world to fight for the Republic at 35,000; roughly 2,500 of these were from the UK and of that number between 500 and 600 died.4 The role of the Labour movement has generated a historical debate over whether the Spanish solidarity movement constituted a grassroots Popular Front and also over the Labour movement’s commitment to the Spanish cause.5 Tom Buchanan has challenged the idea of a Labour betrayal of the Spanish republic. He attempted to show that Labour leaders such as Citrine, Bevin and Dalton operated according to various institutional pressures and did not simply callously disregard the Spanish Republicans. In particular, the Labour leadership had to take
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson seriously the hostility of some Catholic voters to the Republic. Secondly, Spanish solidarity did not constitute a coherent national movement or a Popular Front. Thirdly, the normative dimension of Popular Front strategy conceals its weaknesses (the depoliticisation of Spanish support attendant on cross-class respectability) and renders unambiguous its moral project (overlooking its entanglements with Stalinism). Lewis Mates underlines some of this analysis, illustrating the significance of the official Labour response. He carefully explored local Catholic reactions within the movement. Where Jarrow was concerned, it combined two interesting features: on one hand, a very high proportion of Catholics within Wilkinson’s constituency (who was the north-east’s most outspoken parliamentary supporter of the Republic) and, on the other, it was the area with the least evidence of a Catholic backlash against Labour over Spain.6 Wilkinson’s work for Spain illuminates these historiographical controversies on three grounds: she came to sponsor the Popular Front strategy; she worked within the higher echelons of the movement to change its outlook; and she was committed to grassroots mobilisation. Wilkinson’s role in Spain has drawn some scholarly interest. Wilkinson was one of Angela Jackson’s sample of British women active in the Spanish conflict. Using analysis based on the dynamics of this cohort, Jackson identified Wilkinson’s relationship with her father, her childhood illness, her religion, her suffrage background, her concerns about poverty and unemployment as prompts to involvement in the Spanish cause.7 Hugo Garcia has dismissed her visits to Spain during the war as ‘war tourism’ on the grounds that she was trapped in cultural stereotypes and incapable of genuine understanding of the situation.8 These assessments leave a significant part of Wilkinson’s Spanish involvement unexplained. Spain certainly contributed to the radical mystique around Wilkinson but it also affords opportunities for a deeper comprehension of her political evolution. Mates stressed that Wilkinson’s relationship with the Communist Party was ‘ambiguous and highly complex’.9 Spain helps us to explore the nature of that complexity.
Trip to Madrid for RCVGF, July 1933 Wilkinson’s first trip to Spain in July 1933 was under RCVGF auspices to establish a Spanish section. Arriving on 8 July by train, Lord Marley and the French anti-war novelist Henri Barbusse accompanied her. Barbusse’s celebrity ensured media interest and he gave several major interviews to the Spanish press. One periodical used the occasion to write a full feature on Barbusse, who they described as the French don Quixote, ‘the great defender of all those who suffer injustice’.10 If the 300
Spain in revolution and war media glare focused on the French author, the Spanish press did take some interest in the former British MP. The Heraldo de Madrid reproduced her touching declaration of admiration for Spain.11 Two days later, Ogier Petreicelle of El Socialista interviewed the three visitors. This took place in an artist’s studio with a cooling breeze from the mountains. Wilkinson and Marley outlined the character and work of the RCVGF.12 The ‘battling socialist parliamentarian’ explained the nature of the terror in Germany citing the use of steel whips and the harrowing case of the revolutionary poet Erich Mühsam, who died in a Nazi camp.13 Anticipating press criticism, she stressed that the Relief Committee was not a Communist front. One indicator of RCVGF’s work – she observed – was the Brown Book’s impact, which provided detailed proof of the regime’s brutality, in contrast to the uncritical, even sympathetic, coverage in much of the European press. For instance, El Debate described Hitler’s government as possessing ‘renovating moral and spiritual values’. She believed that German events were a warning to Spanish workers. The interview then turned to the situation in the British Labour movement. Beyond these press interviews, the other major function of the trip was to launch the Spanish section of the RCVGF. The key Spanish figure in this project was Dr Luis Jimenez de Asúa of the Comité hispano antifascista. The public meeting took place at 7.30pm on 10 July in Madrid’s El Ateneo. Asúa chaired the meeting at which Barbusse, Wilkinson, Marley and Professor of Philosophy Luis Recaséns Siches spoke. The Spanish section’s committee was announced with personalities stretching across shades of centre and left opinion. For example, Wilkinson recalled meeting the celebrated – by then Communist – poet Rafael Alberti on the trip.14 In her speech, she indicated how happy she was to be in Spain and amongst so many young people. She related her experiences of visiting Germany both the previous summer and recently, warning how Hitler’s victory had resulted from the divisions of the German left. A sketch in La Cronica evoked a heroic image of Wilkinson with her arm in a black sling, the other outstretched towards the audience in impassioned appeal.15 Despite vitriolic hostility from Spanish right-wing newspapers, the visitors must have considered the trip a success given the illustrious sponsors including Prime Minister Manuel Azaña and President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora.16 In the longer term, however, this promising launch led only to the occasional fundraising event.
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson The Asturian ‘red October’ 1934: the first check to fascism Wilkinson made a second trip to Spain on behalf of the RCVGF (or ‘Friends of the New Spain’) with Lord Listowel in November 1934. It occurred in the aftermath of the Asturian miners’ insurrection and the brutal repression of the miners at the hands of the authorities.17 In particular, it was the murder of the Madrid journalist Luis Sirval that sparked international attention. According to the socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs during the Spanish Civil War, Julio Álvarez del Vayo, ‘we’ (without specifying who he meant by ‘we’) asked for a foreign commission to investigate the repression and that it was composed of Wilkinson, Listowel and Sonia Branting, daughter of the former Prime Minister of Sweden. Álvarez del Vayo insisted that the visit prepared the way for international solidarity with the Spanish left.18 Indeed, the first suggestion that Wilkinson should involve herself in such a visit came from Elena Stasova – Lenin’s former secretary – who had recently been a Soviet delegate to the World Congress of Women against Fascism and War.19 Alongside Wilkinson on the tour was William Hare, the Fifth Earl of Listowel who supported the Labour Party and was to become Secretary of State for India and Burma at the time of independence. Aristocrats (Marley, Listowel and Atholl) accompanied Wilkinson on three of her trips to Spain. Organised in conjunction with Katz and Isabel Brown, the latter noted that ‘titled names always count’ as she put together delegations to Spain.20 Although much of the press coverage focused on the British political figures, Katz, the Comintern agent, and Association Juridique Internationale lawyer Bourthoumieux also accompanied the delegation. The miners had risen in response to the formation of a centre-right coalition government that included José María Gil Robles of the CEDA (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas). Gil Robles admired Hitler and had visited Germany to study NSDAP methods and propaganda.21 After events in Germany and Austria, Spanish workers feared Gil Robles as an Iberian Hitler or Mussolini. Wilkinson explained the ‘clerico-fascist’ Gil Robles as a ‘limited company’ in which the ‘military, the Jesuits and the big banks’ were the shareholders.22 Though short of rifles, with their catapults and sticks of dynamite, the Asturian miners (‘dinamiteros’) were a formidably militant force. Their slogan ‘UHP’, ‘Unite, Proletarian Brothers!’ was a reaction against the disunity in Germany the year before. Wilkinson wholeheartedly approved of their united front embodied in the Workers’ Alliances.23 She believed that the Asturian ‘red October’ illustrated the desire among the ranks of the European labour movement to prevent fascism by their own 302
Spain in revolution and war actions, and that constitutions afforded no safeguard. For Wilkinson, the Asturian October signified the ‘first “halt”’ to the ‘sweep of Fascism across the continent’, thereby challenging the ‘tide of defeatist opinion’. Following her analysis in Why Fascism? published days before leaving for Spain, Asturias confirmed that fascism could only ultimately be defeated by insurrection and the establishment of workers’ power. The Asturian miners’ defeat stemmed from factors beyond their own control. They had liberated their own region from the rule of the assault guards and the mine owners. Power was briefly in their hands. To humble the Asturian commune, it took four battle-hardened columns of the Foreign Legion and the Army of Africa with heavy artillery and air support. According to Wilkinson, anarchist leaders had sabotaged the revolt, despite ‘the magnificent working-class material’ in their unions. The CNT had become, she maintained, ‘excessively bureaucratic and politically corrupt’ and the members were ‘victims of … an old fashioned and out-worn political creed’.24 Her lack of sympathy for the anarchist position, despite her prior connections with syndicalism, is noteworthy in the light of subsequent events during the Spanish Civil War. The Asturian Workers’ Alliance believed that the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) would coordinate nationwide insurrection.25 Having turned sharply to the left under Largo Caballero’s leadership, the party’s executive had agreed to such action in the event of Gil Robles’s inclusion in government. It had done this, however, without due consideration of the tactical implications, not least the stance of other workers’ organisations, particularly the mass anarchist trade union, the CNT. In Asturias, the local CNT joined in the Workers’ Alliance but this was not the case elsewhere. Outside Asturias, the call for revolution misfired. Madrid witnessed some strike activity and there was a rebellion in Catalonia, where Wilkinson observed that the anarchists abandoned the movement to the ‘bourgeois-separatist’ leadership. Consequently, the government repressed the movement outside Asturias with ease and Largo Caballero found himself in jail alongside thousands of his comrades.26 In spring 1935, Wilkinson reflected on the events: ‘Their stand was very nearly successful in important areas of Spain, and though defeated, it may yet have important political consequences.’27 Wilkinson and Listowel first travelled to Madrid, arriving on 9 November 1934. According to Time magazine, the British Ambassador Sir George Grahame implored them to leave Spain.28 Instead, Wilkinson met an American foreign correspondent Jay Allen. She recalled her evening with the ‘handsome oddity’ Allen sampling the ‘most perfect Manzanilla’ and eating tapas (‘little hot cooked tit-bit in an earthenware dish’). Allen had recently been released from prison after he had harboured Juan Negrín, Luis Araquistáin, Álvarez del Vayo, Llopis, and the 303
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Asturian miners’ leader Amador Fernández in his Madrid flat between 8 and 10 October.29 He was risking re-arrest ‘for three strangers who had blown in with just an introduction from a colleague in Paris’.30 Despite the repression, she and Allen went into the bars of Madrid’s backstreets, speaking to printers, transport workers and building workers. She enthusiastically reported their expectation of revolution; that there would be a ‘next time’ was taken for granted. These workers spoke in high spirits of reaching the peasants and the syndicalists.31 The delegation went to the Modelo prison during the lunchtime visiting hour. Mass arrests had filled the Modelo with political prisoners without formal charges. Amongst them was Petreicelle, who had interviewed Wilkinson on her previous visit. He had been interrogated and beaten with rubber truncheons.32 She also saw Largo Caballero, Araquistáin and Giner de los Rios.33 Wilkinson admired Largo Caballero as ‘a great personality’ who Spanish workers trusted implicitly.34 However, she did suspect that age had made him overly hesitant leading to the revolution’s failure.35 Going to the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, accompanied by the PSOE deputy Lejárraga de Martínez Sierra, they had an hour’s interview with premier Lerroux. Wilkinson wrote of her (perhaps feigned) sympathy for his situation, presiding over a troublesome coalition. The army’s Asturian atrocities were his ‘skeleton in the cupboard’. With the world now asking questions, he pretended that that he had nothing to hide, providing Wilkinson and Listowel with a letter of introduction for their mission.36 Inside the chamber of deputies, the Carlist José Maria Lamamié de Clairac asked the speaker if he was aware of the presence of the British delegation, which he deemed to be a humiliating national affront. Lamamié de Clairac wished to make an ‘energetic and virile protest’.37 The President of the Chamber, the Duke of Alba, replied to Lamamié de Clairac that the British pair had visited him and he had denied them facilities for their mission. Calvo Soleto vented his indignation and Gil Robles shouted: ‘Take them to the frontier’. Alba requested that the commission leave the Cortes.38 Sections of the Spanish and international press also objected to the intervention.39 Time reported unsympathetically on the Wilkinson–Listowel trip, telling of atrocity stories during the revolution: the mass rape of nuns, priests being roasted alive, their corpses being put on display in butchers’ shop windows labelled as ‘pork’.40 This prompted British newspapers to complain about the diplomatic implications.41 Wilkinson and her party headed for ‘the storm centre’, Oviedo.42 She explained that the prisoners had held her hands through the prison bars and had repeatedly uttered ‘Asturias, Asturias!’ She mustered enough 304
Spain in revolution and war Spanish to say, ‘Yes, yes, we are going there’.43 By the time the delegation arrived in Asturias, a counterrevolution was victorious. Conditions of press censorship and intimidation of the left prevented an accurate picture of the situation within Spain. Parliament had restored the death penalty. Even in parts of the country where there had been no uprising, working-class activists were rounded up and landlords exploited the occasion to deal with their unruly braceros (landless labourers). The reconquest of Oviedo – under the leadership of General Franco and his lieutenant colonel Juan de Yagüe Blanco, ‘the hyena of the Asturias’ – cost the lives of around two thousand workers. Witnesses reported that the Army of Africa and the Foreign Legion were given free rein in the working-class districts of Oviedo. There were widespread summary executions despite efforts of miners’ leaders to negotiate surrender without reprisals. In the wake of the military defeat of the miners, the Minister of War gave Commandant Lisardo Doval y Bravo, a captain of the Civil Guard, emergency powers to restore public order.44 Doval was responsible for the organisation of the paramilitary police repression. This involved house-to-house searches to disarm the workers’ movement and led to the imprisonment of thousands, so many in fact that the Catholic Church offered convents, monasteries and churches for the purpose. Equally, Doval organised punitive raids into the mountains where miners had gone into hiding. He took a personal hand in the torture of prisoners.45 Republican Union parliamentarian and former Minister of Industry in the first Lerroux Cabinet Félix Gordon Ordax presented a report to the Cortes detailing the unsavoury repertoire of abuses that the army committed.46 Indeed, Luis Sirval – the journalist murdered in army custody so as to suppress evidence of their brutality – had been Ordax’s political secretary while at the Ministry. The Wilkinson–Listowel mission to Asturias was brief and tempestuous. They travelled to Oviedo by train with Luis Vigil Escalera, a retired naval officer as their interpreter. They arrived during the morning of 15 November and went to a café in the town centre.47 A hostile crowd soon surrounded the group, perhaps alerted by questions about recent events. Wilkinson’s party went hastily to the Palacio de la Diputacíon at around 10am. The crowd followed and remained outside in calle de Fruela, one of the streets worst affected by the bombardment of the revolutionaries. Wilkinson and Listowel remained inside until 2pm. The Spanish monarchist paper ABC noted that Commandant Doval of Oviedo treated the ‘undesirable foreigners’ with ‘great deference’. The mission left to shouts of ‘Go to Ireland, go to India!’, implying they should expose the abuses of the British Empire. Wilkinson’s own version differs from the standard press one. According to her, three men interrupted her group at the café. 305
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson One resembled ‘the sort of Spaniard you see on posters, magnificent, rather suitable for opera’, the other two had been educated at English public schools. It was they who provoked the demonstration. Initially 50-strong, another hundred were added by the time that Wilkinson and her friends had gone to the town hall. The crowd did not intimidate Wilkinson but ‘our operatic friend’ had marshalled ‘thirty well dressed young men’ who were allowed to enter the town hall in the waiting room along with Wilkinson’s party. It was just such a group that had ‘unofficially’ murdered the journalist Luis Sirval and Wilkinson’s interpreter told her that they intended to shoot him.48 In effect, Doval summarily deported Wilkinson, Listowel and Association Juridique Internationale lawyer Bourthoumieux.49 Wilkinson later described it as kidnapping.50 They were driven to Santander in a car that Doval provided. They crossed the border to Hendaye in France from there.51 Notwithstanding their expulsion, the international publicity that Wilkinson’s visit generated was responsible for Doval’s immediate recall to Madrid and his replacement.52 Picturing Wilkinson between the English lord and the French lawyer, French Communist newspaper L’Humanité reported on their expulsion and the revelations about the Asturian repression: the atrocities committed by Moorish soldiers, the house-to-house searches, the hostage-taking, the summary executions and the pursuit of rebels who had fled to the mountains.53 On their way back to Britain, on 20 November, Listowel, Bourthoumieux, and no doubt Wilkinson as well, spoke at a conference at the Palais de la Mutualité on Paris’s left bank organised for the victims of fascism in Spain. Professor Wallon, authors Elie Faure and André Wurmser shared the platform.54 The Münzenberg team were soon able to collect enough materials to produce a brochure on the events in Asturias with a preface from Barbusse.55 Through the distorting lens of the Spanish right-wing press, the British visitors chose not to see the magnitude of the catastrophe, despite the amiable welcome afforded by the authorities. Wilkinson exposed the repression in the Asturian province during several speaking engagements in Britain. She described villages bombed from the air, mass executions and the arrest of all left-wing journalists.56 She inferred that fascism had risen in countries because labour had failed to take power, that there was little left that capitalism could offer British workers and they should run industry on socialist lines. In response, Luís Antonio Bolín, journalist of the monarchist ABC, conducted a sixmonth campaign to refute her account of Asturian events, notably on the BBC and in the conservative daily newspaper the Morning Post.57 He had travelled, apparently by chance, on the same train to Oviedo as Wilkinson and was able to report, albeit tendentiously, on their 306
Spain in revolution and war escapade. Bolín became Franco’s foreign press secretary during the civil war and gained notoriety for intimidating foreign correspondents working in the Nationalist zone, threatening them with execution, spitting on the republican corpses and inventing the fiction that Basque nationalists had destroyed Guernica.58 Bolín alleged that Listowel lied about his visit to Oviedo.59 He found a receptive audience among the British conservative press with a Daily Express columnist talking of ‘a drubbing for … the busybodies claiming to be humanitarians’.60 Wilkinson courted considerable criticism for her trip to Spain. For instance, expert on English manners H.W. Seaman could describe her as a ‘dangerous gadabout’ whose ‘ill-timed interference’ had done ‘no good and a lot of harm’.61 Wilkinson’s report on Asturias in Time and Tide provoked Bolín, Jesuits and terrified ex-pat ladies to attack her in the letters page, with the final exchange between Bolín and Wilkinson in March 1935 when the editor called a halt.62 Daily Herald’s report was ambivalent and brief about Wilkinson’s visit. It began with Lerroux’s denial of the atrocities, though it did also note Listowel’s complaint about his expulsion and quoted Wilkinson saying: ‘Where inquiry is not free there must be something to hide.’63 No doubt to her exasperation, the NEC issued a press release, condemning her trip to Spain on the grounds that it was ill-conceived and some had assumed that it was an official Labour Party delegation (which is not what the Spanish press was saying). There had also been a complaint from a Labour Party member living in Spain. Leah Manning who the ‘Paris secretariat’ of the ‘World Committee’ asked to visit Spain with Wilkinson in October saw Wilkinson’s treatment at the hands of the press as ‘disgraceful’.64 Unable to make the trip in November, Manning went in late December and published her experiences in Madrid and Oviedo, thereby completing the work that Wilkinson and Listowel had begun.
Visit with Conze prior to the Civil War The Popular Front’s election victory in February 1936 altered the fortunes of Spain’s social movements. Wilkinson visited Spain in May or June 1936 a few weeks before Franco’s coup. Taking a host of photographs, she chauffeured around Edward Conze who was preparing his book Spain Today.65 Betty Archdale, Wilkinson’s secretary between 1935 and 1938, also accompanied them.66 Conze sought to explain Spain’s revolutionary process to a British audience. It is significant that he adopted an explicitly revolutionary position and dedicated his book to Joaquín Maurín, one of a leaders of the POUM (the anti-Stalinist revolutionary Marxist party). Conze indicated that he had initially planned 307
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson to translate Maurín’s Hacia la Segunda Revolución and that his Spain Today owed much to Maurín’s text. While preparing the book, Conze and Wilkinson interviewed notable figures on the Spanish left, including Largo Caballero’s advisor Luis Araquistáin, Preteceille (whom Wilkinson had met on her visits in 1933 and 1934), and, in addition to Maurín, two other POUM leaders Juan Andrade and Julián Gorkin.67 Spain Today appeared after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. It was highly critical of the Popular Front strategy, which relabelled the discredited tactic of coalition government with the liberals. He believed that the Spanish Communist Party’s conservatism resulted from Moscow’s commitment to the Franco-Soviet Pact. In Conze’s memoirs, he recorded an incident that highlighted the sinister side of Communist activity in Spain. GPU (State Political Directorate) agents interviewed him in Barcelona and put a shadow on him and Wilkinson (according to Conze, anarchists that they met offered to kill the shadow).68 Perhaps most interestingly, Conze underlined the revolutionary process that was under way, within which dual power was emerging: on the one hand, the official structures of government and parliament, and on the other, the organs of popular power in the shape of the workers’ alliances and the casas del pueblo (people’s centres). Conze later recounted an incident from the visit that revealed Spain’s political instability and Wilkinson’s remarkable courage: In the square in Toledo we sat in a café. Stirred up by officers from the Alcazar a riot developed outside and soon the Guardia Civil sprayed the square with machine gun bullets. All sensible people withdrew; except tiny Ellen who had rushed into the square to see better and beckoned me to do likewise.69
In Spain Today, Conze expected a victorious workers’ revolution given the spirit that he had discovered amongst the Spanish people. His memoirs, however, claimed that he had sensed only a great looming tragedy. Wilkinson accepted at least some of Conze’s analysis and shared a revolutionary perspective. Wilkinson recounted her experiences in Bilbao, Oviedo, Mieres, Leon, Madrid, Valencia and rural Toledo in the Daily Herald.70 The first of these articles talked of the widespread strike wave and the ubiquitous slogan of UHP.71 By the time her second article appeared, the Spanish Civil War had broken out. She tried to expose the revolutionary dynamic at work. In Valencia, she interviewed ‘Amutio’, the chair of the labour group on the city council, who was organising co-operative credit to help the city’s labouring poor.72 The backdrop was a mortal combat against reaction: he had had to fight on the barricades twice in five years for his life and his party. In Valencia, she imbibed a revolutionary atmosphere in which youths were planning street fighting 308
Spain in revolution and war and circulating photographs of tortured and mutilated political prisoners. She also related her experiences in the Toledo region. Oreveia Labrador, the provincial secretary of the land workers’ union, escorted Wilkinson around Toledo.73 ‘This quiet, lionhearted little man’ had contracted TB in Lerroux’s prisons. They went together to interview the ‘ultra-correct civil servant’ of the Department of Agriculture responsible for land rights in Toledo. After their visit, Labrador observed that peasants could not wait for the government’s land reform. Azaña’s promises of reform in 1932 had yielded so little, whereas since the last election a wave of land seizures in Toledo had secured 50,000 acres for 3,000 peasants. Asked about the landowners, he shrugged and objected that they lived the high life in Santander or Biarritz and can claim compensation from Madrid. Wilkinson next visited a collective farm in Castañar, with a collectivised bull and olive oil mill, seeing the revolutionary land seizures in practice.74 Her article exposes the drift that her politics underwent during the Spanish Civil War. At the outset she supported revolutionary initiatives from below and ended up supporting their repression. When Wilkinson reviewed Conze’s book for Time and Tide, she praised it for its analysis of Spanish events, allowing readers to correct the ‘bias of their pet newspapers’. She did, however, disagree with Conze’s explanation of the Spanish Socialist Party’s turn to revolution in 1934. While he argued that the PSOE rank and file pressured the leaders to do so, Wilkinson was sceptical of the capacity of bureaucracies to ‘see the light’ in that way. Instead, she believed that it was forced upon them because the right’s strategy offered them no alternative.75 By August 1937, however, she described Delaprée’s Mort en Espagne and Sender’s The War in Spain as the best books on the subject.76 These focus on the human dimension of the conflict from a mainstream Republican perspective, both the personal cost and the heroic quality of the fighters. Sender’s book is strongly sympathetic to the role of the Communists based on their record in the fighting.
Outbreak of Spanish Civil War On 17 July 1936, generals launched a coup against the Popular Front government and against parliamentary democracy. General Mola assembled a coalition that included the CEDA, the Alphonsine monarchists, José Antonio’s fascist Falange movement, the Carlists and anti-republican officers organised in the Spanish Military Union.77 After simultaneous risings in Morocco and mainland Spain, they would march on Madrid. Popular mobilisation from below and the loyalty of some sections of the police and army frustrated this plan. As Wilkinson remarked, the 309
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Generals expecting to have Spain in their hands in forty-eight hours ‘failed because of the mass resistance of the people’.78 However, the Nationalists were not defeated, holding western Andalusia, Galicia, western Aragon, the northern towns of Castile, part of Extremadura, the south of the Basque country and Navarre. They had failed to take Spain’s largest cities, apart from Seville. With the confusion and uncertainty of the first days of the fighting, Wilkinson must have felt helpless to affect events. Only a week before the rising, she had held a party at her flat with Largo Caballero and Álvarez del Vayo who were in London for an international trade union conference.79 On 29 July 1936, the Daily Herald published a telegram to the Spanish Prime Minister in support of the heroic fight of the Spanish people against fascism. Wilkinson’s name was the first in a list of eleven MPs.80 From this first act, Wilkinson played a prominent role in Spanish solidarity. Louis Fischer, the foreign correspondent who had Negrín’s ear, said of her: Wilkinson, diminutive redhead, was the heart and fire of the pro-Loyalist work in England through the Spanish War. … As a member of the executive committee of the British Labor party, she exercised influence among the leaders, and her oratory, fervor, and hard work made her very popular among workingmen. She is indefatigable. She addressed meetings, wrote articles, organized committees, called committee meetings, travelled up and down the country, shot brilliant questions at complacent ministers in the House of Commons.81
Indeed, Kingsley Martin remembered 18 Guildford Street functioning as a nerve centre for Spanish solidarity ‘crowded with people ranging from the respectable right of the Labour movement to the revolutionary Left’ with Wilkinson relaying information and the next tasks from ‘our French friends’, namely Katz and Agence Espagne, a pro-Republican press agency that he ran from Paris.82 Spanish Foreign Minister Álvarez del Vayo, who had been involved in various campaigns with Münzenberg, turned to that propaganda genius to handle the Republic’s international public relations campaign. Katz was given responsibility for this, acting as the managing director of Agence Espagne. Through Katz then, Wilkinson was tied closely into the Spanish government and its efforts to shape foreign opinion in its favour. Increasingly, Katz was displacing his old chief in the network of journalists, celebrities and intellectuals that Münzenberg had constructed. On 4 August 1936, Katz visited the UK, the first of at least thirteen occasions during the Spanish Civil War. During this visit, he met with Isabel and Ernest Brown as well as discussing Spain with Wilkinson.83 Wilkinson was instrumental in securing Katz’s permission to enter despite having been put on a special blacklist as a result of a Home 310
Spain in revolution and war Office circular of 5 August 1933.84 Her repeated interventions on his behalf and the consequent frequency of his visits caused repeated objections on the part of the security services and tension between them and the Home Office.85 Less well documented are Wilkinson’s visits to Paris to visit Katz but she certainly went there repeatedly.86 Symptomatic of their relationship was that they holidayed together in August 1938 at San Ary on the French Riviera.87 She signed her letters to him ‘love to Ilsa’ [Katz’s wife]. Special Branch thought there to be good grounds for assuming that Wilkinson was infatuated with Katz.88 By August 1936, Wilkinson had thoroughly thrown herself into the Spanish cause. She confided to George Catlin that she ‘was simply up to her eyes in the Spanish work’. This involved a great range of activities. For instance, she lined up speakers for Isabel Brown to contact for fund-raising activities.89 Wilkinson was involved at some level in a multiplicity of Spanish solidarity campaigns, as a patron or committee member or advocate for the All London Spanish Aid Council, the Basque Children’s Committee, the International Brigade Dependents’ and Wounded Aid Committee, the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief, the Parliamentary Committee for Spain, the Spanish Medical Aid Committee, and the Tyneside Foodship Campaign.90 Wilkinson battled the press belief that the war was one between Communists and Catholics.91 The Jarrow constituency had a large Irish Catholic contingent that was crucial to the local Labour Party’s membership and electorate. She addressed the matter directly at a public meeting in Hebburn on 7 September 1936: 97% of Spaniards were Catholics with as many for the Republic as for the Nationalists, whose ally the German government – she observed – was itself persecuting Catholics. She predicted that the reward for Italy and Germany for a fascist victory would be control of Gibraltar and therefore Britain’s route to India. The threat to British interests aside, Wilkinson underlined the main characteristic of the war as being the fight of Spanish workers to hold on to their right to vote.92 On 13 August, Wilkinson attended the Special European Conference at the Hotel Lutetia, Paris, called by IFTU secretary Walter Schevenels and CGT secretary Léon Jouhaux. More than 200 delegates attended.93 She was selected for the conference’s presidium.94 The organisers emphasised the need to counter the ‘fascist’ press campaign against the Republic, avoiding potential controversy over the role of Blum, the socialist Prime Minister of the Popular Front government in France in the construction of the non-intervention strategy (which sought formal agreement of the major powers not to intervene in the war). Back from Paris, Wilkinson spoke at a meeting for Spanish Medical Aid, which had been launched a week earlier, in the Friends Meeting 311
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson House on Friday 14 August. Two thousand gathered to hear a platform that included Tillett and Lansbury. Isabel Brown made the financial appeal, which added £300 to the coffers. Wilkinson reported that she had spoken to the leading Spanish socialist Giner de los Rios in Paris who pointed to the atrocities that the fascists were committing and signalled his support for the British medical aid campaign.95 On 6 September, Wilkinson also helped to launch a Spanish Medical Aid committee in Manchester, speaking in the Free Trade Hall.96 The Manchester Guardian observed that Wilkinson roused the mainly working-class audience when she speculated that non-intervention was a government smoke-screen and asserted that – but for the parliamentary recess – the government would have been pressured to establish real non-intervention from the beginning which would have extinguished the revolt. To illustrate the toothlessness of non-intervention, she recalled her recent trip to Lisbon where she had witnessed three German and two Italian ships in the port and that they ‘were not unloading lemons’. The timing of this visit to Portugal is significant. It coincided with her friend Jay Allen’s reporting from Lisbon, Elvas and Badajoz from where he related the appalling massacres upon the entry of the Moorish troops and the Foreign Legion.97 On 11 September, she spoke alongside Hamilton Fyfe (former Daily Herald editor) and J.R. Campbell in a large meeting in Memorial Hall.98 The following day, she was addressing Sunderland Peace Council, praising Leon Blum and supporting non-intervention on the grounds that it had averted world war.99 From around this time onwards, however, Wilkinson began to subject the policy of non-intervention to repeated invective at public meetings, in newspapers and in the Commons. Quickly opposing cooperation with the Communists in investigative missions to Spain, the National Council of Labour instructed that no letters of recommendation should be provided for visitors to Spain unless specifically they had been officially delegated.100 Despite this, Wilkinson assisted with the first of these missions, helping to organise the London press conference of the returning mission from Spain of Isabel Brown, Lord Hastings, William Dobbie MP and Seymour Cox MP.101 This visit was part of a campaign entitled the Commission of Inquiry into Alleged Breaches of Non-Intervention Agreement in Spain.102 They returned shortly before the Labour Party’s Edinburgh Conference and the Commission was intended to be part of a political battle inside the Labour movement to reject the non-intervention position. Their report, which Isabel Brown hastily produced, was waved in the air when Ernest Bevin argued that there was no evidence of intervention on the part of the fascist powers.
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Spain in revolution and war The Labour Party’s annual conference took place in Edinburgh. Having earlier endorsed the position of the LSI supporting non-intervention, on 9 October, Attlee proposed an investigation of the breaches of non- intervention on the grounds that it was clear that the fascist powers were making non-intervention a charade. In the debate, Wilkinson was keen to highlight how much time the investigation would take given that Franco was likely to be in Madrid within the week. The party’s policy nevertheless remained in favour of non-intervention.103 She also was amongst those who successfully pressed for Spanish writer Isabel de Palencia to be heard by conference. Wilkinson provoked the anger of Sir Walter Citrine over Spain. Her speech at a Spanish Medical Aid public meeting in the Friends Meeting House on the evening of 6 November caught the TUC’s General Secretary’s attention. Someone had passed him a press cutting from the Shields Gazette about the meeting. In a letter dated 12 November, Citrine wished her to confirm two points. First, whether she had made the following comment: I was in Spain when the struggle commenced, I know the Spanish worker gets a lot of criticism. He is not cut to a pattern that would suit Sir Walter Citrine, but I met the workers in their union, and they knew what they wanted.104
Clearly, he objected that the Jarrow MP was thereby targeting him for criticism. His second point was that the Gazette had stated that she had observed that if Franco took Madrid, ‘we’ would rush to recognise him, in that – when challenged from the floor – she included the Labour Party. In a follow-up letter, he cited her ‘attack’ on him at the Edinburgh conference and one at the Friends Meeting House event.105 Complaining that she was busy with by-elections, parliament and travel, Wilkinson did not reply until 25 November. Being too ill to travel, she was now able to catch up with her correspondence. On Citrine’s first point – the difference between him and Spanish workers – this was obviously true and an innocent joke that she would have made had they shared the platform.106 On the second point that she had attacked the Labour Party, quite the reverse was true as she was defending the party against Trotskyist hecklers, as did the other speakers. They accused her of everything from James Connolly’s execution to the TUC’s ban on hunger marches, a policy that she had fought the leadership on from within the movement. She denied vehemently that she had said that the Labour Party would recognise Franco. While the letter suggests that journalistic error led to misunderstanding, the exchange revealed the difficult line that Wilkinson trod in her Spanish work. In working with those outside the Labour Party and exercising the right to express 313
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson her own political position, she was aware of the threat of discipline, even expulsion, against her. It is clear that her opponents within the movement sought to set clear limits to her actions and words in support of Spain. Citrine’s response bristled menacingly: ‘I cannot indefinitely maintain silence if this sort of thing is continued.’ He accused her of jeopardising TUC and Labour Party support for Spanish Medical Aid and his personal influence in this regard.107 Indeed, the TUC had withdrawn its support from the Spanish Medical Aid on the grounds of the involvement of Communists the day before.108
Wilkinson’s visit with the ‘Red Duchess’, April 1937 Wilkinson visited Spain with a women’s delegation in April 1937, alongside the Conservative MP the Duchess of Atholl, Rathbone and Dame Rachel Crowdy (former Head of the Social Questions and Opium Traffic section of the League of Nations).109 Wilkinson and Atholl were prominent in the pro-Republican Parliamentary Committee for Spain.110 The Duchess became a figurehead in the campaign on behalf of the Republic.111 She received considerable criticism from fellow Conservatives for this. Alfred Denville MP condemned her visit ‘in company with a couple of the extreme element … to help the Communist Government of Spain’.112 Wilkinson used her contacts with women MPs and the women’s movement to put together the delegation. Katz was their unadvertised companion and acted as special correspondent for Agence Espagne on the trip.113 He took full advantage of the trip with press releases reporting their meetings with the Spanish dignitaries.114 Wilkinson explained to Atholl that Katz would be assisting them because of his knowledge of Spain and his many contacts.115 The fact-finding mission was made ostensibly in connection with the Duchess of Atholl’s Committee. The Duchess, the committee and the visit also encapsulated the efforts of Munzenberg and Katz to implement the Popular Front strategy of the outstretched hand to ‘progressive sections of the capitalist class’ in anti-fascist campaigning as well as electoral alliances. Indeed, the Duchess epitomised such a strategy, despite her 200,000-acre estate, investments in Jamaican sugar and opposition to Indian constitutional reform. On Tuesday 13 April at midnight, Wilkinson left a meeting in Jarrow to catch the early boat train. Crowdy, Rathbone and the Atholls were already at Victoria station. There, signalling the close relationship between Wilkinson, Katz and the leaders of the Republic, the Spanish Ambassador Pablo de Azcárate wished the delegation farewell.116 After the press criticism of the ‘Red Duchess’, the Duke jested that Wilkinson’s 314
Spain in revolution and war conservative tendencies might detract from the Duchess’s growing Bolshevism. Their night train from Paris to Toulouse arrived at 5am, where they took a light breakfast of coffee and a roll. From there, they drove in the rain to an aerodrome, taking a flight across the Pyrenees, to refuel in Barcelona, and then on to Valencia, the new capital of the Spanish Republic.117 They landed in rainy Valencia at 10am to a floral reception. At customs, they came across the Dean of Canterbury who apprised them of the results of his trip to the Basque country and the appalling lack of food there. The wife of the Spanish Foreign Minister Álvarez del Vayo met the party. They drove into Valencia, which was celebrating the sixth anniversary of the Second Republic, 14 April. At 1pm, the President Azaña and Prime Minister Largo Caballero greeted them in a grand old house bedecked with fine tapestries. Recognising Wilkinson, Largo Caballero shouted cheerily ‘Salud Camarada!’ He told them of the enormous amount of German and Italian war supplies for the Nationalist side, tantamount to an unprovoked foreign invasion. He pointed out that non-intervention had helped Franco. Wilkinson thought the British Chargé d’Affairs to be a curious choice of guest given his open admiration for Franco. After lunch, the anarchist Minister of Health Frederica Montseny accompanied them to inspect the living conditions of the refugees, of whom there were 50,000 in Valencia. Rachel Crowdy quizzed her about her political views. ‘We anarchists believe,’ she stated, ‘in self-discipline. In the liberty of a self-disciplined person, not in authority imposed from without. That way the individual does not grow. Our way grows the self-reliant man.’ Her response clearly baffled Wilkinson who reported the quote and simply added: ‘I leave it at that.’ In the evening, Wilkinson encountered a young captain, his arm in a sling, wounded at Jarama, where the British International Brigaders had ‘covered themselves in glory’. They talked of the role of the International Brigade and Wilfred Jobling of County Durham who had recently lost his life fighting in Spain. With no trains or air service because of the threats from Nationalist fighter planes, the British delegation drove in two cars over the high sierras between Valencia and Madrid. Wilkinson’s goal was to get in touch with the Spanish Medical Aid Committee. Atholl and Crowdy sought to improve the evacuation of Madrid’s children. ‘Three crowded days’ followed in Madrid.118 They arrived at twilight and shelling took place throughout the night. The windows of their hotel, the Hotel Gran Vía, were boarded up with plywood.119 Symptomatic of her double life, once her two colleagues were in bed, Wilkinson made her way to the Telefónica building, on Gran Vía, to meet up with ‘journalist friends, comrades of the hectic days of the first 315
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Nazi terror in Berlin’.120 This imposing edifice was a tower of Babel, where foreign correspondents came to send their reports across the world. Nationalist artillery targeted its distinctive silhouette, hitting the building fifty-eight times already. Gran Vía and Calle de Alcalá, running down to the Cibeles fountain, had become known as ‘shell alley’.121 In the Telefónica, Wilkinson encountered ‘Elsa’ [Ilsa Kulcsar], a heroic Austrian woman with a Spanish husband who acted as a government press censor (Arturo Barea) and who handled Russian, German, English and Spanish without difficulty. She had carried on regardless when the journalists’ room had been hit earlier that year. In his memoirs, Barea revealed how he resented the delegation as a further example of Katz’s ‘slick showmanship’. There, Wilkinson found American novelists Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos, Izvestia journalist Ilya Ehrenburg as well as British journalists Claud Cockburn (or ‘Pitcairn’) and Bill Huckley. Hemingway and Dos Passos were attracted to Spain to participate in Joris Ivens’s propaganda film Spanish Earth, with the latter trying to discover the whereabouts of his Spanish translator, and friend, Johns Hopkins University academic, José Robles Pazos, who had been imprisoned, abducted and executed as a spy by a special brigade on the Republican side.122 It was precisely at this time that Dos Passos, who was becoming increasingly frantic, was told of Robles’s death. Wilkinson stayed at the Telefónica, discussing experiences of Spain until dawn when she returned to her hotel to snatch three hours sleep. The British press stressed the personal danger that Wilkinson and the Duchess courted in Madrid.123 Shelling began each morning as ‘punctual as the milkman’.124 Wilkinson ate a meal with Atholl and Rathbone in the hotel in a guarded underground room that before the war was the hotel’s kitchen. At around 2pm, a deafening sound erupted. A shell had struck the street above killing five, and according to Agence Espagne, wounding 50 others.125 A white-faced journalist lunching with them whispered to Wilkinson, ‘Keep the Duchess and Miss Rathbone here for a bit. It’s nasty. They’ve got to clean bits of a man off her car.’ After this episode, they then drove to the district of Tetuán to witness ‘poor streets where not a brick remained’ and displaced women and children wandering the wreckage. Wilkinson noted that the terror bombing of the civilian population had not had the effect that the fascists had desired as ‘Madrid had grown very tough under this treatment’. She underlined the character of the bombing in class terms: poor residential areas were targeted, whilst rich areas were hardly touched. During her visit, she noted the macabre and poignant spectacle of how the food queues were bombed, the bodies were removed, only to reform with a new bitterness. She speculated about the hollowness of a Francoist victory over ‘cities 316
Spain in revolution and war ruined, blackened and burned and a people whose survivors hate them with an intensity I have met nowhere else in the world’.126 Wilkinson was taken to a tall building on the city’s outskirts that overlooked the battlefield. The glint of their binoculars drew shelling of their position. She marvelled at the line of men returning from a stint in the trenches and, to elicit an empathetic reaction from her readers in the Sunday Sun, mused how it resembled the men returning from the Follonsby pit in her constituency. They then went on to see General José Miaja, who was organising the defence of Madrid and reputed as its saviour in November 1936. Barea and Kulcsar had had to persuade Miaja to see the delegation. He asked who these women were, complaining that he was never sent pretty women and that he was being turned into a vaudeville turn. Kulcsar acted as interpreter between the Duchess and the General ‘toning down questions and answers’ and trying to shield the guests from Miaja’s impatience.127 His doggedness reminded Wilkinson of a bulldog. As a result of two bombs hitting the courtyard outside Miaja’s underground headquarters, Wilkinson missed her rendezvous with Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit of the Spanish Medical Aid (the Communist medical student who led the British Medical Unit), who had been injured in the explosion. After a broadcast from a cellar with the Duchess, Wilkinson went to her bed. ‘The man who knew everyone’ (Katz) telephoned her at 2am.128 This day was to become ‘the most exciting of my life’. Wilkinson had lobbied Miaja for a personal visit to the trenches. Wilkinson was summonsed to a room of five officers and ‘some friends of mine’ to make her case to visit the front.129 Agence Espagne was keen to underline the personal danger that the visitors had encountered noting that shelling just missed the car that took Wilkinson to the trenches at the University City.130 There she found ‘Gustav’ (probably Regler) whom she had met at a European anti-war conference. They spoke of the spirit of the popular army and the role of the political commissar, the war’s ‘unsung heroes’, in maintaining this through their efforts. Wilkinson accepted the view of the political commissar’s role without which ‘the army in the trenches would still be arguing about the relative merits of Trotsky or Stalin or Caballero’.131 She also addressed a meeting organised in the trenches where she reported on the work of Spanish Medical Aid in Britain. Wilkinson’s conversations served a didactic function for her British audience. She told these officers about the propaganda in the British press of ‘red terror’ that depicted the anti-Catholic atrocities of the Republican camp. Speaking as a Catholic, one officer noted that Franco’s side included non-Catholic Germans and Moors and imprisoned uncooperative priests. He frankly admitted that in the early days when the workers had been armed, there were shootings on the Republican side, 317
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson priests being among the victims. But Franco’s side shot priests too and their policy of extermination once they had captured hostile territory such as Badajoz or Malaga was qualitatively different. Possessing a union card was often sufficient grounds for execution. Wilkinson eventually persuaded the officers to take her to the trenches. Approaching the huge defensive earthworks of stone and the deep dug-outs of the University City, she was told that fascist machine guns trained on a spot around a corner straight in front of them and indeed, a shell exploded on the site. She described how once the rebels had been driven out of the Montaña barracks, they lodged themselves in the network of University buildings, the hospital and halls of residences, having to be evacuated building by building. She spent time getting to know soldiers in the trenches around the School of Philosophy, who were resting after intense fighting the day before. As so often happened on her wartime travels in Spain, her acquaintances were keen to know the attitude of the British government, hoping that its reputation for fair play and its history of support of the Spanish cause would count for something. She wrote for her audience in the north-east of England that she spared those risking their lives the ‘brutal truth’ of the British government’s attitude to Franco.132 While Wilkinson was in the trenches, Atholl had gone to church and interviewed Father Lobo, the vicar-general of Madrid.133 In the late afternoon, to a volley of shells that landed in the vicinity, the mission assembled so it could return to Valencia. En route, they saw the materiel captured from Italian troops at Guadalajara. As they stopped at a regional military headquarters, Wilkinson delighted in an exchange between a Spanish General, a socialist from a very humble background, and the Duchess of Atholl whom he was keen to impress. ‘You are a Duchess,’ he said, ‘and we welcome you for your sympathy. But here in our ranks I started life as a shepherd boy … and now I am General in the People’s Army.’ The Duchess replied with a wide smile, ‘How interesting and how like Scotland. From there a boy from a simple peasant hut became Prime Minister of Great Britain, and another peasant boy became one of Europe’s most famous poets.’ In comparison with Madrid, the Republic’s new capital seemed calm. Their return coincided with the implementation of the Non-Intervention Committee’s naval control scheme, which put Spain’s eastern coast under Italian and German supervision. This rendered the path of Russian arms to Spain yet more difficult. This was received in Valencia as a further step in the shameful hypocrisy of the Non-Intervention Committee’s work. That night, a demonstration took place which was ‘unorganised, spontaneous and rather discouraged by the government’.
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Spain in revolution and war The slogans demanded the right for the Spanish Republic to buy arms and condemned the new naval arrangements. Given that the Spanish government viewed British opinion as critical, Wilkinson’s group were allowed access to any minister that they wished to interview. In Valencia, they were able to see Indalecio Prieto, the Minister of Defence, the leader of the PSOE’s moderate wing. As was her habit as a parliamentary correspondent, Wilkinson provided a pen portrait of ‘the best organising brain in Spain’. He was a ‘heavy man, heavily-jawed, keen eyes’ with ‘that type of battering ram energy that the heavily built men of brains seem to possess’.134 They discussed the naval scheme and non-intervention, highlighting the unjust way that it prevented the supply of weapons via Russian ships, whilst German and Italian planes were able to fly unimpeded, even over French airspace. Wilkinson reflected on the irony of non-intervention, having seen French manufactured planes earmarked for the Spanish government lying idle the other side of the Pyrenees. That day, Wilkinson also met Álvarez del Vayo, accused by Caballero of being too close to the Russians, and his wife in their official residence. Wilkinson joked with his wife about the ‘ghastliness’ of the art of the Queen Maria-Christina period that adorned the walls. While Álvarez del Vayo had good English and was sympathetic to Britain, she encountered British industrialists in Spain who wanted Franco to win the war on the grounds that he stood for ‘law and order’. This was despite Franco’s inadequate compensation for the expropriation of their mercury, iron and copper, which he was using to pay for German and Italian arms.135 After the Foreign Ministry tour, the delegation visited the Communist Education Minister, Jesús Hernández at the Spanish Communist Party headquarters. He explained that his priority was to win the war and that, despite a forged letter used to say that he was ‘anti-God’, he was in favour of religious toleration. Hernández outlined his plans for primary education for workers that had been terribly neglected in Spain. During this discussion, Dolores Ibárruri entered. She left a deep impression on Atholl and Wilkinson. Miaja had told Wilkinson that the passion flower was worth a battalion. The wife of an Asturian miner embodied a womanly ideal for Wilkinson. She had seen her speak ‘like a great actress’ to 30,000 in a bullring in Madrid on a previous visit. ‘She is lovely,’ Wilkinson reported, ‘in the way older Spanish women can be, the finely chiselled lines of her face softened by thick black hair tinged with grey.’ Wilkinson had to persuade the Duchess of Atholl to meet Ibárruri but ‘Kitty’ was overwhelmed by the Spanish woman and the Scottish MP compared the Spaniard to Eleanora Duse the great actress.136 She provided the romantic myth of the grieving miner’s widow whose audacious and lyrical rhetoric provided the Spanish republic with its slogans 319
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson ‘no pasarán’ and ‘it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees’ that resonated so evocatively beyond Spain’s borders.137 After their meeting with Hernández and Ibárruri, the delegation went to observe the treatment of Italian prisoners of war. For Wilkinson, this compared favourably with conditions in the Madrid Modelo prison in November 1934. The visit also led her to understand the Italian defeat at Guadalajara. The soldiers were mainly young peasants who did not know or care what the war was about and indeed thought that they were being sent to Abyssinia. The officers were less amenable, being determined to give nothing away. The delegation was also able to confirm reports that civilians fleeing Malaga along the coast were bombed and fired on from the air.138 Their tour of the prison concluded their business and they began their journey back to the UK. On their return to Britain, the investigators produced a brief report into the humanitarian conditions in Republican Spain examining the refugee situation, the lack of food, the religious question, prisons and the lack of medicine. They had visited Madrid and described the bombing raids that had destroyed the working-class district of Tetuán, with hundreds killed.139 The report provided more evidence of the suffering of the Spanish people to counter unsympathetic coverage in some of the British press. If the visit was formally humanitarian, the participants also produced a second confidential report on the attitudes in Republican Spain to the Non-Intervention Committee’s new scheme for observing Spanish frontiers. Having interviewed Prieto and Companys and others for this purpose, the visitors reported a universally negative opinion of the scheme on the Republic side. They detailed how its provisions favoured Franco: the Portuguese–Spanish border was poorly monitored, the Italian and German navies would abuse their patrolling rights and the absence of a scheme to patrol airspace clearly advantaged the side with German and Italian allies rather than Mexican and Russian ones.140 The report also questioned the expertise and impartiality of George Ogilvie Forbes, chargé d’affairs at the British Consulate in Valencia. Finally, the delegates also made a widely reported public statement against non-intervention.141
Wilkinson and the fall of Largo Caballero Shortly after the visit, a conflict within the Republican camp surfaced in street-fighting in Barcelona. At the time, Wilkinson was preoccupied with humanitarian campaigning, consumed with indignation against the British government’s culpability for Spanish agony and busy making propaganda for the Republic. She chose not to believe the accusations of Soviet manipulation of the government and the use of terror – a 320
Spain in revolution and war witch hunt against the POUM, abductions, torture – being used behind Republican lines against fellow anti-fascists. It is even probable that she believed that the POUM were financed by the Nazis.142 On the British left, voices did speak out against these matters. The ILP played a particular role in exposing the realities of the situation. John McGovern’s visit to Spain in November 1937 resulted in a pamphlet Terror in Spain.143 They did so in the context of challenging the Popular Front strategy, the correctness of which Wilkinson had recently become convinced. Her motivations were complex and it would be wrong to assume that her public statements and her private thoughts coincided. She felt an obligation to defend Communism against the right and believed that Soviet support for the Republic was crucial. Moreover, she relied on her contacts with the Comintern for her transnational campaigning, which developed into loyalty towards friends like Katz and various other fellow travellers. Despite her affection for Caballero, she saw his fall from office positively. Her rationale was that he was a stubborn old man incapable of working with the Communists after having operated for so long in a labour movement of socialist and anarchist tendencies. He had refused to acknowledge the ‘proof’ that fascist agent provocateurs had infiltrated the anarchists. For her, the Negrín government was an alliance of the army leaders, the socialists and the Communists who were committed to winning the war. The ‘strong men’ in the army were despairing that arms were left in the hands of the irresponsible anarchists who were not pulling their weight in the war. She analysed the ‘Barcelona tragedy’, thus: The Communists wanted to win the war. He [Largo Caballero] thought they wanted to make a Soviet revolution. The anarchists and their allies the POUM were the people who put the winning of the war against Fascists second, and their own ideas of revolution first.144
Being positive about the Communist growth amongst peasant proprietors and supporting their campaign to overturn collectivisation, she accepted other aspects of the Stalinist view of the events. She also intimated that Largo Caballero was being manipulated by those around him. Those who organised her visit – either pro-Negrín or Communist Spaniards or communist friends such as Katz or Brown – constructed a particular political vision of Spanish politics that she accepted. She expected, erroneously, that Largo Caballero’s fall would somehow ‘bring Catalonia into the war’ and change the balance of forces. Louis Fischer’s War in Spain revealed the dual function of the Atholl–Wilkinson trip.145 Fischer was a key intermediary between foreign visitors, the communists and the government, being personally close to Negrín. It is significant 321
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson that he used the conversation between Largo Caballero and the British women to illustrate the divisions within the Republican camp and the folly of Largo Caballero’s leadership. Thus, not only did Wilkinson’s visit have the goal of supporting the Republican cause, it also legitimised the Negrín position in the ‘civil war within the civil war’. Wilkinson’s position elicited George Orwell’s criticism. He had fought in Spain and sought to expose the role of Stalinism on his return, or as he put it, he intended to ‘spill Spanish beans’. In his review of Koestler’s Spanish Testament, he complained of pro-Communist censorship in British periodicals sympathetic to the Republic whereby the anarchist or ‘Trotskyist’ case for revolution was stifled and the counter-revolutionary role of the Communist Party denied. For Orwell, Wilkinson’s belief that the new friendship between French conservatives and the PCF simply resulted from their mutual fear of Hitler – rather than the PCF’s reconciliation with capitalism – illustrated her naivety.146 In comparison with her vocal support for the revolutionary struggles of Spanish peasants and workers at the outset of the Civil War, this indicated that her views were drifting to the right along the spectrum of Spanish Republican politics.
Campaigning in Britain for Spain, 1937 On 26 April 1937, the German Condor Legion bombed and totally destroyed the historic capital of the Basque country, Guernica, a town of a population of fewer than 10,000. Wilkinson was one of the signatories to a letter to The Times condemning the bombing of Guernica, ‘which must shock all humane persons irrespective of their political sympathies’.147 It sought to appeal across the political divide for funds for the evacuation of Basque children on behalf of the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief. Wilkinson also intervened in the Commons debate in Guernica’s aftermath, seeking admission into Britain for 4,000 Basque refugee children.148 Wilkinson continued with public engagements on Spain, speaking at Lewisham town hall on 26 May 1937 for the Spanish Relief Fund alongside Cripps.149 During the Cheltenham by-election, Wilkinson gave a public meeting in support of the Labour candidate C.C. Poole. She condemned the government’s foreign policy, especially regarding Spain. She tried to overcome the insular disregard for events in Spain by connecting her experiences in Madrid to those of her audience. The sunny day in Cheltenham reminded her of a street in Madrid during her recent visit. ‘And then without warning at all, – boom! – a shell! A shop was wrecked and what had been men and women were just something
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Spain in revolution and war red. From a little cafe children were borne out, some without their legs, others without their arms.’150 By the summer of 1937, the Labour Party had abandoned non- intervention. On 11 July 1937, Wilkinson spoke at the London Trades Council and London Labour Party’s Trafalgar Square demonstration that marked the end of the party’s support for what Wilkinson described as a ‘tragic farce’.151 Indicating this shift in official policy, Herbert Morrison was amongst the speakers and a letter from Attlee was read out. This called for the volunteers, which were in reality foreign armies, to be withdrawn and for the Republic’s right to buy arms as non-intervention had failed to stop the spread of the conflict. The Manchester Guardian London reporter believed the rally to be the largest demonstration in favour of the Spanish Republic to date. Wilkinson attempted to reach a variety of networks (political, trade union, women’s, religious) with which she was associated. For instance, in November 1937, she addressed the Methodist Council with guest speaker Don José Capo, a senior Spanish Methodist official.152 She explained that Methodism’s democratic spirit shaped her worldview therefore could not be impartial regarding Spain; this contrasted with the Catholic Church’s role in Spain, which alongside the landowners, were the ‘two prevailing powers’ in the country. Breaking down in tears, she elucidated the horrors of the war, recalling the distressing cries of wounded children before clashing with Methodist council member Sir Henry Lunn who supported Franco’s Nationalists.
In the Commons As well as public meetings, Wilkinson was identified most closely with the Republican cause in the House of Commons. She used all variety of procedures such as written or oral questions to do so. From the parliamentary platform, she assisted the Republican solidarity campaigns through challenging the entry restrictions that the British government imposed on international visitors such as Victor Basch, Isabel Blum or Madeleine Braun.153 Wilkinson also used this method to try to extract information useful for the campaign or that probed the inaction of the British government. She asked whether neutral observers were aboard the Italian warships monitoring the Spanish coast.154 As a consequence of her transnational contacts (government figures, foreign correspondents and Comintern officials), Wilkinson could publicly expose the inconsistencies of the British government’s Spanish policy with information about the landings of Italian or German troops or details of the military hardware that these countries provided. She pressed the government over their refusal to grant belligerent rights to the Spanish 323
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Republic.155 When foreign secretaries (Eden or Halifax) or their substitutes routinely denied knowledge, Wilkinson goaded them for their ‘no information’ policy: ‘is the policy of the Foreign Office not to have any information about facts that are inconvenient to their fascist friends?’156 Wilkinson contributed regularly to debates on Spain. She returned time and again to the presence of Italian and German troops.157 Summoning her wit, Wilkinson dubbed the government’s inconsistent denials of fascist intervention as its ‘time lag admissions’ and spoke of ‘the avoidance-of-criticism-clause’ in the Merchant Shipping Bill.158 When Lord Cranborne defended the government policy on the grounds that half a loaf was better than no bread, Wilkinson retorted that non-intervention was more like half a watch: no use at all.159 Others in the House clashed with her over Spain, such as her opponent over Jarrow’s steelworks, Runciman. He sneered at her for her visits to Spain: ‘how difficult it is for several individuals to obtain an impression of a whole country … we shall not attach overdue authority to the travellers who, in all good faith, and with very great perseverance and at the cost of their comfort and even of their health, did their best to find out’.160 Although the government’s position was formally one of neutrality, several within Conservative ranks were supporters with varying degrees of enthusiasm for the Francoist cause, amongst whom were former Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare, chief whip David Margesson and Lord Hailsham, a friend of the Duke of Alba (who was acting as Franco’s London emissary). Some isolationist imperial diehards on Conservative benches called for the government to adopt a pro-Nationalist line: Sir Henry Page Croft, Sir Arnold Wilson, Victor Cazalet, Alan Lennox-Boyd and Patrick Donner.161 As well as challenging Franco’s sympathisers in the Commons, Wilkinson also tried to organise counter-information against the Nationalist propaganda circle around Alba.162 The LRD produced a diagram of the Friends of Nationalist Spain, connecting together Conservative MPs, the Cliveden set, Anglo-German Fellowship, Imperial Policy Group, fascists, aristocrats and company directors.163 Moreover, to Wilkinson, Lennox-Boyd’s promotion to under-secretary for Labour indicated the Chamberlain government’s sympathy for the Spanish rebels.164
Labour’s Spain Campaign Committee The Labour Party’s stance on Spain changed at its 1937 conference in Bournemouth. Conference instructed the NEC to establish a nationwide campaign to compel the government to abandon non-intervention and restore the Republican government’s right to purchase arms. In response, the Labour Party NEC of 27 October established the Spain 324
Spain in revolution and war Campaign Committee (SCC) composed of Cripps, Henderson, Stanley Hirst, James Walker, Wilkinson and George Dallas, its chair, inviting others through the power of co-option such as Jagger, Shinwell and Griffiths. Wilkinson and the party’s International Secretary Gillies acted as its secretaries. Holding its first meeting on 1 November, it organised a series of demonstrations in November–December 1937 and the Milk for Spain campaign.165 In the SCC, Wilkinson operated within a complex institutional setting. Tom Buchanan has argued that the SCC should be seen in the light of the post-General Strike efforts of Citrine, Bevin and others to establish a mass membership under disciplined and centralised control, wherein rank-and-file initiative was restricted and channelled.166 This went hand in hand with anti-communism, with trades councils and members were being disciplined for associating with communist front organisations, such as the NUWM or various Spanish solidarity campaigns. Large numbers of members had involved themselves in the myriad of unofficial groups that had developed at the local level. Thus the SCC allowed the party to harness the energies of its members and draw them away from unofficial bodies. At the same time, the Labour Party’s resources were considerable and the committee involved in its leadership included some of the most determined campaigners for the Spanish cause such as Wilkinson herself and Cripps. The SSC’s political direction was initially ambiguous and evolved over time. Evidently, the mobilisation of Labour Party resources implied a political dimension that purely humanitarian campaigns did not. It sought to generate activity under the aegis of the party. Some of the rhetoric was workerist, socialist, trade unionist or Labourist. In particular, through the Attlee– Wilkinson visit, it established links with and publicised the cause of the Republican government, leading PSOE figures, the UGT and served Republican propaganda for Spanish and international consumption. Despite party managers’ intentions, it was entangled with the politics of the Popular Front. The Labour Party conference had repeatedly rejected motions for Communist Party affiliation, unity, and a British Popular Front. However, key figures in the campaign, such as Wilkinson and Cripps, were Labour supporters of a British popular front – the Unity Campaign – and a foreign policy of alliance with the Soviet Union and France to oppose the fascist powers. A political litmus for the SCC was the right for the Republic to buy arms. Campaigning for ‘arms for Spain’ was passed at the Bournemouth conference of 1937. Wilkinson took many occasions to argue for Republican Spain’s need for arms. Characteristically, she used an anecdote to make the case. Back from her ostensibly humanitarian mission of April 1937, she recalled an exchange with her Spanish interpreter, José 325
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Sancha. When she asked why so many young men were on the streets of Valencia, he retorted that if the French and British would sell the Republic arms, they would be in the battlefield.167 Wilkinson revealed her tactics on the NEC in a letter to Brailsford. She was concentrating on anti-aircraft guns rather than the ‘melodramatic gesture’ of Labour challenging the arms export ban as a whole.168 She believed that she had nearly been successful. Clearly then, behind the humanitarian and official façade, Wilkinson was pursuing complex political stratagems. Indeed, Wilkinson’s position within the official campaign highlighted the tension between humanitarianism and politics. It often fell to Wilkinson to make appeals for humanitarian aid especially milk for children or to decry the bombing of the innocent. She rebutted the ‘sneers from our own people’ that this was mere charity. Not allowed to send guns, food was needed for the fight just as strikes were ‘ultimately won or lost on the stomachs of the women and children’.169 This political subtext to her humanitarianism made her all the more effective. Jo Camp remembered Wilkinson speaking at the Friends Meeting House and at the Royal Albert Hall, reflecting that ‘there was never a more skilful collector of funds – she was marvellous’.170 Her collection speech at the Albert Hall was, for one observer, the high point of the meeting, moving many to tears and undoubtedly even extracting the bus fares home.171 Seeming to confirm the view that Wilkinson slipped into an apolitical humanitarianism, the William Gillies collection has Wilkinson’s letter withdrawing from a public meeting at the Friends Meeting House about Spain on the grounds that she objected to its ‘all party’ rather than humanitarian character. But this should be seen in the context of Wilkinson’s desire to engage the Labour movement as a whole in Spanish solidarity and of her run-ins with Citrine, the NEC and NCL. The meeting in question – an ‘all party women’s meeting for peace and democracy’ on 29 March 1938 – included Marjorie Pollitt representing the Communist Party, and therefore opened Wilkinson to possible disciplinary action.172 That the letter was in Gillies’s possession should underline this point. Wilkinson’s humanitarianism was more than a straightforward rejection of politics, instead it should be seen as an articulation of the popular frontist strategy to seek respectability and allies beyond the ranks of labour for the cause of anti-fascism and it was therefore consistent with her wider politics at this time. The SCC organised demonstrations in major cities across the country in November and December 1937. The campaign was launched in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester on 14 November, with 3,000 attending. Cripps, Wilkinson and James Walker were the speakers. In her speech, Wilkinson condemned the government’s plan to send a consul 326
Spain in revolution and war to Franco’s government and to recognise the Duke of Alba in London as such.173 The campaign visited Edinburgh (21 November), Birmingham, Swansea and Newport (28 November), Leeds (5 December), Bristol and Newcastle (12 December), culminating at the Albert Hall on 19 December, with Wilkinson speaking in Manchester, Swansea, Newport, Bristol and the Albert Hall.174
The visit with Attlee, December 1937: ‘our distinguished ambassador’ Wilkinson visited Spain with Attlee, his private secretary John Dugdale and Philip Noel-Baker MP from 3 to 8 December 1937. They toured Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid. According to the press, the executive of the UGT had invited the leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Wilkinson’s friend Louis Fischer called in at Attlee’s office and handed him a letter from Negrín inviting him to lead a Labour delegation to Spain.175 On the NEC and joint secretary of the Labour Party’s SCC, Wilkinson was a natural choice to accompany Attlee. They left London on the night of 1 December after Attlee had announced to the PLP that the Spanish government had invited him.176 On 2 December, when they arrived in Paris, Attlee, Wilkinson and Noel-Baker gave press statements to the editor of Agence Espagne. The Jarrow MP spoke of the growing sympathy in Britain for the Spanish Republic. Even in the poorest areas of the highest unemployment, hundreds of pounds were being raised for the Spanish milk fund. They left Paris by train at 8.20pm.177 On 3 December, the delegation travelled via Perpignan just north of the Franco-Spanish border to Barcelona. They apparently arrived with a French delegation including the SFIO deputy Zyromski and senator Morizet. UGT secretary Rodriguez Vega and representatives of the PSOE received the arrivals in Barcelona. They toured the city inspecting its hospitals and medical aid centres as well as the bombed-out areas, which caused a sensation among the visitors. They found the calm in Barcelona remarkable, particularly when told of the death of thirty people at a café only twenty minutes before. They were presented to Indalecio Prieto the moderate SFIO Minister of Defence, entering into a long conservation. Tom Buckley, the Daily Telegraph’s foreign correspondent, took Wilkinson around ‘unofficial’ Barcelona, witnessing the children queuing for food. That evening they were Prime Minister Juan Negrín’s guests of honour. Wilkinson raised with him what she had seen that afternoon and he was quick to point out that they needed not only to feed the children but also defend them, despite the Non-Intervention Committee’s embargo on anti-aircraft guns.178
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson The delegation flew from Barcelona to Valencia arriving at 11am. The mayor, civil governor, superior commissioner of security, the president of the provincial council and Lafuente, the general secretary of the UGT welcomed them at the aerodrome. From there, they drove fifty miles up the coast to Castellón, visiting villages that Italian planes based in Palma had devastated. At 1pm, they returned to Valencia. At around 2am on Sunday 5 December, the British delegation arrived in Madrid, being greeted by government officials and representatives of the Madrid press. Their day began with a visit to the Hospital de Carabineros which had been converted from a university halls of residence. From there, they took breakfast in the Presidencia, after which an anti-fascist women’s group (mujeres antifascistas) and a youth organisation (union des muchachos) hosted a meeting in the Cine Salamanca for the British guests.179 After this, they toured Argüelles, the working-class area near to the front line. A front-page photograph in El Sol pictured Attlee and Wilkinson surveying the destruction there. After observing these landscapes of modern warfare, they went to the General Barracks. After Miaja had received them Jésus Hernández gave a welcome oration. The press were also invited to ask questions of the foreign visitors.180 In the afternoon, they went to visit British International Brigaders in Mondéjar, a village 65km from Madrid. To ‘a mighty cheer’, the volunteers of the No.1 Company of the British Battalion christened themselves the Major Attlee Battalion and organised a torchlight ceremony. The event had a special place in the the romantic-heroic mythology of the Brigade. Will Rust underlined its significance, ‘Every man felt stronger, felt united with the mass labour movement at home, felt that their sacrifice in the cause of world peace and democracy was understood and supported.’ Wilkinson provided a symbolic counterpoint to masculine military virtue. Fred Copeman remembered Wilkinson’s popularity overshadowing Attlee’s on the visit: ‘Ellen was a great favourite with the lads. Her fiery enthusiasm and kind interest in the smallest things made her the central figure of the group.’181 At a rally later in Britain, Wilkinson recalled how impressed she was with the International Brigaders, and in particular Copeman, as she introduced him to the meeting.182 Rust recalled her ‘cheery reception’ in the barracks ‘over a cup of real English tea specially brewed in her honour’.183 She met volunteers from Durham, North Shields, South Wales and even one from her native Ardwick who said ‘Eh, lass, Ah’m glad to see thi.’184 They sang the Internationale together in honour of those of their number who had fallen in Spain. Later on, they visited Madrid’s Standard factory and its munitions workers. The British visitors remarked that they had never seen so many women workers together in one place. In what was perhaps a 328
Spain in revolution and war stylised exchange for public consumption, Wilkinson noted on seeing the women in masculine overalls that they were ‘addicted to rouge’ and promised to send them lipstick. One of the workers replied, ‘Send us condensed milk.’ To which General Miaja added, ‘But send us cannons as well.’ Spanish Republican newspapers used the visit for propaganda purposes contrasting the sterility of the Committee of London with the admirable speeches of the Labour Party leader. Attlee articulated tributes to popular heroism and expectation of Republican victory.185 The trip was intended for both international and domestic consumption to show the international support to boost morale in the face of the bitter hardships of war. Internationally, such visits served to publicise the Spanish Republican cause, to increase practical support and to pressure the democratic powers into a more amenable stance towards the Spanish government. Their comments also conformed to the government line over questions such as the Popular Army. At the press conference in Paris, Attlee talked of government success in restoring order and creating new military and civil organisation; in other words, precisely the issues contested on the streets of Barcelona the previous May.186 On Monday, Wilkinson and Attlee visited Julián Besteiro, the former PSOE president of the Cortes and chair of the Committee of Reform, Reconstruction and Health for Madrid. They then attended the Carlos Marx school group. As the children recited poetry about the greatness of the Asturian people, Wilkinson could not contain her tears. To Wilkinson’s surprise, the infants discussed an Alberti poem about an air raid. The teachers explained that a conference of doctors and psychologists had recommended that the children articulate their fears about the raids and their grief about those they had lost. One child had recently lost his mother.187 At 1pm, the mayor of Madrid, Gomez Egido welcomed them for a lunch at the council house.188 Attlee recalled in his memoirs Wilkinson’s reaction to a British consular official present at one of these receptions who she believed to be pro-Franco. She looked him in the eye, repeated his name twice, curtsied and turned away redolent of Queen Elizabeth’s gesture towards the French Ambassador after the St Bartholomew’s Eve massacre.189 Underlining the public relations dimension of the trip, Carreño España, a government press official was present having invited domestic and foreign journalists. In the afternoon, they visited Madrid’s front line, witnessing a parade of the 44th Brigade of the Popular Army. Before their departure for Barcelona, they ate with Hernández and Giner de los Rios the Minister of Public Works whom Wilkinson had met on her visit to Madrid in November 1934. They were sent on their way with a large demonstration outside the 329
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Presidential building. The moment is captured in the Progressive Film Institute newsreel Mr Attlee in Spain which was produced in English and Castillian versions. They arrived in Barcelona in the afternoon of 7 December to the sound – not for the first time – of air raid sirens, being welcomed by the President of the Cortes Martínez Barrio.190 Attlee remembered that on the flight from Valencia to Barcelona, fascist aircraft chased them though his other companions were oblivious to this.191 At 6pm, Negrín, Álvarez del Vayo, Prieto and Uribe (Communist Minister of Agriculture) received the British guests. Wilkinson had an extended discussion with Negrín over lunch. At 8pm, the Catalan government’s propaganda minister Jaume Miratvilles organised a meeting at which Attlee gave a long interview to the Manchester Guardian’s Miss Deeble.192 The group left Barcelona on the afternoon of 8 December to arrive in Paris at 8.45am the following morning to be met by CGT officials. In the afternoon, they spoke at a press conference organised by the International Committee of Information and Co-ordination for Aid to Republican Spain where Attlee paid tribute to the ‘high courage and democratic faith of the Spanish people’.193 If the danger of visiting the frontlines of the Spanish civil war were not enough, lightning stuck their plane on the flight between Paris and Croydon.194 They arrived in London on 9 December.
Aftermath of the trip The clenched fist salute of the delegates to Spanish troops caused controversy.195 Walter Liddall the Conservative MP for Lincoln City introduced a motion of censure into the House of Commons against Attlee over the visit being ‘guilty of a breach of faith and is unfit to again be granted a visa to Spain’.196 It was this aspect of the visit that those parts of the world press sympathetic to Franco from the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail to the Nazi Party’s Völkischer Beobachter focused on.197 Attlee’s gesture and his presence more generally overshadowed Wilkinson though it was her who played the greater part in organising the event and was known to many of her Spanish hosts. It was a role that she happily played in the furtherance of the Republican project. Her contribution was recognised in Spain. Journalist and poet Antonio Montoro’s remarkable front page article in Libertad paid tribute to Wilkinson’s ‘intelligent gaze’ over Spanish affairs. Montoro considered her to be ‘our distinguished ambassador’.198 This is apt, indeed, because Wilkinson’s support for the Spanish Republic even extended to unofficial diplomacy, agreeing to approach French Foreign Minister Bonnet in order to indicate that Chamberlain was out of touch with British public opinion over Spain.199
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Spain in revolution and war Three hours after arriving in London from Spain, Wilkinson spoke to a meeting chaired by Charlotte Haldane for the International Brigade Dependents and Wounded Aid Committee.200 Wilkinson addressed the criticism from the Conservatives and parts of the British press, feeling it an honour. She could not be impartial in Spain’s fight for freedom; to a loud chorus of ‘noes’, she asked the audience whether the Conservatives were. She also took the opportunity to return to praise the new Popular Army and the improvements that resulted. She concluded on the desperate food situation and the need for milk for the children. The meeting sent a message of birthday greetings to Ibárruri. At the Newcastle SCC public meeting on 12 December 1937, Wilkinson brandished a letter from the Catholic Action Party, stating that it would be carefully noting down her speech in an effort to deter her from supporting the Republican cause.201 She reasserted the significance of looking beyond parochial boundaries, saying that if fascist tyrants thought that the choice of government in Spain was their concern, then this was a matter of global importance.202 At the SCC on 16 December, Wilkinson won approval for the sale of a thousand donated copies of Louis Fischer’s pamphlet with its preface by Attlee. The proceeds would go to the SCC’s Spanish fund.203 At the Albert Hall on 19 December, Labour’s Spanish campaign reached its zenith. After a delegation from local Labour Party branches to the previous SSC meeting, Hammersmith Town Hall was booked for an overflow meeting. Several marches had been organised for the day. Although these were local initiatives and not sanctioned by the NEC, they were publicised in Tribune next to Wilkinson’s article on Spain.204 Clearly, Wilkinson and her Tribune colleagues were using the official structures to encourage grassroots initiative beyond that formally agreed in the committees. On 19 December, a crowded hall heard Attlee and Wilkinson speak shortly after their return from Spain as well as Cripps and Morrison. According to Agence Espagne, 15,000 turned up despite the capacity being only 8,000.205 Over £3,000 was collected from the audience.206 Attlee kept to a careful script. He praised the orderliness of the Spanish government and its army that he believed could win the war. He condemned the press lies and distortions about the Republic. He observed that non-intervention had failed to deprive Franco of a single man or gun. It was not non-intervention but its onesided application that was the problem. For that the British government bore a heavy responsibility. If Attlee was to put the official party position, it was left to Wilkinson to make the appeal to funds, speaking of the need for milk for children and food for women. It is clear that it was by design that in the Albert Hall and in Labour publications, Wilkinson was to be deployed as a woman to appeal to humanitarian concern. 331
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson This had the double effect of keeping her from areas where her views diverged from the leadership’s position and using her talent eliciting sympathy. Nevertheless, in her speech, she praised the Republic Army as well and when she said that she brought news from a victorious army, the applause was ‘deafening’.207 The Labour Party produced a pamphlet in time for the Albert Hall rally entitled We Saw in Spain based on their trip. In a short article, Wilkinson described her visit to a school in Madrid: ‘Bombs have fallen on schools just like this, wrecking them completely blowing teachers and children to bits. That is how fascists bring civilisation’.208 Longer more political pieces were left to Attlee, Noel-Baker and Dugdale. While the NEC had envisaged that the Milk for Spain campaign would end at the Albert Hall, it was necessary to reschedule Peace Week in January because so many affiliated organisations had asked for speakers on Spain.209 The SSC had clearly captured the imagination. The meeting at the Albert Hall signalled the high point of the Labour Party’s work around Spain. After that point, Wilkinson sought periodically to revitalise the campaign within the party and to draw the party into joint work with the movement outside its official structures. Wilkinson also provided emotive testimony to the bombing in Barcelona.210 From great heights, Luftwaffe bombers shut off their engines about 30 miles from their targets and drifted silently towards their targets. They were in position to drop their half-ton bombs before Republican fighter planes or anti-aircraft artillery could respond. The effect was devastating. At 8am one Saturday morning, two halfton bombs destroyed a workers’ tenement block and, as Wilkinson remarked, ‘all that was in them … the women cooking breakfast, the children still asleep in their cots, the tired munitions workers sleeping after night shifts’. The surrounding housing was rendered so unsafe that 3,000 people had to be evacuated with their tragic bundles of possessions to crowded shelters where germs and bombs menaced the refugees. Angered by the inaction and fake humanitarianism of the British Prime Minister when questioned about the Barcelona raids, Wilkinson remarked that 90 seconds work of these two bombers was ‘the ghastliest horror that is happening in the world’ that Chamberlain did nothing to stop: ‘Therefore Chamberlain must go. This horror must be stopped.’
Heading towards defeat, 1938–39 Meeting on 21 March 1938, the SCC planned a demonstration at Hyde Park for 10 April 1938, with Wilkinson speaking.211 With estimates of crowd numbers up to 120,000, Wilkinson (writing as ‘East Wind’) noted 332
Spain in revolution and war that the Labour Party, having organised only four platforms, was surprised and overwhelmed by the response to their call.212 Wilkinson was also amongst the initiators of the National Emergency Conference and Demonstration on Spain.213 Being a cross-party event, there was suspicion and resistance within the NEC, which discussed the event on 12 April. A vote to declare the conference to be without official status won seventeen to four, but Wilkinson could seek solace in the inclusion of a phase allowing affiliated organisations to exercise their own discretion, on the basis of an eight to thirteen vote.214 An impressive cross-party group of MPs and other notables, including Attlee and Wilkinson, put their name to an emergency conference on Spain to press for the Republic’s right to buy arms to be held on 23 April 1938.215 As Wilkinson observed, with the inclusion of Attlee and no mention of the Communist Party, it could not be condemned as a United Front conference.216 The National Emergency Conference on Spain constituted a major effort to galvanise and coordinate Spanish solidarity. It was composed of 1,203 separate organisations. Some 1,800 attended the rally in Queen’s Hall, with Wilkinson amongst the speakers.217 The conference delegated Wilkinson, Jagger and Rathbone to attend an informal meeting in Geneva of legislators of five democratic states on 11–12 May, the most significant delegation being from the French Popular Front government.218 Wilkinson’s speech at the National Emergency Conference underlined the situation’s urgency and the need for cooperation across all shades of political opinion. The conference, therefore, should be practical in nature and not the place for propaganda.219 Such a stance was intended to close down critical discussion of what was happening in Spain, as well as being an effort to placate the right on the NEC. For the Labour right, the composition of the conference was problematic and, indeed, one speaker described it as ‘the first meeting of the Popular Front in England’.220 Wilkinson’s tricky navigation of her party’s policy had its mirror image across the Commons floor in Atholl. It was over this conference that the Conservative Party deprived the ‘Red Duchess’ of the whip.221 While Wilkinson has been criticised for an apolitical humanitarianism during the Spanish Civil War, there was no humanitarian consensus on the SCC that she chaired. A proposal (reflecting her own position) to raise funds for anti-aircraft guns was put to its meeting of 26 April 1938, but lost by three to six.222 The SCC did push for Labour’s May day demonstrations to make special mention of Spain that year. Furthermore, it designated 21–22 May as the National Weekend for Spain. Labour Party head office organised twelve demonstrations and local party organisations arranged another fifty.223 The central event was a rally at the Albert Hall on Sunday 22 May. Dalton, Cripps, Attlee and Dukes spoke. 333
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Wilkinson chaired the meeting and made the appeal for funds, raising £1,403. The Daily Herald hailed this as a ‘great demonstration organised by the National Council of Labour’ but clearly a Sunday indoor rally could hardly be considered the mass mobilisation of Labour’s forces as Wilkinson routinely advocated.224 Testing the limits of the SCC’s remit, Wilkinson and Cripps raised support for a non-Labour initiative. The plan was to mark the second anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War with a weekend of activity (16–17 July 1938), including a demonstration at Trafalgar Square. Wilkinson’s name appeared first on the list of speakers on the leaflet for the demonstration.225 The right-wingers on the committee reacted with suspicion. The party chairman and secretary were to examine the circumstances of the demonstration and consult the NEC before giving official support.226 The Trafalgar Square meeting attracted 10,000 according to the Daily Herald (or half that number according to the authorities).227 Such numbers under the circumstances must have been considered a disappointment and an indicator of the failure of the Labour Party to endorse the event fully. The speakers included Lord Faringdon, Sidney Silverman MP and Nehru. Wilkinson’s efforts to secure support were evidently frustrated and it appears that she had to withdraw from the event. Instead, the Daily Herald published statements in support of the Republic from Attlee, Citrine, Dalton, Cripps and Wilkinson.228 With such discouragement, Wilkinson’s antagonism with Citrine resurfaced when she exposed in Tribune both his stage-management of the 1938 Trade Union Congress and his excuses for inactivity over Spain. She appealed to the General Council to mobilise the enormous might of the TUC in support of Spain.229 Had they called a conference to protest at the deaths of British trade unionist seamen sunk illegally by the fascist blockade of Republican Spain, she remarked, Citrine’s objections of practicality or remit could not have applied. In response, Citrine’s private secretary sent her a prickly missive.230 Wilkinson associated herself with the returning British International Brigaders and the campaign to aid the wounded, their widows and dependents.231 In November 1937, she signed an appeal for Christmas gifts for their wives and children.232 By December 1938, the International Brigade were being withdrawn from Spain as part of non-intervention. The short film ‘Welcome to the International Brigade’ captured Wilkinson and Attlee greeting International Brigaders with footage of Victoria Station and a reception meeting.233 Wilkinson spoke at an International Brigade Memorial Meeting on 8 January 1939 in the Empress Hall, Earl’s Court.234 Eight thousand attended in order to honour the 543 Britons who had died in Spain. They heard Wilkinson, Pollitt, Wilfred Roberts and Catholic priest Father O’Flanagan (secretary of the Irish Free State 334
Spain in revolution and war Library). The meeting raised £5,000 for the dependents of comrades who had fallen in Spain. In a letter to Fischer, Wilkinson described it as the ‘biggest success London has seen for a long time’, observing that the Communist Party deserved the credit for it. While the ‘lads were impressive’, it was Harry Pollitt’s ‘BIG show’ on his return from Spain. She was glad that Attlee’s message of support saved her from a ‘wholesale row’ on the NEC for appearing alongside Pollitt on a public platform.235 By this time defeat for the Republic appeared inevitable. On Wednesday 25 January 1939, another non-Labour public meeting and demonstration called for action over Spain. The Queen’s Hall was so overcrowded that an overspill meeting was hastily arranged in the Kingsway Hall. The Left Book Club, the Parliamentary Committee for Spain and the IPC sponsored the meeting signifying the spirit of the Popular Front. Other speakers included Alfred Barnes MP, Roberts, Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, Priestley, Bevan and Cripps. The event became entangled with the recent expulsion of Cripps from the Labour Party. Victor Gollancz, the chair, introduced Wilkinson as the only NEC member to vote against Cripps’s expulsion. She called for the rank and file of all parties to work together over the question of Spain and called for pickets of the houses of pro-Franco MPs. Cripps himself received the loudest approval. Bevan stated that Cripps’s crime was one that he too committed and that they could expel him too. Three thousand marched to Whitehall, chanting ‘we demand arms for Spain’. On 26 February 1939, Wilkinson participated alongside members of the International Brigades in a protest over the British government’s recognition of the Franco regime. After a rally at Trafalgar Square, there was a march to Downing Street. While protesters clashed with police to break through their cordons, Wilkinson, Attlee and Dr G.A. Morrison delivered a protest resolution to 10 Downing Street.236 In Warrington in February 1939, Wilkinson spoke of the ‘dreadful news’ of Barcelona’s fall, paying tribute to those who preferred to die on their feet than live on their knees. She observed bitterly that Chamberlain was telling people that giving aid to Spain was simply prolonging the agony and if Franco won he would preside over a graveyard of his own making.237 After the defeat, at the Labour Party conference in Southport, Wilkinson spoke on behalf of the NEC about Spain. She complained of the wall of silence over the thousands of executions being conducted by Franco’s army, 35,000 in Madrid alone. The government wanted Spain to be forgotten.238 She argued that the cause of Spain – the fight against fascism – was not lost and that the Labour movement should continue its efforts to aid the Spanish people and the heroes of the International Brigade. Having heard ‘it could not happen here’ at SPD meetings in Germany, she challenged such complacency in Britain. 335
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Critics of the official Spanish policy moved an amendment, condemning the failure of the NEC to mobilise the resources of the movement in support of the Spanish Republic as well as its support from non- intervention for a year. This, they argued, had materially weakened the Republican cause, and permitted Chamberlain’s divided government to extricate itself from potential collapse over the matter. They also wanted more done for the dependents of fallen International Brigaders. Replying for the NEC, Wilkinson stated that now was not the time for recriminations and the amendment lost on a show of hands.239 Rather than being manipulated into the position of defending the leadership’s record as some have suggested, Buchanan has argued that she saw no distinction between the work of Labour and that of the Communists.240 This view might be qualified. Her role at Southport was symptomatic of her approach to Spain, battling inside the NEC to shift party policy but being constrained publicly by her obligations to that body. She had tested the boundaries of those duties on several occasions, thereby risking her position in the party and it is ironic that she should be used to manage dissent within the party given her past. She had done this before on such issues as birth control and she was to do so increasingly from this point on. Defeat brought dire consequences for Wilkinson’s transnational contacts. After the Munich conference, Prague was no longer safe and Czechoslovakia’s fall seemed only a matter of time. Katz asked Wilkinson to secure twenty-five visas, principally for communist former Reichstag deputies. Most notable amongst these was Wilhelm Koenen.241 She managed all this only after serious lobbying, explaining in a letter to Katz, ‘I have just got the permit for the whole lot, but it had been SOME job.’ She then endeavoured to obtain visas for the ‘Kisch group’ but noted ‘I have to persuade the authorities, and my credit is getting exhausted, I will do my best.’242 Wilkinson also helped German Communist Hans Kahle, the commander of the 11th International Brigade in Spain, whom she had encountered in her April 1937 visit to Spain, to get British and French visas, writing to the French Interior Minister on his behalf.243 German communist author and international brigader Alfred Kantorowicz remembered Wilkinson’s friendship from RCVGF days, her help to secure his flight after the Spanish Civil War and her sympathetic letter regarding his wartime internment in Britain.244 She also wrote to the Australian authorities to allow Schapira and Liner to settle there. Through the National Joint Committee for Spanish relief, she worked on behalf of the 200 or so Republican leaders who arrived at Victoria station on 4 April 1939, shortly after the surrender of Madrid.245
336
Spain in revolution and war Conclusion: ‘Spain is draining me dry.’ The sheer scope and complexity of Wilkinson’s involvement on behalf of Republican Spain is striking. Her attitude towards Spain was the result of entangled relationships with Spanish leaders, her own party, her union and the Münzenberg-Katz circle (more than the British Communist Party itself). These pulled her in different directions in campaigning and ideological terms. What attracted Wilkinson to Spain was not so much the defence of a liberal democracy, though her antifascist commitment could not be doubted, but the ebb and flow of a great social movement. At moments, her writings on Spain exhibit a great intimacy and profound affinity with that movement and its revolutionary capacities. Yet the implications of her transnational networks and her advocacy of a Popular Front policy pulled her away from the base of that movement into the reception events for foreign visitors, the hotels filled with some of the world’s most celebrated novelists and journalists. Foremost, Spain was an experience of defeat and nobody connected to it could escape its emotional cost or its challenge to one’s political assumptions. It entailed the defeat of a transnational cycle of protest that touched many parts of the globe in the mid-1930s. Given Wilkinson’s experiences of Michigan, Paris and Madrid with the emancipatory possibilities palpable, or as she put it ‘miraculous’, she felt more than most British people the intensity of that defeat. Spain took its toll on Wilkinson’s health and nerves. Beryl Hughes had a hard time managing Wilkinson’s diary at this time because she was in such demand for public meetings and had the habit of accepting all invitations. Every four or five weeks, Wilkinson would cancel all her engagements ‘alleging illness or some other excuse’. As Wilkinson was getting a reputation for this, Hughes took over her diary and planned a more sustainable schedule.246 Wilkinson was to have visited Spain with Edith Summerskill on 18 July 1938 but had to cancel due to a bout of influenza, her sister Annie describing Wilkinson as ‘very poorly’.247 As defeat approached, despite keeping up her energetic public face, this workload bore its toll as she confided with Katz, ‘Spain is draining me dry.’248 Reminiscing in 1947, Kantorowicz remarked how the outbreak of war had broken up the network of Communists and their closest anti-fascist collaborators amongst whom he counted Wilkinson. He recalled their growing collective despair during the later 1930s that Europe was not heeding their warnings, that by the summer of 1938 they already sensed that it was too late. He observed that they were bound together in an abiding friendship and a deep common spiritual distress.249 Cockburn observed how the ‘gruesome conclusion’ of Spain’s war rendered the Republic’s supporters ‘cynical, despairing, 337
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson without faith or enthusiasm for anything’.250 Spain was for many the graveyard of political commitment. The Spanish Civil War coincided with show trials and purges in Moscow and several of Wilkinson’s collaborators (such as Münzenberg, Fischer, Regler and Koestler) registered their profound unease about events there. They evoked the contrast between the revolutionary hope and idealism in Spain and the cynicism and malevolent atmosphere inside Soviet Russia.251 Wilkinson could not help but notice the political itineraries of her friends. Alienated by politics as a consequence of his engagement with Spain, Conze abandoned politics in 1938 and became a great expert in and proponent of Buddhism.252 Toller committed suicide in New York on 22 May 1939. Münzenberg and the Comintern grew apart during the course of the Spanish Civil War. He visited Moscow at the time of the Zinoviev show trial in September 1936 and came under suspicion of Trotskyism. To avoid a summons to Moscow, he went into hospital in 1937. He was expelled from the central committee of the German Communist Party in 1938. That October he and social democrat Breitscheid established an anti-Stalinist socialist newspaper Die Zukunft. His friend Victor Schiff broke the news of Münzenberg’s mysterious death in the Daily Herald in January 1941 (though happening some months earlier).253 Schiff – also an acquaintance of Wilkinson – insinuated what many believed: Münzenberg had been abducted and killed by Stalinist agents.254 This is certainly what other friends of Wilkinson, like George Catlin, thought.255 British intelligence was uncertain about the depth of her entanglement with the Comintern; they suspected that, given her long association with Katz, she was ‘in closer contact with Comintern circles abroad than we had previously believed. This view is borne out by her reference to “the big fellow” … . This is a nickname by which paid Comintern employees in Paris frequently refer to one of their Chiefs whom we have never been able to identify.’ Yet the report concluded that her connection with communists might equally and more innocently be explained by her interest in the fate of German refugees since 1933.256 British intelligence files have also opened an unanswerable but unsettling question with Wilkinson’s uncharacteristically rattled request of Katz in mid-November 1938: WHAT a bombshell. Honestly I am scared stiff. You simply must either destroy the negatives of the worst or send them to me, and any copies there are PLEASE. Imagine what might happened if the Gestapo ran a burglary or the Surete a raid! HIMMEL. PLEASE.257
Her next letter to Katz repeated the request in a post-script: ‘DON’T FORGET TO SEND ME EXISTENT COPIES OF THOSE PHOTOS. 338
Spain in revolution and war KEEPS ME AWAKE AT NIGHT.’258 In the remainder of both these letters, Wilkinson adopted a business-as-usual tone, suggesting that the photographs did not sour relations between herself and Katz or that he was using them to blackmail her at least at that point. The possibilities remain open: they might have been damaging on a general or a personal level (perhaps for a mutual acquaintance). In any event, the cryptic exchange highlights the unrevealed dangers that Spain entailed for her. Wilkinson’s relationship with Spanish exiles did not stop there. In July 1940, Wilkinson asked on the NEC why representatives of the Spanish government (in exile) had not been invited to an international meeting but was told that only representatives of allied countries were invited.259 Pablo de Azcárate’s memoirs reveal how in August 1944 Negrín turned to Wilkinson as ‘during the Spanish Civil War, as a Member of Parliament, [she] had been one of the most loyal and resolute friends and supporters of the Republic’ when seeking passage to the USA and Mexico.260 With Hitler and Mussolini’s imminent defeat, Negrín was keen to unify pro-Republican parties and press for recognition as the legitimate government of Spain. At the same time, Franco was writing to Churchill to clarify the British position regarding his regime and the Foreign Office pursued a policy of not offending the Spanish dictator. In March 1945, shortly before the San Francisco conference to establish the United Nations, Negrín again dined with Wilkinson together with Morrison and they discussed the upcoming conference. Negrín was sceptical and feared that Labour would share responsibility for the poor outcome. Unfortunately, as Angel Viñas notes, Azcárate did not clarify Negrín’s evaluation, whether exclusively confined to Spain or the wider global settlement.261 Wilkinson attended this conference on behalf of the British government and Negrín was right to be sceptical of its results. Despite that, her death underlined the abiding significance of her Spanish connections for her Republican friends: Azcárate’s attended her memorial service, Ibárruri sent a message of sympathy to Labour women’s organisations on behalf of the Union of Spanish Women, and an obituary in Mujeres antifascistas españolas recalled her visit to Spain and her interventions on the Republic’s behalf.262
Notes 1 2 3 4
Estampa, 28 May 1929. Wilkinson, ‘Social justice’, in Fabian Society, Programme for Victory: a Collection of Essays Prepared for the Fabian Society, London, 1941, p. 127. Douglas Little, Malevolent Neutrality: the United States, Great Britain, and the Origins of the Spanish Civil War, Ithaca, NY, 1985. Tom Buchanan, Britain and the Spanish Civil War, Cambridge, 1997, p. 9. 339
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Richard Baxell, British Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War: The British Battalion in the International Brigades, 1936–1939, Hoboken, NJ, 2012, pp. 9–15. 5 Angel Viñas, ‘Inglaterra y el Frente Popular’, in Manuel Ballarín y José Luis Ledesma (eds), La República del Frente Popular. Reformas, conflictos y conspiraciones, Zaragoza, 2010, pp. 21–34. 6 Lewis Mates, Spanish Civil War and the British Left, London, 2007, pp. 100–101 and 109. Citing Shields Gazette, 31 December 1936 on Catholic Labour councillor and marshal of the Jarrow Crusade David Riley’s militant pro-Republican stance. Angela Jackson, British Women and the Spanish Civil War, London, 2002, 7 pp. 19–40. 8 Hugo García, The Truth about Spain!: Mobilizing British Public Opinion, 1936–1939, Brighton, 2010, p. 97. Arturo Barea, The Forging of a Rebel, London, 2001, pp. 656–663. S.J. Hetherington, Katherine Atholl, 1874– 1960: Against the Tide, Aberdeen, 1999, p. 183. 9 Mates, Spanish Civil War, p. 86. 10 La Cronica, 16 July 1933. 11 Heraldo de Madrid, 8 July 1933. 12 El Socialista, 13 July 1933. 13 Condemning the RCVGF for failing to campaign about Mühsam and for using van der Lubbe as a scapegoat, La Revue Anarchiste, October– December 1934, pp. 13–15. See also Wilkinson’s support for his case, Clarion, 14 April 1934. 14 Sunday Sun, 23 May 1937. 15 La Cronica, 16 July 1933. 16 El Socialista, 13 July 1933. La Epoca, 11 July 1933. Siglo Futuro, 26 July 1933 and 5 August 1933. 17 Garcia, Truth, pp. 24–27. Hugo García, ‘Potemkin in Spain? British Unofficial Missions of Investigation to Spain During the Civil War’, European History Quarterly, 40, 2 (2010), pp. 217–239. Also from a culturalist perspective, focusing on gender and the radicalisation of language after the Asturian revolt and arguing that accounted for the descent into civil war, Brian D. Bunk, Ghosts of Passion: Martyrdom, Gender, and the Origins of the Spanish Civil War, London, 2007. 18 Julio Álvarez del Vayo, Les Batailles de la Liberté: Mémoires d’un Optimiste, Paris, 1963, p. 184. 19 TNA KV 2 3595 minute sheet refers to letters: Stasova to Wilkinson, 20 October 1934; Wilkinson to Stasova, 30 October 1934; Stasova to Wilkinson, 27 November 1934. 20 Isabel Brown, ‘Looking for evidence’, in Jim Fyrth and Sally Alexander (eds), Women’s Voices from the Spanish Civil War, London, 1991, p. 247. 21 Wilkinson, ‘Reaction over Spain’, Student Outlook, February 1935. 22 Time and Tide, 24 November 1934. 23 Student Outlook, February 1935. 24 Ibid., February 1935. 25 Juan Francisco Fuentes, Largo Caballero: El Lenin Español, Madrid, 2005. 340
Spain in revolution and war 26 Where he received several international visitors, including Vincent Auriol and Wilkinson, Sunday Sun, 23 May 1937. 27 Wilkinson, ‘Terror in Spain’, Nation, 6 March 1935, pp. 232–233. 28 Time, 26 November 1934. 29 Paul Preston, We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War, London, 2008, p. 346. 30 Time and Tide, 21 Dec 1935. 31 Wilkinson, ‘Reaction over Spain’. 32 Leah Manning, What I Saw in Spain, London, 1935, p. 62. 33 La Voz, 15 November 1934. 34 Sunday Sun, 23 May 1937. 35 Nation, 6 March 1935. 36 Time and Tide, 24 November 1935. 37 Congreso de los Diputados, 14 November 1934, pp. 4749–4750. Mary Vincent, Catholicism and the Second Spanish Republic: Religion and Politics in Salamanca 1930–36, Oxford, 1996, p. 249. 38 The Times, 16 November 1934. 39 Described as an ‘international Masonic ambassadorial mission’, Siglo Futuro, 3 February 1936. Proposing a counter-investigation to determine Listowel’s gardener’s pay, Gracia y Justicia, 24 November 1934. ABC, 16 November 1934. La Epoca, 16 November 1934. El Sol, 18 November 1934. 40 Time, 26 November 1934. 41 The Times, 18 November 1934. Jose Maria Gil Robles, No Fue Posible La Paz, Barcelona, 1968, pp. 152–153. 42 Student Outlook, February 1935. 43 Nation, 6 March 1935. 44 La Voz, 2 November 1934. 45 Preston, Spanish Holocaust, pp. 87–88. Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Dias de Combate, Barcelona, 1997, pp. 135–136. 46 David Ruiz, Octubre de 1934: Revolución en la República española, Madrid, 2008, pp. 330–340. Extracts of Ordax’s report appears as an appendix in Manning, What I Saw in Spain, pp. 175–192. 47 ABC, 16 November 1934. 48 Time and Tide, 24 November 1934. 49 L’Humanité, 18 November 1934. 50 Daily Herald, 22 June 1936. 51 ABC, 16 November 1934. 52 However, this did not mean an end to the repression. Ruiz, Octubre, p. 350. 53 L’Humanité, 18 November 1934. 54 BDIC Fonds Ligue des Droits de L’Homme F delta res 798 62 Spain Comité populaire d’aide a toutes victimes du fascisme en espagne/Groupe des amis de l’espagne. President Prof Wallon, invitation to a great conference, 20 November 1934. 55 Pages Espanoles d’Octobre, Paris, n.d. André Ribard, Espagne en 1934, Paris, 1934, p. 17. 56 Speaking in Kingsway Hall, London (24 November), Barnsley (5 December), Bristol (11 December), Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 6 December 341
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 1934; Manchester Guardian, 15 November 1934 and 24 November 1934; West Daily Press, 12 December 1934; for the Comintern’s account of Wilkinson’s visit and the repression: Inprecorr, December 1934, pp. 1605–1606. 57 New Statesman and Nation, 26 January 1935, p. 103. Garcia, Truth, p. 27. 58 Preston, We Saw, pp. 157–164. 59 Luis Bolín, Spain: the Vital Years, London, 1967, pp. 130–137. 60 Daily Express, 30 January 1935, cited in Bolín, Spain, p. 135. 61 Sunday Chronicle, 23 December 1934. 62 Time and Tide, 23 March 1935, p. 429–430. 63 Daily Herald, 19 November 1934. 64 Manning, What I Saw in Spain, p. 18. 65 NUSC TDWR Edward Conze to Reid, 30 July 1974. 66 NUSC TDWR Archdale to Reid, 3 May 1972. 67 Edward Conze, Spain Today: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, London, 1936, p. v. 68 Edward Conze, The Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, Sherborne, 1979, p. 20. 69 Conze, Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, p. 15. 70 Daily Herald. 5 August 1936. 71 Ibid., 22 June 1936. 72 Justo Martínez Amutio (1896–1983), metalworker and pro-Largo Caballero secretary of the Valencia Federation of the PSOE. He eventually became a senator in 1977. Author of Chantaje a un Pueblo, Madrid, 1974, sensationally accusing Negrín of treachery in relation to the Soviets. Helen Graham, The Spanish Republic at War: 1936–1939, Cambridge, 2002, p. 155. 73 Ilya Ehrenburg, the Soviet journalist and novelist, also visited and wrote about the land seizures in the Toledo province at roughly the same time. VU, 20 May 1936. 74 Recovering women’s contribution to the civil war, Mary Nash, ‘“Milicianas” and Home Front Heroines: Images of Women in Revolutionary Spain (1936–1939)’, History of European Ideas, 11 (1989), pp. 235–244. Paying particular attention to the efforts of anarchist women of mujeres libres and the women’s commission of the POUM, Mary Nash, Rojas: las Mujeres Republicanas en la Guerra Civil, Madrid, 1999. 75 Time and Tide, 5 December 1936. 76 Ibid., 14 August 1937. 77 Alejandro Quiroga and Miguel Ángel del Arco, ‘Introduction’, in Alejandro Quiroga and Miguel Ángel del Arco (eds), Right-wing Spain in the Civil War Era: Soldiers of God and Apostles of the Fatherland, 1914–45, London, 2012, pp. vii–xix. 78 Sunday Sun, 16 May 1937. 79 McMaster University Archives, George Catlin papers, invitation from Wilkinson to Miss Brittan and Professor Catlin, 8 July 1936. 80 Ellis Smith, James Hall, S. Davies, Arthur Jenkins, George Dagger, Ernest Marklew, John Jagger, George Hardie, Tom Kennedy, J. Leslie, William Gallacher, J. Davison in that order, Daily Herald, 29 July 1936. 81 Louis Fischer, Men and Politics: an Autobiography, New York, 1941, 342
Spain in revolution and war pp. 464 and 502–507 (brokering a meeting with Lloyd George). 82 Kingsley Martin’s obituary of Wilkinson, New Statesman and Nation, 17 February 1947. 83 TNA KV 2 1384 191 Port of Dover report, 4 August 1936. TNA KV 2 1384 187a Wilkinson to Katz, 30 July 1936. 84 TNA KV 2 1384 186 Wilkinson to Katz, 16 July 1936; granting permission to enter, TNA KV 2 1384 186 Geoffrey Lloyd to Wilkinson, 14 July 1936; TNA KV 2 1384 181b Wilkinson to Katz, 23 June 1936; TNA KV 2 1384 187a Wilkinson to Katz, 30 July 1936. 85 TNA KV 2 1384 183a DSS report (S8), 26 June 1936. TNA KV 2 1384 281a report on Katz, 21 November 1938. TNA KV 2 1384 303c Metropolitan Police report (Special Branch), 11 April 1939. 86 McMaster University Archives, George Catlin papers, letter from Wilkinson to George Catlin, 7 April 1938. 87 Fischer, Men and Politics, p. 521. 88 TNA KV 2 138 4 259 Special Branch report on Katz, 24 June 1938. On his use of charm with Wilkinson or Geneviève Tabouis, Koestler, Invisible, p. 257. 89 McMaster University Archives, George Catlin papers, letter from Wilkinson to George Catlin, 15 August [1936]. 90 Angela Jackson, British Women and the Spanish Civil War, London, 2002, pp. 245–250. For the Tyneside Foodship Campaign, Lewis Mates, ’Britain’s Popular Front ? The Case of the Tyneside Foodship Campaign, 1938–1939’, Labour History Review, 69, 1 (2004), pp. 35–57. 91 How the press divided over the question of Spain see, Tom Buchanan, Britain and the Spanish Civil War, pp. 24–25 92 Shields Gazette, 8 September 1936. Also discussing this article, Mates, Spanish Civil War, p. 100. 93 McMaster University Archives, George Catlin papers letter from Wilkinson to George Catlin, 15 August [1936]. 94 L’Humanité, 14 August 1936. 95 Manchester Guardian, 15 August 1936. Tom Buchanan, The Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Britain: War, Loss and Memory, Brighton, 2006, pp. 43–63. 96 Manchester Guardian, 29 August 1936 and 7 September 1936. 97 Preston, We Saw, pp. 351–360. 98 Tom Buchanan, The Spanish Civil War and the British Labour Movement, Cambridge, 1991, p. 207. 99 Sunderland Echo, 14 September 1936. 100 LPASC NCL minutes, 27 August 1936. 101 Isabel Brown, ‘Looking for Evidence’, in Jim Fyrth and Sally Alexander (eds), Women’s Voices from the Spanish Civil War, London, 1991, p. 249. 102 This commission was composed of Philip Noel-Baker, Rathbone, and two Communists as secretaries, Geoffrey Bing and John Langdon-Davis. 103 LPACR, 1936, pp. 258–259. Manchester Guardian, 10 October 1936. 104 British Library of Political and Economic Science (BLPES) Sir Walter Citrine Papers Citrine to Wilkinson, 12 November 1936. 105 Ibid., Citrine to Wilkinson, 27 November 1936. 343
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 106 Ibid., Wilkinson to Citrine, 25 November 1936. 107 Ibid., Citrine to Wilkinson, 27 November 1936. 108 Buchanan, The Impact of the Spanish Civil, p. 149. 109 Duchess of Atholl, MP, Eleanor Rathbone, MP, Wilkinson, MP, and Dame Rachel Crowdy RRC, Report of a Short Visit to Valencia and Madrid in April 1937, London, 1937. See for a general account sympathetic to the Republic, which sold 300,000 copies, Duchess of Atholl, Searchlight on Spain, Harmondsworth, 1938. 110 Sue Bruley, ‘Women against Fascism and War: Communism, Feminism and the Popular Front’, in Jim Fryth (ed.), Britain, Fascism and the Popular Front, London, 1985, pp. 131–156. 111 Duchesse d’Atholl, L’Espagne et l’Europe, Paris, 1938. 112 Blair Castle Archive Atholl papers NRAS 980 File 35 1937 Alfred Denville to the Duchess of Atholl 14 April 1937. 113 Agence Espagne, 18 April 1937. Duchess of Atholl, ‘Dangerous for Us’, in Jim Fyrth and Sally Alexander (eds), Women’s Voices from the Spanish Civil War, 2nd edition, London, 2008, p. 250. On Katz’s presence, Hugo Gracía, ‘Potemkin in Spain? British Unofficial Missions of Investigation to Spain during the Civil War’, European History Quarterly, 40, 2 (2010), pp. 217–239. 114 Bristol University, Special Collections, Dame Rachel Crowdy Papers, DM1584 12 Q Spanish Press Agency, complimentary press releases, nos 154 and 156, 15 April 1937. 115 Liverpool University Eleanor Rathbone Papers Wilkinson to Atholl, 2 April 1937. 116 Pablo de Azcárate, Mi embajada en Londres durante la guerra civil española, Barcelona, 1976, photographs after p. 144. 117 Sunday Sun, 25 April 1937. 118 Ibid., 16 May 1937. Daily Herald, 16 April 1937. 119 They also come across Gallacher, William Gallacher, The Chosen Few, London, 1940, p. 51. Nan Green (ed.), The Last Memoirs of William Gallacher, London, 1966, p. 258. Claud Cockburn, Cockburn in Spain: Despatches from the Spanish Civil War, London, 1986, p. 180. 120 Sunday Sun, 2 May 1937. 121 Barea, Forging, p. 615. 122 Jonathan Miles, The Nine Lives of Katz: the Remarkable Story of a Communist Super-Spy, London, 2010, p. 192. Stephen Koch, Breaking Point: Hemmingway, Dos Passos and the Murder of José Robles, London, 2005. Providing a rigorous and less sensationally anti-communist account, Paul Preston, We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War, London, 2008, pp. 72–108. 123 Sunday Dispatch, 18 April 1937. 124 Barea, Forging, p. 662. 125 Agence Espagne, 18 April 1937. 126 Sunday Sun, 2 May 1937. 127 Barea, Forging, p. 661.
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Spain in revolution and war 128 Atholl described him as the best informed man in Spain, Churchill Archive CHAR 2 314 Atholl to Churchill, 9 May 1937. 129 Sunday Sun, 9 May 1937. 130 Agence Espagne, 18 April 1937. 131 Daily Herald, 29 April 1937. 132 Sunday Sun, 9 May 1937. 133 The Times, 24 April 1937. 134 Sunday Sun, 16 May 1937. 135 Ibid. 136 Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl, Working Partnership: being the Lives of John George, 8th Duke of Atholl, and of his Wife, Katharine Marjory Ramsay, London, 1958, p. 211. 137 Paul Preston, Comrades: portraits of the Spanish Civil War, London, 1999, pp. 277–318. 138 The Times, 24 April 1937. 139 Duchess of Atholl, MP, Eleanor Rathbone, MP, Wilkinson, MP, and Dame Rachel Crowdy RRC, Report of a Short Visit to Valencia and Madrid in April 1937, London, 1937. 140 University of Kent Special Collections Hewlett Johnson papers UKC JOH COR 252 Notes on the Scheme of Spanish Frontiers Observation, April 1937. 141 Espagne Socialiste, 1 May 1937. Duchess of Atholl, My Impressions of Spain, Southend, 1937. 142 Given that Atholl expressed this view shortly after their visit to Spain, Churchill Archive CHAR 2 314 Atholl to Churchill, 9 May 1937. 143 McGovern. Terror in Spain, 1937. 144 Sunday Sun, 23 May 1937. 145 Louis Fischer, The War in Spain, pp. 34–45. Preston, We Saw Spain Die, pp. 249–307; it is worth noting that Wilkinson signed off a letter to Katz, ‘and obeisances to L.F.’, TNA KV 2 1834 256 Wilkinson to Katz, 19 June 1938. 146 George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 1: An Age Like This, 1920–1940, Harmondsworth, 1970, p. 332. 147 The Times, 1 May 1937. Herbert Southworth, Guernica! Guernica! A Study of Journalism, Diplomacy, Propaganda and History, Berkerley, 1977, pp. 185 and 462. 148 HC Deb, 3 May 1937 col. 770. 149 Lewisham Independent, 28 May 1937. 150 Gloucestershire Echo, 22 June 1937. 151 The Times, 12 July 1937. Manchester Guardian, 12 July 1937. 152 Methodist Record, 11 November 1937. 153 HC Deb, 12 March 1937, cols 1515–1517. 154 Ibid., 22 March 1937, col. 2567. 155 Ibid., 28 April 1937, col. 313. 156 Ibid., 15 March 1937, col. 1621.
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 157 Ibid., 24 March 1937, col. 2874. 158 Ibid., 17 March 1937, col. 2123. Ibid., 17 March 1937, col. 2173. 159 Manchester Guardian, 18 March 1937. HC Deb, 17 March 1937, col. 2172. 160 HC Deb, 17 March 1937, col. 2212. 161 Buchanan, Britain and the Spanish Civil War, pp. 86–88. HC Deb, 6 May 1937, cols 1357–1362. 162 TNA KV 2 1384 Wilkinson to Katz, n.d. ‘Till late Friday night’, c. late September 1938. 163 TUC Library LRD 1 B 1 11 Friends of Nationalist Spain. 164 Time and Tide, 12 March 1938, p. 339. 165 LPASC LSI 19 4 Labour Party circular letter from J.S. Middleton: Spain Campaign Committee, November 1937. Demonstrations were to take place in Manchester, 14 November; Edinburgh, 21 November; Birmingham, 28 November; Swansea and Newport, 28 November; Leeds, 5 December; Bristol, 12 December; Newcastle, 12 December; London, 19 December. 166 Buchanan, The Spanish Civil War and the British Labour Movement. 167 She described him as a poet but he may be the painter of that name. Sunday Sun, 16 May 1937. 168 LPSAC HNB 3 6 Wilkinson to Brailsford, 28 May 1938; HNB 3 10 Wilkinson to Brailsford, 31 May 1938. 169 Tribune, 17 December 1937. 170 NUSC TDWR Jo Camp to Reid, 29 June 1974. 171 Time and Tide, 25 December 1937. 172 LPSAC SCW 1 29ii Other speakers Atholl (Conservative), Lady Layton (Liberal), Rose Simpson (CWS), Judith Corcoran (LNU), Sheila Lynd (Left Book Club), Dame Sybil Thorndike, 29 March 1938. 173 Manchester Guardian, 15 November 1937. 174 LPACR, 1939, pp. 33–37. LPSAC LP NEC Spain Campaign Committee minutes, 4 November 1937. 175 Fischer, Men and Politics, p. 464. Agence Espagne, 26 November 1937. 176 The Times, 2 December 1937. On the visit, TNA KV 2 1384 252 Louis Fischer to Katz, 24 November 1938. 177 Agence Espagne, 2 December 1937. 178 Time and Tide, 18 December 1937. 179 Agence Espagne, 5 December 1937. El Dia, 6 December 1937; El Sol, 7 December 1937. 180 Agence Espagne, 5 December 1937. 181 Fred Copeman, Reason in Revolt, London, 1948, p. 120. For the positive reaction of another British International Brigader to the visit, Bill Alexander, British Volunteer for Liberty: Spain 1936–39, London, 1986, p. 136. In the International Brigade newspaper, Volunteer for Liberty, 26 (1937), p. 1. 182 MML IBA Box 1 F2 National Emergency Conference on Spain Report, Queen’s Hall, 23 April, p. 12. 183 William Rust, Britons in Spain: the History of the British Battalion of the 15th International Brigade, London, 1939, pp. 97–101. 184 Time and Tide, 18 December 1937. 346
Spain in revolution and war 185 186 187 188 189
La Claridad, 11 December 1937. The Times, 10 December 1937. Time and Tide, 18 December 1937. El Socialista, 7 December 1937. Clement Attlee, As It Happened, London, 1954, p. 94. British Embassy official J.H. Leche complained about allegations that he was a fascist and that he suppressed information about foreign intervention and bombardments, believing Wilkinson in particular to be behind the rumours, TNA KV 2 1384 255 Leche to Sir George Mounsey (Foreign Office), 13 May 1938. He was correct. University of Kent Special Collections Hewlett Johnson papers UKC JOH COR 252 Notes on the Scheme of Spanish Frontiers Observation, April 1937. 190 La Claridad, 8 December 1937. 191 Attlee, As It Happened, p. 94. 192 Agence Espagne, 8 December 1937. 193 The Times, 10 December 1937. BDIC, Nanterre, Fonds Ligues des Droits de L’Homme F delta res 798 61 Spain Comité international de coordination et d’information pour l’aide a l’Espagne républicaine invitation from Madeleine Braun, 6 December 1937, to press conference on Thursday 9 December. 194 The Times, 10 December 1937. Daily Express, 10 December 1937. 195 The Times, 8 December 1937. For the image of Attlee with his fist in the air, IISG BG A1 390. 196 HC Deb, 9 December 1937, cols 564–567; La Claridad, 8 December 1937. 197 Daily Mail (continental edition), 10 December 1937. Westdeutscher Beobachter, 10 December 1937. 198 Libertad, 10 December 1937. 199 Bodleian Library Special Collections Cripps papers SC 10 2 Zilliacus to Cripps, 11 May 1938. 200 Daily Herald, 10 December 1937. 201 Shields Gazette, 13 December 1937 and 17 December 1937; North Mail, 15 December 1937 and 23 December 1937 (Bede’s notes); Mates, Spanish Civil War and the British Left, pp. 100–101. 202 Agence Espagne, 13 December 1937. 203 LPASC LP NEC SSC minutes, 16 December 1937. 204 Tribune, 17 December 1937. 205 Agence Espagne, 19 December 1937. 206 The Times, 20 December 1937. 207 Describing the scene of ‘red hysteria’, Catholic Herald, 23 December 1937. 208 LPASC CP CENT PL 01 05 C.R. Attlee MP, Wilkinson MP, Philip NoelBaker MP and John Dugdale, We Saw in Spain, London, n.d. [1937]. 209 LPASC LP NEC minutes, 22 December 1937. 210 Tribune, 25 March 1938. 211 Financed by the national Labour Party but organised by the London Trades Council and London Labour Party, LPASC NEC minutes, SCC, 21 March 1938 and International Sub-Committee, 25 April 1938. 212 Time and Tide, 16 April 1938. 347
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 213 Who included Richard Acland, Katherine Atholl, David Grenfell, Megan Lloyd George, Geoffrey Mander, Harold Nicolson, Philip Noel-Baker, Eleanor Rathbone, Wilfred Roberts, Wilkinson. Marx Memorial Library (MML) International Brigade Archive (IBA) Box 1 F1 Appeal of Emergency Conference on Spain, 6 April. 214 LPASC LP NEC minutes, 12 April 1938. 215 The Times, 7 April 1938. 216 Time and Tide, 16 April 1938. 217 North Mail, 15 and 31 January 1938; Shields Gazette, 21 January 1938; Buchanan, Spanish Civil War and the British Labour Movement, pp. 123– 124; Mates, Spanish Civil War and the British Left, pp. 6 and 76. 218 Manchester Guardian, 11 May 1938. 219 MML IBA Box 1 F2 National Emergency Conference on Spain Report, Queen’s Hall, 23 April, pp. 4–5 220 Manchester Guardian, 25 April 1938. 221 Atholl, Working Partnership, p. 220. 222 LPASC Labour Party NEC minutes, Spain Campaign Committee minutes, 26 April 1938. 223 Ibid., 17 May 1938. 224 Daily Herald, 23 May 1938. 225 MML IBA Box 1 F7 leaflet for the national demonstration, Trafalgar Square, 17 July 1938. 226 LPASC Labour Party NEC minutes, Spain Campaign Committee minutes, 22 June 1938. 227 BL IOR L PJ 12 293 Extract from the New Scotland Yard report, no. 121, 27 July 1938. 228 Daily Herald, 16 July 1938. 229 Tribune, 16 September 1938. 230 BLPES, Citrine papers, Private secretary to Wilkinson, 5 October 1938. 231 For appeal from Charlotte Haldane with Wilkinson as signatory, Manchester Guardian, 2 June 1938. 232 Manchester Guardian, 8 November 1937. 233 BFI archive, Welcome to the International Brigade (1938). 234 Manchester Guardian, 9 January 1939. 235 Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library (Princeton University) Louis Fischer Papers Box 13, folder 16 Wilkinson to Louis Fischer, 14 January 1939. 236 Cairns Post, 28 February 1939. 237 Chester Guardian, 10 February 1939. 238 LPACR, 1939, pp. 256–258. Lancashire Daily Post, 30 May 1939. 239 Manchester Guardian, 31 May 1939. 240 Buchanan, Spanish Civil War and the British Labour Movement, p. 222. 241 TNA KV 2 1062 160a: Wilkinson to Katz, 18 November 1938. 242 TNA KV 2 1384 300 letter to Vivian, 20 February 1939, with extract of intercepted letter, Wilkinson to Katz, 10 February 1939. 243 TNA KV 2 1384 284b summary of intercepted letter, Wilkinson to Katz, 8 December 1938; TNA KV 2 1384 283c summary of letter Louis Fischer to Katz, 6 December 1938. Relating an anecdote involving Hemmingway, 348
Spain in revolution and war whiskey and being bombed, escorting Atholl and Wilkinson and coming across a soda water factory Charlotte Haldane, Truth Will Out, London, 1949, p. 178. 244 Alfred Kantorowicz, Exil in Frankreich: Merkwürdigkeiten und Denkenwürdigkeiten, Bremen, 1971, pp. 69–70 and 226. 245 Manchester Guardian, 5 April 1939. 246 NUSC TDWR John Paton to Reid, 3 March 1975. 247 Manchester Guardian, 18 July 1938. 248 TNA KV 2 1384 280 Wilkinson to Katz, n.d. late October–early November 1938. 249 Alfred Kantorowicz, Deutsches Tagebuch, Munich, 1959, pp. 339–340. Breaking with Stalinism in 1957, Josie McLellan, ‘The Politics of Communist Biography: Alfred Kantorowicz and the Spanish Civil War’, German History, 22 (2004), pp. 536–562. 250 Cockburn, I, Claud … , Harmondsworth, 1967, p. 169. 251 Regler, Owl, pp. 230–67. Regler, The Great Crusade, New York, 1940, pp. 189–219 With the thorny problem of getting his Russian wife Markoosha out of Moscow, Fischer, Men and Politics; Koestler, Invisible Writing, pp. 384–394. Bill Jones, The Russia Complex: the British Labour Party and the Soviet Union, Manchester, 1977, pp. 25–28. 252 Conze, Memoirs, pp. 18–20. 253 TNA KV 2 774 280A report, 20 December 1940, on intercepted letter from Babette Gross to Edo Fimmen of 7 November 1940. 254 Daily Herald, 4 January 1941, press cutting TNA KV 2 774 281A. On Schiff and Münzenberg’s relationship, TNA KV 2 774 266B and 270B reports, 21 November 1939 and n.d. 255 George Caitlin, For God’s Sake, Go, Gerrard’s Cross, 1972, p. 147. 256 TNA KV 2 1384 281a report on Katz, 21 November 1938. 257 TNA KV 2 1384 280 Wilkinson to Katz, 18 November 1938. 258 TNA KV 2 1384 280 Wilkinson to Katz, n.d. late October-early November 1938. 259 LPASC NEC minutes, 23 July 1940. 260 Angel Viñas (ed.), Pablo de Azcárate: En Defensa De La República. Con Negrín En El Exilio, Barcelona, 2010, pp. 307–308. 261 Wilkinson for her part sang the praises of la Pasionaria, though Negrín related his less enthusiastic experiences. Viñas, Pablo de Azcárate, pp. 321–322. 262 The Times, 7 February 1947. TNA FO 370 1447 Condolences on the death of Miss Wilkinson MP, Minister of Education, 1 January 1947–31 December 1947. Mujeres antifascistas españolas, 15 February 1947.
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8 In government, 1940–47
When Churchill’s wartime coalition formed in May 1940, Wilkinson became a junior minister: first as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Pensions and then in October 1940 as Parliamentary Secretary to Morrison who was the Minister of Home Security and the Home Secretary.1 The 1945 election interlude apart, she remained in government until her death in 1947. This transformed her relationship with the movements. Her time on the NEC and during the 1929–31 Labour government acted as precedents for this transformation. Yet, this was more than mere opportunism and careerism. It was the product of three features: her defeated hopes for the movements, the logic of her political strategy and a propitious political opportunity structure. Her time in office encompassed momentous times both for domestic and international politics. World war redrew the political landscape and at its end the Labour Party won its first electoral majority, promising fundamental social reform. This phase of Wilkinson’s life has attracted historians’ attention for her role during the Blitz, her controversial time as Minister of Education and the uncertainties of her death. Rather than an exhaustive study of her career in high politics, the emphasis adopted here is upon how her time in government transformed her ideas, her relation with social movements and her transnational orientation.
Wilkinson’s turn Wilkinson’s inclusion in Churchill’s government on 17 May 1940 is remarkable.2 According to Dalton, Churchill was ‘very keen’ on her appointment.3 Her assessment of Churchill altered over time. From a younger Wilkinson’s viewpoint, Churchill had a long villainous record that stretched back to repression of the suffragettes when he ‘gratified his special cast of mind by inventing ways of breaking the spirit of the militant women’.4 Wilkinson also described Churchill as architect of the
In government, 1940–47 General Strike’s defeat and was consequently ‘one of the foremost pillars of reaction’, personally responsible for a ‘great part of the suffering and unrest’.5 Overall, he was the ‘cleverest class-warrior’ of the British establishment and as Chancellor ‘the rich man’s favourite statesman’.6 The Clash’s heroine had joked about shooting Churchill during the coming revolution. In Wilkinson’s Peeps at Politicians, Churchill artistically exploited the press, supplying gossip and pleading victimhood at the mere hint of criticism. In Commons debate, he attacked cruelly but was wistfully sensitive. Parliament eventually softened Wilkinson’s attitude. Snowden and Churchill’s duels delighted her.7 The ‘large smiling, expansive Winston’ could impulsively shape a brilliant speech from ‘half a fact and a couple of rumours’. As early as April 1932, Wilkinson singled Morrison and Churchill out as ‘hardly-to-be-spared’ governmental talent.8 By the late 1930s, her misgivings about Churchill dissipated seeking anti-appeasement unity ‘from Pollitt to Churchill’, transforming him from class enemy via admirable opponent to potential ally. His inclusion as First Lord of the Admiralty in Chamberlain’s Cabinet in September 1939 provided a ‘tonic for the House’ as the front bench at last possessed someone ‘in a struggle in which he personally believed’.9 By his defeat in the 1945 general election, Wilkinson was famously the only Labour MP to cheer Churchill. When in 1946 she received a plaque of the Great Coalition, she fondly recalled a time when ‘we served our Captain to save Britain’ and how those ‘great days’ had eclipsed other memories. 10 Indeed, Kingsley Martin believed Wilkinson’s ‘move to the right’ (his inverted commas) in 1940 was ‘under the spell of Churchill’. Louis Fischer agreed.11 Lobby correspondent and friend Paul Einzig who visited her and her sister at weekends in Buckinghamshire warned her not to drift to the right and believed Churchill had ‘hypnotised’ her.12 For Churchill, Wilkinson illustrated his government’s distinctiveness: ‘the most broad-based Government that Britain has ever known … from Lord Lloyd of Dolobran to Miss Wilkinson’.13 Such diversity required otherwise inconceivable concessions. This pact – known as ‘the People’s War’ – is one element of the wholesale shift in Wilkinson’s political stance. Put simply, she accepted the war and imperial defence shoulder-to-shoulder with the diehards, while the Conservatives accepted a populist anti-fascist rhetoric and the welfare state. As Wilkinson’s involvement signalled such a radical departure from her pacifist days, Astor teased ‘General Wilkinson’.14 Yet her value to the government clearly transcended her initial brief, Private Secretary to the Minister of Pensions. When pep talks were not well received, Wilkinson’s down-to-earth broadcast on 1 July 1940 fitted the mood. Her talk opened with an overheard remark.15 A young woman had commented: ‘Well, if we can’t buy new clothes we might as well 351
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson live under Hitler.’16 Wilkinson explained that the Nazi regime was a war machine led by gangsters who consigned women to producing children for war. History had shown that the strength of popular resistance depended upon its women and she encouraged women to involve themselves in the war effort. In so doing, Wilkinson drew on the language of feminist popular mobilisation and working-class self-organisation she had deployed throughout her activist life. Mass Observation reported that her speech was ‘young and vigorous’ and provided real leadership, gaining admiration from Edinburgh to housing estates in Chelsea: ‘They ought to make her a general; she would tell us what to do.’17 Given her political drift from late 1936 and the impact of events in Spain and Finland in 1939 and 1940, Wilkinson’s inclusion in government was not the cause of her turn to the right. Feeling that the European crisis could be ‘traced to intractable politicians of both left and right’, she wrote of living in ‘discouraged days’ around this time.18 For Kingsley Martin, Wilkinson epitomised the coalition’s confusion of old political conventions with her conversion from a ‘red revolutionary who would ruin the country’ to being a ‘practical and patriotic’ Labour leader.19 Another sign of her political trajectory was Wilkinson’s abandonment of the LRD and Tribune for the Fabian Society, joining its executive in May 1940.20 Her prior sympathy for the Soviet Union had turned to suspicion and anxiety.21 From left isolation on the NEC and risking disciplinary sanction, she conformed to orthodoxy and became largely invisible in its minutes. Her self-description as a ‘practical politician’ both recognised and justified her transition. She revealed her pragmatism when she said of Jennie Lee that she was a magnificent propagandist but no politician and ‘one has to be a politician in politics’.22 The environment of Churchill’s government played a role. Thus, she met her ‘own particular villain’: Sir James Lithgow, former chairman of the NSS. After an hour’s hard argument, she concluded that he was a ‘very pleasant but hard-headed Scotsman’ who believed that the NSS’s effect on Jarrow was none of his concern.23 Regarding Wilkinson’s domain of shelter policy, the party congratulated itself after a year in office on more Anderson shelters, pressing local authorities to drain flooded shelters, and the introduction of ‘Morrison shelters’.24 Yet, for all the leadership’s self-congratulation, there were wider signs of dissatisfaction within the Labour movement. Where the means test was concerned, Shinwell called for outright abolition.25 The NUR executive complained about the imprisonment of Congress leaders.26 Likewise, Labour’s withdrawal of its endorsement of Menon as a parliamentary candidate provoked discontent.27 Opposition to the war came to a head with the People’s Convention held in Birmingham on 12 January 1941. Morrison banned the Daily Worker and the Labour 352
In government, 1940–47 Party conducted a wave of expulsions of those who did not withdraw.28 While she herself had been under threat in January 1939 and had tried to postpone Pritt’s expulsion in March 1940, on this occasion her silence signalled support for the NEC’s positions. By the approach of the Norway crisis, Wilkinson approved of the leadership preventing a ‘dreary squabble with the pacifists and semi-communists’ (amongst whose ranks she was until recently counted prominently) at the upcoming Labour Party Conference.29 During the war, Wilkinson complained about, and rowed with, the left-wingers on the NEC and in the PLP. Her ‘exhortations to loyalty’ caused amusement amongst those Labour colleagues who remembered her own dissent.30 After the threshold of 1940, Wilkinson’s politics changed categorically. Ray Challinor argued that her radical past was used against anti-war or revolutionary sentiment within the Labour movement.31 Thus, Birmingham Labour Party complained that they had not been contacted when Morrison had visited bombed-out areas.32 Left criticism of Wilkinson continued after the invasion of the Soviet Union. On 6 October 1941, when the London Labour movement called an ‘aid for Russia’ demonstration in Trafalgar Square, hecklers interrupted Wilkinson’s speech repeatedly.33 The spring 1942 NUDAW ADM voted, despite her and Jagger’s opposition, to lift the ban on the Daily Worker.34 When unofficial strikes broke out in the Tyneside shipyards, Wilkinson was able to persuade 2,000 strikers to return to work after five minutes.35 A month later, the Daily Worker – which was urging a return to work – reported on a deputation seeing Wilkinson calling for an inquiry.36 Indeed, she condemned the shop stewards who led the strikes for attacking organised trade union activity and pursuing ‘casual mob rule’.37 There were significant shifts in her language regarding war and nation. As late as January 1939, she had speculated whether ‘decent young men in all countries will refuse to go into the Air Force, preferring any other national duty because of the horror of what they will be commanded to do’. Provoked into defending Rebecca West’s Black Lamb, Grey Falcon, she criticised the Vansittart’s ‘cold malignity’ in March 1942, believing international understanding would be needed to prevent a third world war.38 As the months passed, her internationalism eroded and mutated into a liberal variant supportive of empire. Her register changed, replacing the ‘German people’ with ‘Germany’. After exculpating the 17 million who had never voted for Hitler, by November 1942 ‘Germany was certainly getting the medicine she had so heartily asked for.’39 Again in August 1943 at a talk to civil defence volunteers, she contemplated the raids on Hamburg, Dusseldorf and other German cities, saying ‘the rest of the world knows that they started it and are only getting back what they gave’.40 Wilkinson turned down requests from her erstwhile pacifist 353
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson allies during the war. She rejected Fenner Brockway’s plea for exemptions from the fire guard orders on the grounds of conscience.41 George Catlin asked Wilkinson if she could intervene on his wife Vera Brittain’s behalf who had been refused an exit visa to reunite with Catlin and her children. Wilkinson replied that she was serving at Home Security not the Home Office so would not be able to do anything as this would cause inter-departmental resentment.42 Conze reflected that Wilkinson never forgave him for remaining a pacifist during the Second World War.43 When it came to socialism, her views underwent a significant but less apparent change, now equating socialism with wartime economic regulation. Thus, on 25 October 1942 at a Tooting Labour Party meeting, she argued that socialism would not arrive tied with a pink ribbon from Winston Churchill at war’s end. Instead, it would have to be worked for. Yet, state control of the war economy prefigured the ‘city of the future’ in the here and now though the Conservatives denounced these principles in peacetime. The war itself was thus a fight for a rational and planned society, not for the liberties of the millionaires.44 Wilkinson’s essay on social justice for the Fabian Society was the fullest expression of her socialism after 1940.45 Fundamental differences between the First and Second World Wars justified her support for the current war. The novels of the First World War had accurately expressed the ‘feeling of human recoil from senseless slaughter, from the idea of the Colonel Blimps of all the nations having a grand blood-bath at the expense of youth’.46 Despite aerial bombing, she argued, the Second World War was nothing like this. It was ‘not fundamentally a struggle for territories and oil’ but a ‘struggle for the control of minds’.47 Her causal explanation of this war was Nazism (which she defined as big business’s response to the threat of socialism in the era of mass production). She was therefore careful to reject imperialism as the cause of war as she had previously argued. The Nazi state sought to transform Europe into a ‘vast colonial area’. Given the contest’s delicate balance, the democratic ‘appeal of the social idea’ would defeat Nazism. The connection between political democracy and social justice would differentiate this war from the last. ‘Britain’ needed to ‘persuade her own people and the peoples of the world’ of the worthiness of its fight. Emphasising social justice, Wilkinson hoped that London would inspire anti-fascism internationally, just as Madrid had done. Conversely, the British ‘museum classes’ believed that other nations should ‘feel it a privilege … to face death and danger for the sake of the British Empire’. Such a view could not achieve victory. In contrast, she proclaimed the ideal of social justice embodied in the Greek city states, Spartacus, and the French revolution. Social justice and equality could bring British and French workers together and 354
In government, 1940–47 could encourage resistance against German occupation and the Vichy regime. Control of industry in national hands could guarantee the ‘basic pillar of social justice’, namely the ‘economic security of the worker’. If only a precarious job kept a family from ‘starvation and the workhouse’ then political and legal equality was a mockery. The means test’s ‘abolition’ was a first step in this direction. She observed that Hitler’s Blitz transformed attitudes to planning and public control of the economy; need rather than dividends determined investment. Yet, an apologetic silence about this descended over British politics for fear of embarrassing financial and industrial elites. Things should not return to their pre-war condition. Rather than this, Wilkinson believed that planning should be done openly and that there should be a commitment to these measures after the war. This would constitute, Wilkinson argued, a ‘revolution of ideas’ that alone could ‘supply the fervour necessary to win’. Hope could emerge from the bombsites of London, as could the possibility of building ‘something infinitely lovelier than the best of what we have lost. It would not take long to build something very much better than the worst’.48 In classical Fabian vein, her essay expressed statist socialism based on nationalisation and planning through parliamentary means. Her concept of social justice with its Eurocentric genealogy was sufficiently vague to appeal to a broad political spectrum. Her stress upon working-class agency was transformed into mobilisation for total war. Despite this, Wilkinson wrote with a passionate quasi-revolutionary rhetoric inherited from the social movements. Wilkinson’s crossed a threshold in 1940 and showed no signs of reversal. Considering whether Wilkinson was leaning towards Bevan before her death, John Paton believed that after 1940, Wilkinson did not commit herself to the left but instead ‘to the job in hand’. The transition was indeed a shift from principle to pragmatism as well as from politics to ethics.49 It seems that such pragmatism compromised each dimension of her political past. Thus in March 1944, for instance, she voted with the government against equal pay.50 In her last months, perhaps earlier, Wilkinson drifted towards Keynesianism.51
Wilkinson and the Blitz The Blitz began on 7 September 1940 and the intensive bombing of London, as well as of industrial centres and ports continued until 16 May 1941. More than 43,500 civilians died and 71,000 were seriously wounded.52 For both British and German strategic thinkers, aerial bombing sought to undermine civilian – in particular working-class – morale. It was the most serious test of popular resolve in wartime.53 A fortnight into the Blitz, Wilkinson commented on the BBC that unnecessary work 355
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson stoppages were an ‘act of surrender to Hitler’, even after air raid sirens sounded.54 On 8 October 1940 after a month’s intensive nightly bombing, Wilkinson became the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Home Security, Herbert Morrison (he was also the Home Secretary); Wilkinson had specific responsibility for shelters. The announcement coincided with news that her Bloomsbury flat had just been bombed for a second time, a high explosive bomb hitting the shelter in her back garden and damaging the roof. Of her possessions, she salvaged a few books but her clothes and hats were ruined.55 Wilkinson had long campaigned against aerial bombardment (or ‘murder by air’) as it threatened civilisation itself.56 She had witnessed Barcelona and Madrid’s devastation, reinforcing her opposition to the bombing of civilians. Against this background, she became the ‘shelter queen’, visiting bombed-out civilians with journalists in tow to maintain public confidence in the government and coordinating provision of air raid protection (ARP).57 As part of her publicity campaign, Wilkinson addressed the public about air raid shelters in a BBC radio broadcast on 5 December 1940.58 Furthermore, given her record, her very presence in the government legitimised the strategy of Bomber Command under Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris that targeted the German civilian population particularly the industrial working class.59 Indeed, in 1944, she would describe Harris and his wife as ‘two of the finest people I have met in this war’.60 Inside the Home Office, a woman junior minister with a left-wing reputation generated concern. Wilkinson undertook the ‘hottest job’ of Morrison’s three Parliamentary Secretaries. She and Morrison replaced the ‘aloof’ Sir John Anderson on shelter policy. Home Office insider Sir Phillip Allen reflected later that it was difficult ‘to recapture the size of the threat to civilian morale’.61 Air raid shelters had become a major source of discontent. She was just what was needed with her ‘personal and emotional’ way of dealing with ‘humble, frightened and puzzled folk’.62 During her tours of bombed areas, she used to get out a notebook and write down the names and grievances of those she met. A Mass Observation report on morale indicated the appointments of Morrison and Wilkinson ‘reduced the tension on the homeless side, and made people feel that more trouble will be taken about their airraid problems’.63 Angus Calder remembered his father Ritchie talking about Wilkinson’s work during the Blitz, being among his motivations for writing The People’s War.64 In his memoirs, Attlee praised Wilkinson’s outstanding courage at this job.65 High-ranking civil servant, S.C. Leslie noted her ‘Jarrow-march aura was a continuing asset’ among the ‘kind of people most affected by the Blitz’, namely the working class of the East End, Coventry, or Clydeside.66 356
In government, 1940–47 While pre-war expectations of casualties and mass panic were exaggerated, such an effect remained a major concern for the authorities. Moreover, the CPGB were agitating over the shelters, organising shelter committees. They emphasised the lack of deep ‘Haldane shelters’.67 After London Passenger Transport Board and the government had attempted to close the underground overnight, the CPGB and other activists succeeded in reversing that decision through direct action.68 Wilkinson first turned to the SJC to mobilise Labour women and then to voluntary organisations to help with welfare inside the shelters, organising a conference on 26 November 1940 with representatives from various social welfare organisations.69 Opening the conference, she explained that their task was to avert the threat of social breakdown. In this speech, shelters were a problem of home security and social control. A ‘vast human problem’ existed in which thousands were ‘divorced from the habits of life’, with a ‘considerable danger’ being posed by ‘boredom and lack of leadership’.70 First meeting on 17 December 1940, Wilkinson established the Shelter Welfare Committee from the conference. Flora Solomon, the Marks and Spencers executive responsible for employee welfare, wrote to Wilkinson afterwards urging that welfare in the shelters was a responsibility of the state and that here was an opportunity for the instigation of the national welfare scheme.71 Wilkinson did not take such a welfarist approach. Doubtless concerned with the coalition’s consensus, she persisted with her voluntarist approach. Professor Sir John Baker recalled dealings with Wilkinson in relation to the Shelter Policy Committee from October 1940. He proposed a practical solution to the lack of shelters in big cities. He produced a report on 12 October 1940, stating that modern steel-framed buildings common in offices and blocks of flats were virtually bomb-proof from the fourth floor down.72 Wilkinson was enthusiastic. She supported this idea with Sir George Gater, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Home Security sending a letter on 11 November 1940 on the matter and a circular to local authorities. Yet businesses and real estate owners were resistant. Designing shelters since before the war notably for Labour-controlled Finsbury council, structural engineer Ove Arup also saw Wilkinson over shelter policy. In his opinion, the authorities acted deplorably, while the CPGB was agitating unrealistically ‘for complete protection for everybody against a direct hit of a half ton bomb’. In response to the deep shelter controversy, he advocated underground concrete tunnel shelters or ‘wall shelters’ of reinforced concrete walls designed to withstand, rather a direct hit, the blast and splinters that accounted for most fatalities.73 Now persuaded, Wilkinson arranged a meeting between Arup and government experts. The expert conceded Arup’s logic but defended dispersal as the walled shelters would facilitate political agitation and 357
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson panic. Arup contrasted Wilkinson’s real concern with the cynical official who even said that if they could reassure people with a board saying ‘safe shelter’, they would have done their job.74 Ultimately, after disagreements with Wilkinson and her departmental experts, he thought the Morrison shelters (steel cages that were put under tables in the home) were preferable to the Anderson shelters. He shifted tack focusing on sheltering those who were now homeless due to the bombing.75 After her appointment, Wilkinson toured shelters, initially in London and then throughout the country, including the worst affected areas. She encountered traumatic scenes. For instance, she visited the site of a bombed school at which 47 died the previous day.76 Wilkinson also told Rhondda of seeing a severed foot that she could not shake from her mind.77 In response to a press campaign about the ‘nightmare arches’, Wilkinson visited East Enders sheltering under the railway arches on 10 October. Fourteen thousand were spending the night there. According the News Chronicle, Wilkinson’s twenty-minute escorted visit was hardly adequate to assess the real situation. One woman pleaded with Wilkinson about the damp and the lack of bedding.78 Given local authority responsibility for ARP, Wilkinson found considerable variation in shelter provision. In places such as Hull and Norwich, she praised local officials for the improvements being made, but in others, including Dundee and Liverpool, she condemned local provision, thereby displacing discontent from the government onto local authorities.79 During a Manchester trip on 3 December, she promised additional supplies of cement and stoves to counteract damp. She deflected criticism regarding deep shelters by saying that the government was considering different types of shelter but she preferred dispersed shelters, knowing from experience that deep ones provided no security against a 250lb bomb.80 This reference to her Spanish experiences sidestepped the evidence of the effectiveness of public underground shelters in Barcelona and Madrid and contradicted the policy of dispersal.81 The campaign for deep shelters struck a popular chord, but the government were against such shelters on the grounds of expense, timescale of a building programme and social control as it feared that larger shelters would allow discontent to spread.82 Prior to Morrison’s ban on the Daily Worker in January 1941, the paper denounced Wilkinson’s shelter inspections as publicity stunts, speculating about the shelter queen’s ‘unthroning’ or ‘abdication’.83 Within a fortnight of her appointment, her friends at Time and Tide were defending Wilkinson’s shelter tours against Daily Worker’s Pitcairn.84 Despite an overwhelmingly favourable balance of popular reaction, one Mass Observation report noted that she would cynically take off her fur coat before speaking to a Jarrow audience and that she was a ‘ginger-headed 358
In government, 1940–47 gas bag’.85 Wilkinson responded to the ‘ill-tempered generalisations’ over shelters in a speech in Oxford, saying the administrators and planners were performing miracles providing extra shelter places, bunk installation and measures against damp.86 In May 1941, Wilkinson became the chief of Britain’s one and a half million fire-watchers whose job it was to prevent the spread of fires caused by incendiary bombs.87 She detailed the significance of women fire-watchers in two BBC broadcasts.88 She observed that fire-watching would be carried out principally by women who would provide ‘a vast reserve of toughness for our fire-watching service’.89 She believed civil defence (of which fire-watching was a component) could maintain public morale, keeping people occupied in bombed cities with discussion groups, art lessons, lectures, competitions, sports and exhibitions.90 Helen Jones has identified the significance of such sociability in the Civil Defence Centres or what Wilkinson described as the civil defence workers’ ‘real esprit de corps’.91 Wilkinson’s empathy with popular grievances was only credible because it rested on her pre-war activities, concerns and language. Specifically, she was able to channel anti-fascist sentiment, as well as feelings of gender and class injustice. Thus, during a Liverpool visit in April 1941, the city that outside London suffered the greatest loss of life from bombing, she was unhappy at progress in shelter provision and shoddy construction standards of private firms.92 Moreover, with personnel shortages in civil defence and fire-watching, she deployed feminist rhetoric to encourage participation. In the Daily Mail, she wrote that ‘women can be heroes too’.93 To a female audience in Worthing, she talked of the need for ‘woman power’.94 In radio broadcasts, she praised the ‘heroines of the blitz’ and ‘girls … who make Grace Darling’s famous trip seem like a Sunday School picnic’.95 In Liverpool, on 6 October 1942, she paid tribute to women’s courage that had never faltered in war service.96 Yet, she also criticised the wealthy ‘woman of leisure’, or ‘younger women … of well-to-do families … lazing about hotel lounges’.97 When people objected that women should not be obliged to perform civil defence work, Wilkinson ridiculed those who based their arguments on the grounds of femininity (or their ‘rather delicate’ nature). The credibility of her feminist rhetoric was contested. In Worthing, a woman from the audience challenged her over equal pay, incurring Wilkinson’s indignant reply: ‘I think that the lady asking the question need not insult me. I have altered my views in no respect. I have always, and always will, stand for equal treatment and equal pay for equal work …’.98 In a Liverpool meeting, ‘typists, shopgirls and housewives’ gave her a rough reception with one a heckler shouting that Morrison was hiding behind a woman, and the police having to escort her to her car.99 359
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Divulging the limits of the wartime consensus, a misplaced word that she still had all her clothing coupons drew public dissatisfaction, abusive letters and press complaints.100 The Daily Mirror suggested that she had rushed to buy clothes knowing that they were about to be rationed and rumours even circulated of black market dealings. She had to go on record that she still had her vouchers because she avoided ‘fancy frills and feminine’ styles.101 More seriously, though, she had to justify compulsory fire watching duties for women.102 This caused controversy at the TUC conference in Edinburgh of September 1941.103 Prior to the order, she had prepared the ground, saying publicly that if insufficient women were forthcoming for fire-watching duties, the government would introduce compulsion. The Women’s Compulsory Fire Guard Order was introduced in summer 1942.104 It was Wilkinson’s job to smooth its implementation. In a radio broadcast on 9 August, she argued that women would look back on their role during the war with satisfaction and their children would ask ‘What did you do during the war, mummy?’ Their reply would be: ‘Oh nothing much: I just helped to beat the Luftwaffe.’105 Despite such persuasion, the fire-watching order caused angry scenes at Wilkinson’s meetings in Coventry and Liverpool, two cities that had suffered badly during the Blitz.106 In Coventry on 5 October, she faced a two-hour barrage of good-humoured criticism with women interrupting her, shouting ‘get on with the war’ or ‘open the second front’.107 NUDAW joined the criticism over compulsory fire-watching. Its Ayrshire Federation passed a protest motion against her over the non-payment of fire-watchers.108 One NUDAW branch in Luton passed a motion of ‘disgust’ at Wilkinson’s threat to compel women to perform fire-watching duties and that she could ‘no longer be regarded as a person seeking to assist the emancipation of the workers, but as an apologist and tool of the capitalist class’.109 When the Luton motion was forwarded to her, Wilkinson wrote a defensive explanation, blaming the ‘garbled’ press reports.110 Another branch complained to NUDAW headquarters that Wilkinson had ignored their correspondence, that compulsory women’s fire-watching duties contravened union policy and that she was ‘flouting public opinion on this matter’.111 Time and Tide defended Wilkinson once again, criticising the ‘whining’ of Liverpool’s civic leaders and condemning those opposed to the order as ‘congenitally selfish’.112 Despite Rhondda’s support, the gender inequality in compensation for injury during such duties dissatisfied women’s organisations.113 As part of her official duties, Wilkinson showed US Republican Party leader Wendell Willkie the government’s response to the Blitz. She took considerable pride in this, writing privately that she ‘actually liked the man’.114 Willkie was in favour of US entry into the war and he was 360
In government, 1940–47 among those who wanted Wilkinson to visit the USA to boost the pro- intervention case. In summer 1941, the British government was trying to assist the pro-war camp in the USA, both in terms of high politics and public opinion. As a consequence of her previous US visits and network of press, labour and feminist contacts, various American notables lobbied Downing Street for Wilkinson to be sent on a speaking tour in July 1941.115 Seeking to persuade US opinion, particularly labour opinion, about the virtue of US entry into the war, they deemed Wilkinson to be the most appropriate candidate for such a visit. They believed a joint AFL–CIO rally in New York featuring Wilkinson would provide a ‘unique opportunity’. Given the high regard in which US labour held her, Wilkinson’s ‘presence might make all the difference in swinging labour to 100 per cent effort in support of England’.116 As well as American labour, Wilkinson played well to Irish American and Jewish opinion.117 Churchill refused to let Wilkinson go as her work in Britain, primarily maintaining morale in the face of the Luftwaffe, was vital.
Mosley’s release, November 1943 After the outbreak of war, Mosley and Lady Mosley were detained in Holloway Prison under Defence Regulation 18B. On Churchill’s prompting, Morrison decided to release Mosley on house arrest with health as justification. This caused great controversy from 18 November 1943.118 His release raised popular doubts about the anti-fascist credentials of the People’s War and exposed an undercurrent of social tensions. On 27 November, defending Morrison’s decision, Wilkinson complained that the protest against Mosley’s release was ‘mob hysteria’, which consequently focused discontent on her.119 Speaking in Worcester, the following day, she reportedly said that Mosley was ‘bedridden’, which she later had to correct, denying using the term.120 Wilkinson also became entangled with a dispute with NUDAW. On 23 November, the NUDAW executive protested against Mosley’s release to Morrison at the Home Office and requested that its sponsored MPs (implicitly including Wilkinson) support the protest in the Commons.121 Cottrell, acting union president, wrote to Wilkinson on 30 November about her ‘hysterical outburst’. He remarked that ‘your’ executive could not be accused of mob hysteria and that their protest was ‘on behalf of the whole of our members – 270,000 of them – I presume that we are part of the “mob”’.122 Clarifying herself on 10 December, she was not referring to NUDAW or the TUC but the demonstrations outside the Commons and the Daily Worker’s ‘deliberate campaign of misrepresentation’. She defended the decision to release Mosley (who remained under house arrest) on the grounds of his health, the temporary nature of Defence Regulation and the need to hold the 361
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson moral and legal high ground against fascism. She also observed that Labour’s fitness to govern might be questioned if Morrison exercised his judicial functions without discretion, defending him against the ‘campaign of unlimited abuse.’ Finally, she observed that the Communists might find the precedent of a lenient Home Secretary useful in the future. Immediately after this letter, on 11–12 December, the executive reaffirmed its position wanting the TUC General Council to pursue the matter. New Dawn’s letters page was divided on Mosley’s release, though the preponderance objected.123 One correspondent believed that 90% of the membership would be in agreement with the executive’s position and that people were saying, ‘What are we fighting for?’ Another letter from CWS Leman Street factory told of the canteen meetings, collections and a 1,000 signature petition against Mosley.124 Again as with compulsory fire-watching, some branches passed motions censuring Wilkinson.125 Eventually, the furore over the Mosley release relented. By late January 1944, as Cabinet Secretary Sir Edward Bridges put it to a key Downing Street official: the ‘uncomfortable episode’ was now ‘safely buried’.126 However, it was another occasion on which Wilkinson’s association with Morrison and her inclusion in government meant that she stood against the radical mood within the Labour movement. She was criticised at the following NUDAW conference and her succession as Labour Party chair in 1944 was questioned over the affair.127 Of her loyalty to Morrison at the time of Mosley’s release, Chuter Ede joked to Woodburn ‘… I felt like proposing a new Standing Order requiring any member who obeyed the decision of a Party Meeting to give his excuse for being loyal.’ On Wilkinson becoming chair, Chuter Ede commented in his diary: ‘If the Labour Party can survive [this] it must be indestructible.’128 The Mosley release did establish an emerging pattern of press controversies when Wilkinson’s public statements alienated grassroots union activists. Thus, her speech at the TUC congress of 17 October 1944 in Blackpool again revealed her distance from the mood of trade unionists. She had faced criticism within her own union since 1940. Now she lectured the TUC that there was a growing tendency to treat Labour MPs as union delegates and that this jeopardised Labour’s electoral fortunes.129 Ill health and accidents interrupted Wilkinson’s war work. In an article on work and leisure in Lilliput in the summer of 1939, Wilkinson had claimed that her doctor grumbled as she was never ill despite having been ‘consistently overworked ever since the age of sixteen’.130 If this did not tally with her health as reported in the press, it is clear that her health deteriorated during the Second World War. Wilkinson’s characteristic recklessness resulted in an unhappy habit of car and other accidents.131 On 19 February 1930, Wilkinson had a car crash with a van near Covent Garden, her car was damaged but she had no injuries. Again in January 362
In government, 1940–47 1942, she and Morrison drove into a taxi, near the Home Office. In August 1942, she fractured her skull, needing several weeks off work, after a collision with a lorry. On 28 January 1943, Wilkinson suffered a double fracture of her leg, breaking her ankle when MPs were invited to a display of the RAF’s glider programme.132 Needing three operations, she was hospitalised and her public engagements were cancelled until 28 March 1943.133 Her frail constitution, overwork and accidents were taking their toll. Encountering Wilkinson during the war at a Women’s Press Club meeting, Winifred Horrabin jotted in her notebook that she ‘nearly felt sorry for her, she looks so ill and small and weary’.134 In June 1944 after another bout of illness, she told Catlin that the doctors were only now beginning to allow her to deal with letters.135 Doctors did not permit her to preside over the Labour Party conference of December 1944, because she was suffering from pneumonia and acute bronchitis in the London County Council hospital in Hammersmith.
San Francisco United Nations Treaty Conference Wilkinson was an assistant delegate to the San Francisco United Nations Treaty Organisation Conference.136 In the discussions of the delegation in early March 1945, Churchill wrote in the margin of the Conservative Foreign Secretary Eden’s letter, ‘Surely a woman! Miss Horsburgh or Miss Wilkinson.’137 Eden agreed that both should go.138 Again, after Attlee had suggested Tomlinson, Churchill wanted female representation.139 Invitation letters were sent on 22 March, and Wilkinson replied that she was ‘very grateful’ and that the ‘inclusion of my name is perfectly agreeable to me’.140 Being debated at San Francisco were several issues that Wilkinson had campaigned vigorously over before the war, notably peace, imperialism and national self-determination, Spain, women’s rights and the rights of labour. As an assistant delegate, she had little influence upon the government’s position. However, Wilkinson and Eleanor Roosevelt received considerable press for being the most prominent women politicians and were associated with the UN’s new Women’s Charter.141 Prior to the conference, delegates from across the British Empire met up to discuss matters.142 Nehru – a key advocate of independence of colonialised peoples – now stood on a different side of the divide, given that Wilkinson was representing the British government’s position. The same was true of Spain, notwithstanding Negrín having remained in contact with Wilkinson and Morrison during the war. Spanish exiles lobbied unsuccessfully for the cause of the Spanish Republic to be taken up at San Francisco. From San Francisco, Eden, Attlee and Wilkinson went on 14 May to Washington to discuss Europe’s future over questions such as Poland and Yugoslavia as a preliminary 363
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson to a meeting of the USA, UK and USSR.143 Matters were moving quickly in domestic politics and Clement Attlee and Wilkinson flew back to Britain on 17 May.144 Her comments on return revealed little: ‘We did not create a new world but we did not expect to. It was really a good piece of cooperative workmanship.’ At the Labour Party conference, she described an atmosphere of surprising consensus and cordiality at San Francisco and not simply the big three asserting their power.
Quitting the coalition and the general election of 1945 No sooner had Wilkinson returned to Britain than she was involved in discussions about the end of the coalition government and the timing of the coming general election. With Allied forces advancing on Berlin, Hitler had committed suicide on 30 April and his successors signed unconditional surrender on 8 May, signalling victory in Europe. On 18 May, Churchill sent Attlee a letter offering a choice between the immediate dissolution of the coalition with a snap election or its postponement until after victory against Japan. She believed the Churchill ultimatum to be a manoeuvre: either the Conservatives would dismantle the machinery of planning or they would provoke a khaki election in which Churchill’s war leadership would obscure the issues.145 On 20 May, with the Labour Party Conference due to start the following day, the NEC convened in Blackpool with Wilkinson in the chair. Despite Attlee’s view to the contrary, the NEC decided to reject the option of remaining in the coalition until Japanese defeat. Attlee was delegated to compose Labour’s reply to Churchill to be read in private session to delegates the following day.146 Thus, it was in historic circumstances that, as chair of the NEC, Wilkinson presided over the annual conference (21–25 May).147 In her opening address, she paid tribute to the popular effort that had secured victory in Europe. It was a ‘sacred duty not to let these men and women down’ as had happened in 1918. She then discussed the timing of a general election, believing that though Labour had nothing to fear from an early election, some Conservatives wanted to trade on the ‘transient passion’ of victory. She then explained why Labour was best suited to handle the transition to democratic government in Europe. While the Conservatives looked to the ‘right people’ drawn from the ‘upper social crust’, these elites were thoroughly compromised in Germany, Italy and Greece. A British Conservative government would deal unsympathetically with ‘socially-minded Left Governments of the new Europe’ drawn from the anti-fascist resistance, just as Conservative prime ministers had alienated European democrats in the 1930s. At home, she outlined Labour’s programme of millions of homes, jobs for all, social security, 364
In government, 1940–47 educational opportunity and state health service. Despite claims to desire social reforms, the Conservatives’ ‘dilemma’ was that the policy of deregulation destroyed the means to achieve these reforms, with the tragic re-run of 1918 being the inevitable result. She alluded to the CPGB’s campaign for left unity, inviting the ‘small groups’ to join the Labour Party, and went on to condemn the CPGB’s past of division and intrigue.148 She concluded on the unity of the Labour movement ‘steeled in these five wild and whirling years of war’. They faced a ‘great chance which may not come for a lifetime’ to take power and build ‘the type of civilisation we so passionately desire’.149 On 23 May, Churchill formed a caretaker government without Labour. This opened the way for the 1945 general election and the ensuing Labour government which have attained such mythical status.150 Although Gallup polls had predicted strong swings to Labour, the Labour Party’s landslide victory surprised many contemporaries.151 As well as being personally associated with apparent long-term reasons for Labour’s success such as unemployment and participation in the wartime government, Wilkinson also contributed significantly to the campaign itself. Most obviously, she penned the election pamphlet Plan for Peace: How the People Can Win the Peace, having long served on the NEC’s Press and Publicity Department.152 This put the argument that the Chamberlain government had descended into chaos and mismanagement, resulting in the debacle of Dunkirk. She contrasted this with the intervention and planning under the Churchill coalition government, without which victory would not have been possible. The implication was that for post-war reconstruction and the needs of the people, planning was a necessity. Visually, it is probably no accident that the pamphlet resembled Münzenberg’s publications, with their dramatic aesthetic of photojournalism. On its back page, a crowd of smiling faces projected the bold message: ‘A New World to Be Created: Out of the Ruins of the Old. Let’s Build It Together’. One feature of the 1945 general election was the political contest of the airwaves. Conservatives, Labour and Liberals selected speakers for nightly BBC talks between 5 and 30 June.153 Wilkinson, broadcasting on 14 June, was the only woman of the nine Labour Party spokespersons.154 The series gained notoriety because of Churchill’s speech of 4 June in which he likened the Labour Party to the Gestapo. She followed Churchill’s second broadcast and focused on planning and government initiative against the Conservative promise to dismantle rapidly the wartime economic regulation. She identified the incompatibility of promising ‘freedom for capitalist enterprise’ with ‘a list of good things’ that capitalism was incapable of delivering.155 She reasoned that if methods were good enough for aircraft production during wartime, they were 365
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson good enough for housing, Britain’s most pressing social need. Left to their own devices landowners would charge high prices for land and in rents, holding the ‘whole community to ransom’. Countering Churchill’s charge of utopianism, she deftly observed that capitalism had never provided full employment and the belief that it would was ‘the wildest pipedream of the lot.’ She recalled the aftermath of the previous war in which hasty deregulation led to inflation and a bitter recession. She described the Conservative campaign for deregulation as the ‘grim polka to perdition that Lord Beaverbrook is leading’. This would result in ‘the biggest gamblers’ clean-up in history’. She concluded that the choice was between ‘rational planning for safety and security’ and putting ‘your job, your savings, your family at the mercy of the control-wrecker’. Of all Labour’s radio broadcasts, Mass Observation found that Wilkinson’s speech had the broadest sociological appeal.156 A Laboursupporting van driver from East Fulham preferred Wilkinson’s speech: ‘She says she’s going to do it, and somehow, I think she means it. She’s for everybody, she’d make it easier for women, and men would carry on with the building and everything.’ A Labour housewife agreed because Wilkinson’s speech was ‘in straight form, and came to the point’. A shop assistant believed Wilkinson made ‘Winnie sound like a schoolboy.’157 Wilkinson was able to charm Conservative voters as well. A Conservative housewife appreciated her style unlike that of ‘so many of these “SirSomebody Somebody or other”’. A Conservative wine butler contrasted Wilkinson with Churchill’s ‘whitewash’ and ‘Hyde Park style’.158 She convinced sceptics about women in politics. A retired Labour-supporting nurse did not like women speakers generally but believed Wilkinson’s to be the best speech of the campaign: ‘I could imagine Churchill … wishing she was with his party, or he with hers.’159 During the campaign, Conservative supporters paid Wilkinson the dubious compliment of spreading rumours that she had venereal disease or illegitimate children.160 In her own constituency, Wilkinson talked of the ten years since the last general election. She could point to her hard work in representing many hundreds of constituents over their pensions or allowances and noted that she treasured the many letters of gratitude that she had received as a result. The ‘many sad cases’ of hire purchase abuses in Jarrow had inspired her private members’ bill that was passed in 1938. This saved many from the repossession of their furniture or equipment. She saw it as her special task to make Parliament and the country aware of the grave injustice of Palmer’s closure: ‘the great shipyard was dead’ for the sake of shipping shareholders, much of its machinery sold to Germany and a third of the shipbuilding capacity of the country was lost despite the danger of war. Wilkinson conjured the local memories of the Conservatives’ ‘black record’. She concluded 366
In government, 1940–47 that the key to a different future, for jobs, housing, decent pay was planning: ‘If the service man does not want to find himself selling matches or stationery round the doors, as so many did after 1918, he had better VOTE LABOUR THIS TIME.’161 When Labour won a landslide victory, the scale surprised Wilkinson, like most politicians. Writing to Catlin, she observed ‘almost anybody would have got in anywhere’.162 She also rejoiced in a letter to Astor that there were twenty-one new women in the Commons.163
The leadership intrigue of May 1945 Wilkinson worked to put Morrison into 10 Downing Street. It was widely assumed that they were lovers and Morrison was one in the line of monogamous relationships (Newbold, Jagger, Horrabin) that Wilkinson had. Shinwell remembered the intrigues and tensions within the Labour leadership. For him, Dalton’s and Cripps’s egos, the Attlee-Morrison animosity and the Attlee–Bevin friendship shaped the dynamics of the party’s leadership. Wilkinson intrigued alongside Laski and Morrison.164 Initially, she hoped that Attlee might be replaced before the general election campaign got under way. She asked Dalton to convince Attlee to stand down shortly after the decision to reject Churchill’s proposal to maintain the coalition until peace. Dalton replied that it was impossible at that moment.165 Laski, as Wilkinson’s successor as chair of the NEC, then wrote to Attlee along these lines, though Attlee simply ignored the letter. The intrigue resumed after Churchill conceded defeat in the general election on the afternoon of 26 July, with Laski writing to Attlee telling him a PLP meeting should be called to nominate a prime minister. Apparently, Morrison had already told Attlee that he could not serve under Attlee.166 Leah Manning also recorded in her memoirs how Wilkinson’s intriguing to replace Attlee with Morrison continued at the first PLP meeting immediately after Attlee had accepted the King’s invitation to form a government. After a whispered attempt to muster Manning’s support, the latter rebuked Wilkinson for her ‘dirty bit of chicanery’.167 She noticed that Wilkinson was ‘busily flitting’ in the crowd and must have got the same response from everyone. Bevin effectively scuppered the move with a vote of confidence in the new Prime Minister. Manning’s explanation for why Wilkinson supported Morrison for leadership of the party was her ‘very intimate’ relation with him.168
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Ministerial appointment Wilkinson’s appointment as Minister of Education surprised many.169 James Chuter Ede, who had worked on the 1944 act as ‘Rab’ Butler’s Parliamentary Secretary was expected to get the job. Civil servants gossiped about the choice.170 Wilkinson had long coveted the Exchequer but knew that this was a ‘big boy’s job’.171 Given the strength of the Labour Party’s gendered assumptions, Wilkinson might have expected to land the Ministry of Education. Attlee explained the decision in his memoirs. He wanted Ede as Home Secretary and at least one woman in his Cabinet. He rewarded Wilkinson for her war work and as an ‘enthusiast for education’.172 The inclusion in the British Cabinet of a woman warranted international comment.173 Despite this, some domestic reactions were uncharitable. One colleague speculated that Attlee probably appointed Wilkinson – who was ‘quite out of her depth’ – on civil service advice, as they liked inexperienced ministers.174 Nevertheless, she had long been a subtle observer of ministerial-civil service relations, knowing the myth of the all-knowing minister was convenient for the civil service.175 Conservative dailies were soon sniping that the ministerial brief appeared ‘too large for her to fill’.176 Conze believed that Attlee had put Wilkinson in charge of education to neutralise her and remarked how ‘harassed and out of her depth’ she appeared.177 Francis Williams who became Attlee’s press officer noted her surprise that her support for Morrison had not prevented from receiving a ministerial post.178 Arthur Moyle, Attlee’s PPS noted that Attlee had a high opinion of her ability and had been greatly impressed with her courage in Spain.179 Shinwell also believed that Attlee ignored the intrigues to appoint on merit.180 Wilkinson’s flattery of Attlee may have helped. After his 1944 New Year’s address on the BBC, she wrote to him that she and her supper guests at Penn (Buckinghamshire, where she and Annie rented a cottage to escape London) enthused about the real substance of his talk rather than the routine ‘museum of platitudes’.181 Wilkinson smoothed over any possible resentment on Attlee’s part with a BBC broadcast on 1 August 1945, two days before the announcement of the Cabinet.182 On balance, then, it seems that her allies were powerful enough, her reputation strong enough and Attlee magnanimous enough to include her.
Dock strike of 1945 and the unions In Cabinet, on rare occasions, she supported left positions, such as supporting Bevan over the nationalisation of hospitals in December 1945.183 Mostly, however, she argued for right-wing ones. Thus, she wanted measures to get ‘slackers’ (especially married women, unless in an industry 368
In government, 1940–47 where they would normally work) off the national insurance fund, or harsher measures against Congress in India, or to prevent German or Japanese women gaining British citizenship by marrying British servicemen.184 On 28 October, Wilkinson addressed a public meeting in Jarrow. Indicating her lack of sympathy for striking dockers, she speculated controversially that the unofficial strike might result in bread rationing. Over the course of the next few days, this caused front-page headlines, questions in the Commons and a humiliating public retraction.185 The following evening, she was giving a talk to a group of student teachers at Alnwick Castle. In the middle of her speech, she received a cable from the government chief whip instructing her to return to London on the next train. Interrupting her speech, she did exactly that. On her arrival in King’s Cross Station, she gave a brief reason to the awaiting pack of reporters and then refused to comment.186 She told the press that she had speculated about the consequences of an unofficial strike that threatened the official trade union machinery.187 The Jarrow MP’s recall to London was the talk of the lobbies and there was a large turnout for Minister’s questions. Winterton tried to maximise the government’s embarrassment, praising the minister for having the honesty to break the habitual silence that the government had fallen into over bad news. Wilkinson clearly recognised her blunder, confessing her mistake. She cut a forlorn figure, as the Daily Express put it, ‘very pale, dressed in black, looking paler and more slender than ever’. She also had to make her excuses in Cabinet for her error, blaming the press for blowing it out of proportion.188 For their part, rank and file dockers blamed union officials, the press and Wilkinson for their defeat.189 One reflected: ‘That Wilkinson – don’t make us say “we put the wrong woman in”. We called her the “Shelter Queen” during the war, deep shelters for the members of Parliament – surface shelters for us.’190 In similar fashion, Wilkinson spoke out against the ‘anarchy’ of the squatters’ movement who were taking over vacant flats or luxury hotel rooms.191 Tensions also emerged between Wilkinson and the teaching unions. Teachers faced very difficult conditions with the transition to peace. When addressing the West London NUT Association in February 1946, she was clearly trying to lower expectations, talked of the ‘grave difficulties’ and the ‘grim’ economic outlook.192 She appealed to teachers to stand together with her as a team in order to enact the new Education Act and achieve the raising of the school leaving age.193 Speaking at the NUT annual conference on 26 April 1946, she outlined the projected increase in teachers. More controversially, she told delegates that they would be expected to supervise school meals. To shouts of ‘no’, she retorted, ‘Get this clear – it is going to happen.’194 Friction also materialised over the victory celebration trip to the circus at Wembley Pool for 250,000 369
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson children when the secretary of the National Union of Women Teachers objected to the treatment of animals.195 Having said that, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education John Maud deemed her meeting with the NUT executive in 1946 to be a great success.196
From a new internationalism to the Cold War Despite her political turn, continuities can be recognised as well. Wilkinson’s internationalism and transnational orientation remained but now became conjoined with patriotism, and was facilitated and conditioned by official diplomacy and intergovernmental institutions. Illustrating her patriotic stance, she had condemned Laski at the National Conference of Labour Women for saying in Stockholm in August 1945 that Britain was a second-rate power.197 With regard to travel as a political practice, Wilkinson visited Germany, in her capacity as Minister of Education, to report on the state of the school system in the British sector.198 Arriving on 2 October, her five-day visit took in Hamburg, Berlin, München-Gladbach, Düsseldorf and Bückenburg. The ‘appalling devastation’, which was ‘something quite beyond belief’, shaped her impressions of Germany.199 She also encountered considerable hardship. It was in Berlin that the destruction was greatest as was the malnourishment. Many children there exhibited a ‘waxy pallor and listlessness’ and several were not expected to survive the winter.200 A small girl told her that she had not drunk milk for two years.201 In the German capital, one in five children were not attending school because of malnutrition or lack of shoes. The primary purpose of the visit was the re-establishment of the education system in Germany and its de-nazification. She was due to report to Bevin, the Foreign Secretary. She estimated the purge of the teaching profession varied from 20 to 40% in those places that she visited. Equally, teachers who had been dismissed during the Third Reich as Jews or on political grounds returned to their profession. A similar process was taking place in Germany’s universities. Progress in restoring schooling was real, but uneven. In Aachen and Köln, 40 to 50% of children were in full- or part-time education, whereas in Hamburg and Berlin it was 90 to 100%. Another problem was the acute shortage of textbooks as those used during the Third Reich, and even those under the Weimar Republic, were unacceptable. Edith Davies who worked for Control Commission in Germany’s Education Branch would never forget a meeting with Wilkinson in Bunde. The Minister harangued them about their vital work with German children and consequently modest school meals were introduced to provide an essential source of nutrition.202 370
In government, 1940–47 Her reading of international relations moved from realism to idealism, from structuralism to humanism and from Marxism to a liberal rights discourse. More specifically, her focus drifted from the structural forces of imperialism as the cause of war to an idealist logic of the inculcation of a new generation in a culture of peace-making. Thus, when she addressed the Council for Education in World Citizenship, she spoke of peace as international solidarity wherein teachers fostered internationalism through taking the glamour out of war.203 She found other ways to articulate her transformed internationalism. At the jubilee dinner of the Royal Academy of Dancing at Claridge’s Hotel on 15 January 1946, she described ballet as one of the ‘great international languages’ that could draw the peoples of all nations closer together.204 Yet, as a British delegate to the United Nations Assembly in early 1946, she had to represent national interests and on occasion this meant that she sounded anything but an internationalist. Thus, when the Polish delegate appealed for aid to restore devastated countries, Wilkinson lectured the Assembly that such countries could not rely on charity forever and that they needed to re-learn the habit of work and self-reliance.205 Wilkinson was a key architect of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, taking the chair at its inaugural meeting.206 John and Richard Toye have highlighted how Wilkinson intervened to include ‘science’ within its remit and select the first Director-General Julian Huxley rather than the more obvious candidate internationalist Sir Alfred Zimmern.207 Wilkinson opted for Huxley who was part of the circle of left-wing scientists such as J.D. Bernal close to the CPGB. She also intervened to ensure that Huxley rather than the American candidate Francis Biddle got the position.208 UNESCO’s significance for Wilkinson was that it could disseminate an approach to culture and education so that the child could conceive of a world without war and learn the economic, political, social and cultural interdependence of the world.209 She chaired the first meeting of UNESCO’s preparatory commission on 18 January 1946.210 As her pre-war activist network included several East Europeans (such as Katz, Koestler, Gibarti, Dimitrov), and Wilkinson shared an anti-communist trajectory with some of them, she was drawn into the political and cultural contests of the early Cold War. She supported Alexander Rado, a key figure in wartime Soviet intelligence networks, in his efforts to defect from the Soviet camp in October 1945.211 On her trip to Berlin, Wilkinson called in on trade union headquarters, meeting Social Democrat Otto Grotewohl (who was to merge his party with the Communists in the Soviet zone) and the Communist Wilhelm Pieck. She promised that British trade unions would assist in the reconstruction 371
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson of German trade unions on democratic lines, stressing the importance of secret ballots.212 On 14 January 1946, her old acquaintance Count Károlyi wrote to her as ‘democracy is in peril’ in Hungary because of the extreme hardship its people were suffering. Károlyi worked alongside Koestler (whom Wilkinson knew through Münzenberg), Stephen Spender, Laski and A.J.P. Taylor in the New Democratic Hungary Club, which was opposed to sovietisation.213 In the Cabinet of 12 April 1946, she spoke out on the need for a democratic alternative to the Russians in Germany. She observed that Europe was being divided and supported Bevin’s policy.214 This casts a slightly different light on her visit to Prague in autumn 1946. Perhaps too simplistically, Billy Hughes believed that the purpose of Wilkinson’s visit was to re-establish contacts with international socialist leaders that she had known during the Spanish Civil War (presumably Katz and Kisch) and that this indicated that she remained an ‘uncompromising international socialist’ until the last.215 Despite ill health, her trip to Czechoslovakia during the British Film Festival was a pretext to show official solidarity with a government threatened by Communist takeover.216 She flew to Prague on 27 September. On her arrival, she went to a showing of Henry V.217 There, breathing difficulties hampered her effort to make a speech. On the morning of 28 September 1946 in morning, she was President Beneš’s guest at Prague Castle and then lunched with members of the government. She flew back to the UK on 30 September cutting short her stay due to ill health.218 Those who accompanied Wilkinson could not forget the foreboding atmosphere in Czechoslovakia, which was littered with the ‘gruesome evidence’ of war. They witnessed an enormous crowd watching the sentencing of the Nuremburg trial in absolute silence and saw macabre photographs of resistance martyrs.219 Wilkinson had intended to intervene again in Eastern Europe. Ambassador to Yugoslavia Sir Charles Peake stated that he had visited Wilkinson in her flat shortly before her death and got her agreement to visit an exhibition in Belgrade as another exercise in the early cultural Cold War.220 Also indicative of her Cold War stance, she was also recommending Stephen Spender’s deeply pessimistic and anti-communist European Witness, which surveyed the ruins of postwar Germany and feared another yet more devastating round of such destruction.221 Previously tied into Comintern political and cultural networks, Spender’s trajectory, like Wilkinson’s, had swung from pro- to anti-Communism.
A particular view of education Wilkinson’s view of education was a blend of politics and personal experience. She had long been associated with the National Council of 372
In government, 1940–47 Labour Colleges, which provided independent working-class education of a Marxist variety and she admired the cultural work of Roosevelt’s Work’s Progress Administration.222 Wilkinson had vowed that, if she were ever Minister of Education, she would tackle the antiquated rote-learning and disciplinarian character of elementary schools.223 Though she did not abolish it in office, she had denounced corporal punishment as it signalled a teacher or parent losing self-control.224 She had also criticised education for ‘sapping’ the young woman’s initiative and making her afraid to ‘move an inch out of her groove’, advocating mixed education.225 She had objected on class grounds to the advocacy of vocational rather than general education with the aim of making good little bricklayers for local industry rather than good citizens.226 Where the curriculum was concerned, she condemned ‘unselfconscious jingoes’ that had inculcated generations of British schoolchildren with a ‘court and army’ history and colonial arrogance.227 Perhaps her fullest critique of contemporary education took place during Derby Education Week in October 1937. She condemned the way in which elementary education did not seek to raise most schoolchildren’s cultural level or critical intelligence but instead was a machine-age education for the needs of industry. Mass production and mass education had gone hand in hand, producing a society of mass consumer goods, sports, entertainment and leisure activities. Most dangerous of all was that this facilitated the reception of modern mass propaganda techniques that fascist movements used. Instead, she had a vision of education not for the narrow ends of mass production but for life, enhancing the general cultural level, sensitivising public taste and facilitating an engaged citizenship.228 Personal experience shaped Wilkinson’s educational philosophy to a considerable extent. Her success as a scholarship student, winning through her own abilities places at secondary school, teacher training centre and university, certainly affected her attitudes to education. This prompted a meritocratic – even elitist – rather than an egalitarian perspective and would help to explain her support for tripartitism rather than multilateral (or comprehensive) schools. At the 1946 Labour Party Conference, her defence of the tripartite approach became entangled with personal narrative and stressed her two principal motivations: I was born into a working class home. And I had to fight my own way through to University. The first of those guiding principles was to see that no boy or girl is debarred by lack of means from taking the course of education for which he or she is qualified. The second … that we should remove from education those class distinctions which are the negation of democracy.229
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson For someone of her parliamentary generation, school leaving age appeared to be the crucial battleground. In response to the Hadow report of 1926 that recommended a school leaving age of 15, she had complained that the education budget spent less annually than the cost of the preliminary bombardment at Ypres and applauded Astor for criticising her own side over failing to raise the school leaving age. For Wilkinson, Eustace Percy’s failure at the Board of Education (1924–29) to institute secondary education was ‘one of the worst blots on his own reactionary administration’.230 During the second Labour government, she had also witnessed that government’s failure to raise the school leaving age, sitting on the NEC when it was being pressed to enact this manifesto pledge.231 In February 1930, she attended a Commons meeting of 100 Labour MPs (the largest one she had known) to hear R.H. Tawney’s inspiring talk on the urgency of this measure. It, she hoped, would reduce unemployment at a stroke; more importantly, for her, secondary education was a basic matter of social justice. To Wilkinson’s enervation, the measure fell victim to Conservative delay.232
Record as Minister of Education Chief Education Officer for the North Riding of Yorkshire Frank Barraclough described the transformation of Wilkinson in office: ‘She was no longer the Red Ellen I had admired in the 1930s … from being an important Crusader, Ellen became mainly a sick and ailing administrative Minister’.233 He noted that she had the misfortune of implementing, rather than devising, major educational reform. Butler and Chuter Ede had done the groundwork of the 1944 Education Act, having prepared or drafted the necessary preliminary circulars, administrative memoranda and statutory requirements. This restricted Wilkinson’s role to battling for resources in conditions of austerity and inter-ministerial claims. Wilkinson could be bad-tempered at the Ministry. Director of Education for Manchester William Owen Lester-Smith, the Deputy Chair of the Central Advisory Council of Education, remembered a meeting at which she was deliberately rude to Fred Clarke, the chair.234 In contrast, Labour MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, Reverend Gordon Lang remembered Wilkinson as a very approachable minister who considered extenuating circumstances in the case of grave indiscretions on the part of school teachers whose cases he was familiar with.235 Pearson recalled her unconventional ministerial style. She did not like to commit decisions to paper, disliked long documents and balked at signing anything more than her ‘half-chest of notepaper’. She preferred to have matters debated out in front of her and then come to a decision.236 Harold Dent, a Ministry of Education official, noted that Wilkinson retained the ability 374
In government, 1940–47 to charm an audience. At a meeting of adolescents in the East End of London, she spoke in ‘torrential, lively and colloquial fashion’ making them feel good about themselves and told them not to allow the older generation make them feel inferior. She then stopped, leant forward and grinned, saying, ‘This is not the speech I was told to give you, you know.’ On her relations with senior civil servants, Dent believed that she was viewed, despite momentary exasperation, with affection.237 Wilkinson’s major legislative project was the Education Act of 1946 that sought to ‘run in’ and adjust elements of the 1944 Act.238 At the Cabinet legislative committee, Morrison questioned the legal necessity for aspects of the bill and Bevan highlighted the potential conflict of interest for teachers on local education committees.239 It gave additional powers to Local Education Authorities (LEAs) including the provision of clothing and meals for children. Securing the passage of the Education Bill involved gaining the consent of the religious educational lobbies and the teaching unions. The NUT wanted the reversal of the ban on teachers serving on local government committees. The bill had to deal with changes in the voluntary aided sector (such as Church of England or Catholic Church schools), that the voluntary sector managed, but now no longer funded. It also allowed voluntary aided schools to expand their buildings and permitted the practice of religious services off premises. Behind the scenes considerable work was done to keep the denominations on board. Wilkinson also sought to maintain a bipartisan approach, communicating with her Conservative predecessor to ensure his consent.240 The Bill was intended as a non-controversial measure that made necessary amendments for the implementation of the 1944 Butler act. The Association of Education Committees (AEC) demanded amendments to the Bill. According to Frank Barraclough, at this time, Wilkinson acted in an overly defensive and even cantankerous manner, defending obdurately her civil servants’ advice. Challenged by Cove and the AEC’s Alexander, ultimately, Wilkinson gave way on the amendment with bad grace.241 Wilkinson’s Education Act therefore maintained the educational consensus with the Conservatives, entrenched the position of religious institutions in state-funded education and ignored calls for the abolition of independent schools. Wilkinson engaged in a host of initiatives amid the overarching priorities of expansion to permit the establishment of secondary education and the raising of the school leaving age. The most significant of these was the introduction of free milk for all school children with the School Milk Act of 1946 as a means to combat poor nutrition.242 On 3 January 1946, she asked LEAs in circular 79 to make provision for ‘educationally sub-normal and maladjusted’ children of which there were 15,000 in the country.243 She also introduced a new scheme of scholarships to 375
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson university, its first priority being ex-servicemen and women. By May 1946, 4,500 had benefited from the scheme at a cost of £2 million.244 On 16 May 1946, Wilkinson gave a Commons statement and press conference about the expansion of university grants and scholarships. Those winning university scholarships (as she herself had) would also be provided with maintenance grants. In addition, the number of state scholarships with tuition fees paid and grants would be increased as well as encouraging LEAs to expand their provision of fees and grants. The intention was that all those of ‘good attainment’ would receive the assistance they needed.245 Some of her projects signalled continuities with her political past in the movements. Thus, she urged a programme of part-time day release for married women from housekeeping. Inspired by wartime experiences of civil defence, her vision was that married women would not be limited to the study of cookery and needlecraft, but encouraged to broaden their horizons with languages, literature and the arts.246 Wilkinson featured in radio broadcasts advising young women on how to enter politics and how to be treated as an equal in public life.247 Yet at the same time as these challenges to the boundaries of gender, Wilkinson was also capable of gender-fixing policies as well. In September 1946, she addressed the Housing Centre conference at Conway Hall in Holborn. The tenor of her talk was that a ‘strong nation is based on happy homes’. This logic underpinned circular 117 issued on 5 July that made LEAs responsible for the provision of homecraft to all girls at secondary school for an hour a week. Two Emergency Training Colleges for Women and courses at special training colleges would meet the consequent increased demand for domestic economy.248 Moreover, despite the Royal Commission on Equal Pay’s proposal for equal pay for women teachers and civil servants in October 1946, women teachers did not receive equal pay during her spell as Minister of Education.249 A three-way exchange of letters disclosed the paradoxes of Wilkinson’s time in office. It concerned the restriction in the provision of milk to schoolchildren in a part of London. That a Labour teacher contacted Kingsley Martin, the editor of the New Statesman, illustrated the insulation from the movement that civil servants and her parliamentary secretary provided Wilkinson. That she responded to Martin underlined her sensitivity to her press reception as well as his access based on years of acquaintance. Her reply indicated the limits of her knowledge, a displacement of responsibility onto the London County Council and entailed an official defence of policy in the context of severely strained finances.250
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In government, 1940–47 The Nation’s Schools controversy and the multilateral school The Ministry of Education under Wilkinson published a pamphlet entitled The Nation’s Schools. Making only tentative allusion to the multilateral school as an alternative to the tripartite system, The Nation’s Schools precipitated a bitter controversy within the Labour movement.251 Her attitude to comprehensive schools has become the principal controversy about her time as Minister of Education. Beryl Hughes was Wilkinson’s personal secretary 1937–41 and her husband Billy was her Parliamentary Private Secretary from 1945 to her death. Billy Hughes defended Wilkinson’s record as she presided over a very considerable expansion of educational spending, reaching £100 million in 1946. The ‘undue’ emphasis on comprehensives angered him. To raise the school leaving age, the 390,000 extra children required 5,000 additional classrooms and 13,000 teachers. Two enormous undertakings – the Huts on Raising of the School Leaving Age and the Emergency Training Scheme – allowed this to happen. Hughes also pointed to her policy regarding direct grant (grammar) schools. As a consequence of a new scheme for funding direct grant schools, she significantly challenged educational privilege reducing such schools (direct grant schools received funds from central government for some of their pupils while others would pay fees) from 232 to 166. The ones that retained this status had to accept greater numbers of non-fee paying students. Entry had to be on the basis of passing the 11-plus, including Intelligence Quotient testing.252 Manning believed that Wilkinson’s support for grammar schools – rather than comprehensive education – was based on gratitude to a system under which she had flourished.253 A Fabian Society luncheon in October 1945 provided her with the opportunity to quell any notion that she was going to ‘debase or destroy’ grammar schools, praising their role as educational pioneers and as a means to facilitate secondary education for all.254 Harold Dent recalled going for a coffee with Billy Hughes shortly after Wilkinson’s appointment. Hughes had said that the minister was planning to abolish the direct grant schools. Dent reacted sharply, ‘Tell her not to be such a bloody fool.’ Although he did not necessarily attribute it to his intervention, he heard nothing more of the plan.255 Wilkinson’s wholehearted approval of deputy permanent secretary Sir Robert Wood’s memorandum on secondary education underlines her attitude to multilateral schools. He defended the current policy as the ‘early stage of a great transformation’, referring to the policy of secondary education for all but also the greater institutional control that the Ministry exercised over local education. Responding to the critics, Wood tackled two issues deemed anti-egalitarian: differential examinations by 377
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson ability and tripartite secondary schooling. He described the ‘common school’ or the ‘grammar school for all’ to be ‘political class warfare’ that ignored the natural differences of ability. He condemned its supporters on the grounds of their ‘[inverted] social snobbery’. Symptomatic of his anti-socialist hyperbole, democracy itself was at stake as it ‘could not afford to indulge any resentment of ability’. With a rigid elitist conception of ‘individual basic intelligence’, he believed that the critics of The Nation’s Schools were irrationally ‘moved … by the desire for social equality’. He asserted that because of the end to fees for the grammar schools they would not reproduce class distinctions. Signalling her full agreement, Wilkinson wrote a marginal comment that Wood’s memo was ‘so good I would like to use it for my own use’.256 She favoured selection on merit, not class, with the ‘higher I.Q.s’ being creamed off. Underestimating the extent to which this would reproduce class inequality, she believed the middle class would scream because children with ‘appalling accents and worse clothes and no manners at all, but with a passion for getting on … will gaily pass’.257 Thus, with a gloss of working-class identification, Wilkinson accepted essentialist and elitist assumptions about intelligence and the hierarchical structuring of educational opportunity that logically followed. The battle lines were drawn between Wilkinson and her socialist critics. The pressures began to mount on Wilkinson. Perhaps with some exaggeration, Leah Manning talked of an ‘Ellen must go’ campaign.258 The NUT parliamentary secretary Cove was the central figure in these ‘unwarranted attacks’. Manning speculated about support from ‘a more powerful personality – one to whom a successful woman was an anathema!’259 Cove sat on the standing committee for the Education Bill of 1946.260 As it was, Wilkinson felt isolated. Maud indicated that the ‘back-yarders’ wounded her feelings.261 Manning attributed the origins of Wilkinson’s asthma attacks to these ministerial worries. Trivialising the disagreement, Manning stated that Cove’s campaign began over her permission for children to take time off school for potato gathering but had little or no PLP support.262 It is hard to gauge the intensity of this campaign or the extent to which it undermined the minister. The argument reached its peak in summer 1946. Shortly prior to the Labour Party conference, on 5 June 1946, Wilkinson criticised supporters of multilateral schools in a speech at the AGM of the AEC. She registered, but sidestepped, the complaints that the threefold distinction of grammar, technical and secondary schools was based on a ‘wrong social philosophy’ and that children going to the secondary modern schools would develop a sense of failure and inferiority. Echoing Wood’s memorandum, with the abolition of fees in grant-maintained schools, she argued entry into the grammar schools would be meritocratic and 378
In government, 1940–47 urged that LEAs planning multilateral schools should think through the practical problems involved.263 W.G. Cove moved a motion at the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth for repudiation of The Nation’s Schools pamphlet as a thoroughly reactionary product of the wartime compromise with the Conservatives.264 To her embarrassment, conference passed Cove’s motion. Then, when Wilkinson introduced education spending plans of over £100 million in the Commons on 1 July 1946, Cove challenged her salary.265 He argued that she both misunderstood what was happening in her own department and made public contradictory policy statements. He pressed her to renounce The Nation’s Schools, and to confirm or deny whether she believed in three strata of ability upon which the grammar–technical–secondary modern distinction was based. If true, Cove maintained that Wilkinson was ignoring Labour Party support for multilateral schools. Several defended Wilkinson in the face of Cove’s hectoring, including NUT members Manning and Morley, but the argument refused to go away. On 18 July 1946, George Thomas, Labour MP for Cardiff Central, asked Wilkinson whether the pamphlet would be withdrawn. She responded rather awkwardly that although it did not reflect the views of the government in some matters of opinion, it was a largely factual document and therefore it would not.266 After the controversy of The Nation’s Schools, official publicity on secondary education sought to clarify the Ministry’s position and assuage anxieties of parents about the new schools system. It became apparent that this could potentially reopen the controversy about multilateral schools and therefore the timing, style, drafting and number of pamphlets became the focus of considerable attention within the Ministry.267 In addition to intervening so that the pamphlet’s photographs featured girls doing ‘something less conventionally womanly’ and amending drafts, Wilkinson provided the foreword. This was her last published statement, and appeared posthumously.268 The ministerial minutes reveal her embattled state of mind. On 12 January 1947, she was pleased with the drafting of the document believing that it would ‘disarm certain critics’.269 When the issue of named authorship of the foreword was raised, she wrote on 29 January 1947 days before her overdose: Yes please – fierce and frank. No pride of authorship need be tactfully steered around! I wanted to get certain things over, mainly to my own crowd, but I am not sure I have succeeded. EW 29/1/47 To save the office from being implicated I suggested as heading ‘A personal foreword from the Minister of Ed.’
Rather defensively, the foreword maintained that the new arrangements were meritocratic and were responding to objections and criticisms 379
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson from various quarters. In particular, she challenged the view that secondary education should mean the grammar school for all. She drew on the historical comparison with 1918 when a new education act failed to materialise in more propitious economic circumstances. Despite this and her doubters, the raising of the school leaving age had been achieved. She also stressed the freedom of schools to experiment, wanting to see laughter in the classroom rather than bored uniformity. Her vision was a technocratic future – a new scientific age – into which ‘our fine stock the Britons’ will confidently stride.270 This pervasive feeling within the Ministry of Education of an embattled minister also featured a departmental memorandum a fortnight before Wilkinson’s death about the Private Office, which viewed its principal task to enhance the minister’s prestige and authority. While they were ‘planning to build a new educational world … public opinion does not understand either why we are doing it or what it means’. Indeed, the greatest public relations problem was convincing people of the ‘parity of esteem’ in secondary education.271 Thus, by Wilkinson’s own admission, opposition to tripartism was much more than Cove’s personal vendetta.
Wilkinson’s last battle: raising the school leaving age to fifteen (ROSLA) Wilkinson’s last campaign was one that was conducted within Cabinet to raise the school leaving age to 15. The wartime coalition government had promulgated the Education Act of 1944 under Butler’s stewardship. Indeed, Ramsbotham, the previous President of the Board of Education had first indicated the government’s intention to introduce the measure (through enforcing the 1936 Education Act) in early January 1941.272 Much of Wilkinson’s term at the Ministry was to ensure the implementation of this act. One of the Act’s provisions concerned the school leaving age, which at the time was 14 years old. In practice, most teenagers from a middle-class family continued at school until 18 and a minority went on to university.273 The matter was one of the first that Wilkinson broached on achieving the post at the Ministry. The destruction of schools and teacher shortages rendered the raising of the school leaving age envisaged in the Act impracticable in the short term. On 16 August 1945, she noted in a confidential Cabinet memorandum that LEAs were waiting for a decision as to the timing of the measure before making the necessary arrangements for additional school places and teachers.274 As it stood, the school leaving age was part of the Act but the Minister of Education had the power to defer implementation to no later than 1 April 1947. Given that it would require an additional 13,000 teachers and 200,000 380
In government, 1940–47 school places, Wilkinson applied in August 1945 for this period of deferral. Aware of opposition to the measure, Wilkinson opened a line of communication with Attlee in October 1945. He had asked her if she had consulted Tawney, who was perceived as the architect of Labour policy on the matter.275 She enclosed her letter from Tawney for Attlee. Tawney supported her ‘bold and decisive announcement’ that fixed the date of April 1947. He believed that the move would ‘silence the doubters and put everyone on their toes’. Before her statement, Tawney had feared that the Act was ‘drifting into the doldrums’.276 As she indicated to Trevelyan, Wilkinson conceived of this measure as ‘my first major job’ as minister that would only be made possible by pre-fabricated buildings and special one-year teacher training schemes for those who had been the services.277 Already by October 1945, Wilkinson gave public signals that she wanted ‘public opinion behind me in my battles for priorities’ so that she would not ‘feel like a lone voice crying in the Cabinet “Give me more schools”’.278 As her ministerial duties included visits, guest speaking and inspections, often with the press in tow, she used these occasions to strengthen her case in the Cabinet over the leaving age. Thus, speaking at Oxford Education Week in late January 1946, she declared that the school leaving age would be raised on 1 April the following year.279 At the beginning of February 1946, the Minister’s Standing Committee discussed the school leaving age and Wilkinson noted the general scepticism in Oxford.280 In April 1946, Wilkinson wrote to both Attlee and Morrison with the Ministry’s plans, no doubt attempting to prepare the ground for the battles in Cabinet over resources. Both replied without committing themselves, Morrison opaquely commenting on the ‘ambition’ of the programme and his lack of expertise in such matters.281 Within the year of condemning him over his Stockholm speech, Wilkinson was also repairing bridges with Laski. Apologising for chiding him in the NEC, she said that she was having a hell of a job battling shortages and discovering difficulties at every turn.282 On 3 November 1946, she delivered a speech at the Fabian Jubilee celebrations, describing herself as ‘a Fabian Minister of Education’. She paid tribute to the work of the Webbs on education. As to her work at the Ministry, she focused on the size of her budget and the school leaving age. She believed being a minister was a ‘terrible as well as a great privilege’.283 She concluded with a rhetoric (that she had once urged should be consigned to cold storage) of building ‘the new Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land’.284 As this deadline of 1 April 1946 approached, pressure mounted in Cabinet to postpone implementation because of the parlous economic situation. This was more than a symbolic date as it was the last date within the provisions of the 1944 Act for the measure so if it were 381
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson missed, new legislation would be needed and easily denied parliamentary time.285 Wilkinson found herself at odds with the Cabinet, insisting on implementation in April 1947 as had been envisaged in 1945. The Ministerial Committee was seeking a deferral from April to September. In a Cabinet memorandum of 14 January 1947, Wilkinson warned of the ‘odium and disillusionment’ that such a retreat would occasion and believed that the supposed educational and economic advantages of delay were illusory.286 On economic grounds, the restriction in the labour supply that would result had been exaggerated, and the additional wage earners would exacerbate existing inflationary pressures. In terms of the educational infrastructure, the increase in school places would not be a one-off but take place at the end of each term, resulting in a phased increase in demand for teachers and school places. Postponement would remove the onus upon LEAs to increase this capacity. On pedagogic grounds, this cohort of pupils suffered the greatest war disruption and needed the additional year. Moreover, the policy almost exclusively affected working-class children and had been at the centre of the party’s electoral programme as well as its vision for social reform. The government should not, as others had done before, abandon educational reform as the first casualty of economic difficulties. She mobilised forces beyond Cabinet. Sir William Alexander of the AEC recalled summonsing its executive to send telegrams to the Minister and to Attlee to add their weight against the Cabinet opposition to raising the school leaving age (ROSLA).287 Frank Barraclough recalled the rumours at the time that Wilkinson had to face opposition from Cripps’s supporters and she was only able to win the day because she and five or so Cabinet supporters threatened to resign over the issue.288 Sir Martin Flett (of the Cabinet Office) recounted an exchange between Morrison and Wilkinson in a Cabinet committee that he was chairing. It was over the question of class sizes. Morrison rebuked Wilkinson’s onslaught, ‘Come off it Ellen. We were over 40 in my class at [?] Stockwell Elementary and didn’t do me or my teacher any harm.’ To which, she retorted: ‘Speak for yourself Herbert. You’ve never been a teacher.’289 After she finally succeeded in getting the Cabinet to agree to ROSLA on 16 January, she telephoned Maud at midnight and declared triumphantly, ‘We’ve won.’290
Conclusion After Wilkinson crossed the threshold of 1940, she never returned to the movements and her prior radicalism. As a consequence of her reputation as Red Ellen, she found herself episodically in sharp conflict with grassroots militants. This was true of her time at both Home Security and Education. Regarding her record as Minister of Education, even 382
In government, 1940–47 Billy Hughes – Wilkinson’s staunchest supporter – admitted that she had no rounded vision of what a socialist education policy should be. Assessments of her ministerial record tend to focus either on ROSLA and the expanded educational budget or on the failure to support the comprehensive school. Some precision ought to be made on these points. On ROSLA, while it is true that the 1944 Education Act was drawn up under a Conservative President of the Board of Education, its implementation was not a foregone conclusion. Opposition within Cabinet should not be underestimated. This was not a mere shadowplay but a real battle and Wilkinson used her flair for networking and publicity to ensure its enactment. Without her victory, Labour’s education policy would have looked even more abject and might have postponed the raising of the school leaving age for a generation. On the multilateral school, it is clear that Wilkinson only paid lip-service to experimentation discouraging initiative in this direction. Her move to the right in 1940 is a necessary but insufficient explanation for this. Despite her intellectual range, Wilkinson never showed a special interest in educational philosophy, indeed her political vocation was a rejection of a career in teaching befitting contemporary expectations of an educated woman. Her assumptions about education were based on rigid hierarchical notions of intelligence. In such a context, she sanctioned meritocratic policies aimed to challenge privilege but resist egalitarianism. The 11-plus was developed during her tenure at the Ministry. Even so, public schools remained as did the presence of religious institutions in state-funded education. This is not to say that she had no ideas about education. Reacting negatively to her own experiences, she called for greater creativity and more laughter within the classroom and lamented the rote-learning disciplinary institution narrowly designed to meet the needs of capitalist mass production. By the same token, her opponents who favoured comprehensivisation have been unfairly trivialised as conducting a personal vendetta, as misogynist opposition to a woman minister, or as anachronistic. Not only were opponents within the Labour movement and teaching profession trying to formulate a socialist educational policy that addressed class inequalities, their ideas overlapped with a wider popular sentiment favouring what was termed ‘grammar schools for all’. Wilkinson missed the opportunity to do what she had previously advocated for a decade and a half before 1940, namely to mobilise the movements and working-class discontent against opponents of a Labour government’s radical socialist programme. Rather than seeing Cove as an opponent, he might have been seen as an ally in the furtherance of ROSLA and attacks on educational privilege. However, such counterfactuals ought to be qualified.
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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Wilkinson’s spell in office only lasted 18 months and was interrupted by serious illness.
Epilogue: rumours of a reshuffle, illness and Wilkinson’s death There were signs that Wilkinson’s tenure of the Ministry of Education would have ended relatively soon had she not died in February 1947. As early as May 1946, the press speculated about a Cabinet re-shuffle. Wilkinson was a prime candidate, attracting Conservative criticism over her indiscretions and her bouts of ill health.291 In autumn 1946, with a reshuffle rumoured, Wilkinson appeared an obvious casualty on health grounds. In its assessment of Labour’s first year, the Daily Mirror deemed Wilkinson a failure, not bringing the promised fire and energy to Education.292 NUDAW organiser Amy Wild recalled that a Daily Mail article of this type particularly upset Wilkinson.293 In her last months, Wilkinson became a particular target of heckling in the Commons.294 She was aware of the rumours and felt vulnerable. After losing the key to the ministerial box at least twice and needing the locks to be changed, she implored Attlee’s PPS Geoffrey de Freitas, ‘Don’t let Clem know.’295 Moreover, Maud’s ‘top secret’ reconstruction of Wilkinson’s last months (13 November 1946 to 6 February 1947) offered a searching assessment of her ministerial decline. The account began with a lunch with Morrison in his hotel. He praised her great physical courage during the Blitz but rebuked her for being ‘naughty’ with the officials at the Ministry of Home Security. He then pointed out her tendency to take on too many tasks, not read the necessary paperwork (as with her first paper to Cabinet about ROSLA) and then commented on her poor health.296 Around this time, she also rowed with Dalton about the Arts Council, the University Grants Committee and the universities. Clearly, even her former Cabinet allies were questioning her ministerial performance. Wilkinson was in poor health even before she was appointed the Minister of Education. In a letter to Lady Astor at the end of August 1945, Wilkinson indicated that her doctor had told her that she must take a week’s rest by the sea and do nothing.297 Education Ministry finance official Pearson believed that Wilkinson’s ‘hectic life of parties’ contributed to her premature death.298 Her elder sister the formidable Annie Wilkinson acted as Wilkinson’s guardian angel. Annie herself suffered from acute asthma and lived with Wilkinson in their rented cottage in Buckinghamshire.299 When Wilkinson invited those who had participated in an evening debate in the House to the Members’ Room, Annie Wilkinson would sit quietly and when it was getting late would usher her younger sister home.300 Wilkinson was referred to the consultant at St Mary’s hospital W.W. Brooks in early 1946 over her asthma. She and her 384
In government, 1940–47 GP Dr Robert Gilchrist attended Brooks’s Harley Street practice and the treatment worked fairly well for a year. Illness increasingly interrupted her political commitments though. After the June 1946 Labour conference, she only attended two NEC meetings. She contracted tonsillitis in April 1946 and had to cancel a visit to her constituency on doctor’s orders at the end of the month.301 As a result, she went for a fortnight in Switzerland in an attempt to recuperate, returning in mid-May. Her improvement was only temporary, making a second Swiss trip in August 1946. The press was told that this was as a result of having worked too hard and not fully recovering from her tonsillitis. Manning illustrated Wilkinson’s declining powers, recounting the time when the minister rushed to the despatch box, apologising for being late. The sight of Wilkinson in an incongruous hat brought ‘peals of merriment’. Thus interrupted and flustered, Wilkinson suffered a ‘paroxysm of that anxious fight for breath from which asthmatics suffer’.302 J.P.M. Millar also recalled an episode shortly before Wilkinson’s death at a dance organised by Scarborough LEA. His wife Christine Millar went to fetch Wilkinson from her hotel room. Persuading the Minister to put in an appearance, Wilkinson struggled up with Christine Millar’s assistance but collapsed and had to return to bed. J.P.M. Millar wondered ‘whether she was so exhausted that she decided in the end that she couldn’t face life any longer. If her physique matched her courage she might well have been alive today.’303 Another NCLC friend Arthur Woodburn who sat next to her in the Cabinet observed that ‘she was very tired towards the end and I felt that she had exhausted herself’. He also believed that despite being popular and likeable, she was a ‘lonely soul’.304 David Leadbetter (an assistant secretary at the Ministry of Education for public relations) reflected that ‘she had exhausted her old energies, though still capable of showing some of the old fire from time to time and telling officials that they must do as they were told!’305 Attlee was conscious of her deteriorating health, sending her a personal telegram on 28 September 1946, though there was no suggestion that she should step down: ‘So sorry for your indisposition. Best wishes.’306 John Paton MP reflected that she was certainly ‘not herself’ in the last few weeks and that her hard battle with the Treasury and others over the school leaving age took its toll.307 On Monday 3 February, she suffered a sleepless night, tried taking sleeping pills (which were strewn on the floor) and rang Gilchrist her GP.308 Maud saw her in her flat at 1.15pm the following day. Gilchrist was waiting for Brooks. Maud returned at 2.30pm. In the meantime, she had regained sufficient consciousness to ask for tea and talk to Mrs Hooton, her housekeeper. At 4pm, she was moved to the private wing of St Mary’s Hospital. Dr Brooks stated that the intensity of Wilkinson’s 385
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson coma fluctuated and that, on occasion, she briefly regained sufficient consciousness to ask for a cup of tea or coffee.309 On Wednesday 5 February, Maud talked to colleagues and agreed to issue a press release that she had been taken into hospital. At 7.15am, on Thursday 6 February, she died. Two and a half hours later, Nye Bevan, Wilson James, Brooks and ‘JM’ [John Maud?] met presumably on how to deal with the news of the minister’s death.310 Indicating her role on the world stage, the government received official letters of condolence from across the globe.311 Her funeral in the Buckinghamshire village of Penn attracted an array of family and Labour movement notables. In addition to the funeral, there were three memorial services. A national memorial service signalled her significance at the time of her death; the King, the Duke of Gloucester, the Prime Minister and most of the Cabinet, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Winston Churchill attended the event at St Margaret’s, Westminster.312 There were also two memorial services in her constituency. One took place on 16 January in Christ Church, Jarrow, the site where the Bishop of Jarrow had blessed the Jarrow crusaders in 1936. Civic dignitaries from across Tyneside attended this event.313 The memorial service at St Cuthbert’s in Hebburn was a more humble affair. The announcement of an inquest was received with great surprise since, up to that point, the public believed that her death resulted from heart failure following bronchitis. Only the day before, the press had announced that she was in hospital and that she was making satisfactory progress.314 Westminster coroner Dr H. Neville Stafford’s announcement that there would be an inquest was carefully worded so as to defuse any possible sensation.315 His stewardship of the inquest was also very deliberate, asking his witnesses leading questions. He enquired: ‘Could you get a strong-willed person who finds that taking a prescribed dose of medicine does not have the desired effect they may take it into their head to take a little more?’; and, ‘Is it within your experience that persons taking barbituric acid preparations for insomnia may take a medicinal dose that produces a stupor leading to loss of memory, and they may take a considerable quantity unwittingly?’ Dr Gilchrist told the coroner that he had been treating Wilkinson for about nine months and that his client was taking two drugs – theamine and amital – for severe asthma, which she had contracted after her glider accident. She had been suffering from an acute case of bronchitis for about ten days before her death. However, she had supplies of drugs for both asthma and insomnia. Dr G. Roche Lynch, a Home Office pathologist, who had conducted the post-mortem examination found that the minister had taken a ‘gross overdose’ of barbituric acid. The pathologist at St Mary’s, Professor Wilfrid D. Newcomb, agreed that without the 386
In government, 1940–47 overdose, Wilkinson would not have died. He formulated the cause of death as ‘heart failure following emphysema with acute bronchitis and bronchial pneumonia accelerated by barbituric acid poisoning’. Harold Wilkinson, Wilkinson’s younger brother, stated that his sister had never contemplated suicide. Declaring that there was ‘no shred of evidence that the overdose was taken deliberately’, Dr Neville Stafford recorded a verdict of accidental death. The verdict notwithstanding, the prima facie evidence was insufficient to rule out suicide. On the other hand, the absence of a suicide note or other such evidence meant that a suicide verdict could not be proven. Despite this uncertainty, the mystique of modern medical expertise banished public doubt about Wilkinson’s death and the verdict spared the government potential embarrassment. The death of a serving minister is an unusual event. It occurred at a difficult conjuncture that Dalton called the ‘annus horrendous’ with food rationing, balance of payments crisis and a fuel shortages. Internationally, as well as problems of imperial policing in Palestine, Malaya, and India, tensions were increasing between the USA and the USSR in a new atomic age. The forlorn suicide of a popular Labour minister might symbolise the disintegration of her government’s vision of a New Jerusalem. The coroner’s verdict has been widely accepted. Her former secretary Betty Archdale did not believe that Wilkinson could commit suicide and recalled how Lady Rhondda blamed Wilkinson’s doctor who had refused to stay with her, despite her asking him to do so on account of her difficulty breathing.316 Her friend Leah Manning depicted a plausible, if speculative, scene with no suggestion of suicide: On February 6 she died, alone in her flat, with no one to help her in those last desperate hours when, fighting against an attack, she took too many of the pills which alone could give her some relief. A bright and particular star had faded out of our firmament. In it there were never enough women of her quality. 317
Historian Angela Jackson stressed Wilkinson’s relative youth and obscured the possibility of suicide, suggesting bronchitis as cause.318 Thus, in contrast to the case for suicide, contemporaries and historians have presented Wilkinson’s death as a combination of illness and overwork: the tragically early death of a martyr to the cause. This was how biographer Betty Vernon narrated Wilkinson’s death. Vernon interviewed various of Wilkinson’s acquaintances, including her secretary Beryl Hughes who vehemently denied the possibility of suicide. Despite the apparent closure of the matter, some have subsequently asserted that Wilkinson took her own life. Francis Williams described her death as an overdose of sleeping pills.319 Herbert Morrison’s 387
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson iographers state that Wilkinson committed suicide, suggesting that the b Ministry of Education was too great a burden for her.320 In an interview, one of them stated that he was certain of the case on the strength of an off-the-record interview.321 J.F. Horrabin appeared to be one source for such an understanding.322 Conze believed that the strain of office was responsible for her overdose.323 Sir Charles Peake too, who had visited Wilkinson in her Dolphin Square flat shortly before she died, believed that life overwhelmed her and that she hastened her own death.324 He recalled that she was reading Robert Graves’s book that debunked the gospel, and that she told him that she was no longer a Christian.325 This suggests a disconcerting fluidity to her long-held beliefs at the end of her life. Circumstance gives some plausibility to the case for suicide. There had been for some months widespread press speculation that she would lose her job on the grounds of ill health. She had had two convalescent spells in Switzerland and was finding it physically difficult to dispense her duties. Her close friend Herbert Morrison had been hospitalised with a thrombosis. He had failed to support her in the battle inside Cabinet to raise the school leaving age. Vernon accused him of treachery against Wilkinson. Moreover, drawing on the correspondence between Lady Astor and Wilkinson, Anthony Masters suggested in a rather casual aside that Wilkinson was a manic depressive.326 These letters certainly express private self-doubt and bouts of deep pessimism hidden from public view. While her brother denied at the inquest that Wilkinson ever contemplated suicide, two decades later he rather opaquely said: ‘I expect [that’s] why she finished when she did.’327 If some argued that Wilkinson could never contemplate suicide, there are several intriguing references in her writings to the suicidal impulse. Reviewing Marcelle Vioux’s The Mills of Man, Wilkinson complained about the heroine’s suicide saying: ‘That the facing up to an intolerable situation may be even grimmer than the most melodramatic suicide is a fact of life that so young a novelist can hardly be expected to have learned.’328 Wilkinson also discussed the suicide of young Conservative MP Edward Marjoribanks. She found the commonplace explanation that overwork caused his suicide inadequate. For her, this gilded youth was incapable of knowing his own mind, bewildered by modern life, hiding behind self-conscious affectations of dress and manner, lacking all conviction in his ideas, anxious for affection and ‘groping for the anchor he could not find’. She contrasted his rootless clique with the earthy former miner Aneurin Bevan with a brain as quick as theirs but a sense of direction and conviction based on life experience.329 Later the same month, she returned to this macabre topic musing about the poster of a drowned man on a police noticeboard. She speculated that 388
In government, 1940–47 he was probably a veteran ‘allowed to drift to the dregs, and finally suicide … a grim commentary on our “scientific civilisation”’.330 Three years later, reviewing Winifred Holtby’s novel South Riding, Wilkinson commented on suicide as the loveless ageing spinster’s last resort, only to dismiss it in favour of commitment to work: The triumph of this book is its gospel of the saving power of worthwhile work. The heroine of the twentieth century cannot fall luxuriously into a decline if her love story is broken. There is the quick way-out of emotional suicide of course. But when the telephone is ringing for a committee, an operation to be seen through, girls demanding to be taught, the modern woman takes a stiff dose of something, and somehow carries on. Life may be several tones greyer. The sparkle and ecstasy are gone.331
Taking ‘a stiff dose of something’ cost Wilkinson her life, whether this was to ‘somehow carry on’ or the ‘quick way out’ cannot be known. Thus, in scattered writings, Wilkinson had linked the suicidal impulse to a sense of social rootlessness, life becoming a hollow performance, the loss of political purpose or the personal isolation of the older single woman. A case could be constructed that this describes her own situation in early 1947 with her ministerial career coming to an end, her emotional solitude and her accounts very recently settled over the secondary schools pamphlet and the school leaving age.332 Did she intend her foreword to the secondary schools pamphlet as her last words? Did her handwritten comment that this should be personally attributed indicate that she intended it as such? These are tempting propositions but no more than pure conjecture. Overall, then, as frustrating as this admission might be, we cannot know whether Wilkinson committed suicide or not. Those who deny suicide have bluntly refused its plausibility; those who insist on it, lack the evidence to do so. While it was politically expedient for the government to dispel such doubts at the time, it does not follow that this was done to cover up a suicide. To assert such a false certitude is to miss the point. Life and death have their mysteries. In a sense, it is apt to end on uncertainty, as this epitomises how Wilkinson’s enigmatic and remarkable life has fed into the legend of Red Ellen. Thus, we return to this biography’s beginning: Wilkinson’s subtle but powerful impact on British political culture. The aim was to illuminate why this might be the case beyond her association with the Jarrow Crusade. This search for Red Ellen has uncovered a more original and complex thinker than was previously appreciated, whose ideas defy static or simple categorisation. As an activist, she adapted to multiple movements of social transformation and was shaped by cycles of contestation. In the course of her life, she inquisitively explored her world, encountering historical actors of great significance and witnessing epoch-shaping events. 389
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson Ironically then, as well as just demystifying Red Ellen, this study has shown that there is more to sustain the heroic myth of Red Ellen than immediately meets the eye. As our understanding of her is enhanced, it renders her accessible to wider constituencies. Indeed, the ecology of her myth – the desire to combat injustices and the movements attempting to do so in the context of global capitalism – remains today as fertile as ever.
Notes 1
Morrison was the Minister of Home Security and the Home Secretary from October 1940 to May 1945. 2 Newcastle Chronicle, 18 May 1940. 3 Ben Pimlott (ed.), The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton, London, 1985, p. 13 (18 May 1930). Reid interviews: Beryl Hughes. However, according to hearsay, Churchill had responded to Attlee’s list of nominees by saying ‘I won’t have that bloody little red [Wilkinson]’. 4 Plebs, May 1933. 5 Leytonstowe Express, 27 November 1926. New Leader, 27 April 1928 and 4 May 1928. 6 7 Wilkinson, Peeps at Politicians, pp. 8–12. 8 Time and Tide, 16 April 1932. 9 Time and Tide, 30 September 1939. 10 Churchill Archive CHUR 2 495 Wilkinson to Churchill, 22 June 1946. 11 New Statesman and Nation, 17 February 1947. Louis Fischer, The Great Challenge, New York, 1946, p. 63. 12 NUSC TDWR Paul Einzig to Reid, 27 June 1972. Reid Interviews: Paul Einzig. 13 Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years, London, 1957, p. 320. 14 Reading University Astor Papers Wilkinson to Lady Astor, 5 June 1942. 15 Morning Advertiser, 22 July 1940. BBC Written Archives (BBCWA) NO T650 script for Wilkinson, Women under Nazism, 1 July 1940. 16 Manchester Guardian, 2 July 1940. 17 Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang (eds), Listening To Britain: Home Intelligence Reports On Britain’s Finest Hour, May–September 1940, London, 2011, pp. 180–181 and 187. 18 Time and Tide, 6 January 1940. On Paul Reynaud, Time and Tide, 20 March 1940. 19 Living Age, September 1940. 20 Fabian News, May 1940. Fabian News, May 1941. 21 Julian Amery, Approach March, London, 1973, pp. 312–313 on Wilkinson and fear of USSR. 22 Time and Tide, 6 January 1940. 23 Wilkinson, ‘Social justice’, in Fabian Society, Programme for Victory. A Collection of Essays Prepared for the Fabian Society, London, 1941, p. 137.
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In government, 1940–47 24 Labour Party, Labour in Government: a Record of Social Legislation in Wartime, London, 1941. 25 LPASC NEC minutes, 4 February 1941. 26 Ibid., 7 May 1941. 27 Ibid., 26 February 1941. 28 Ibid., 26 February 1941. For fomenting unofficial strikes, Herbert Morrison, Herbert Morrison: an Autobiography, London, 1960, p. 225. 29 Time and Tide, 4 May 1940. 30 Kevin Jefferys (ed.), Labour and the Wartime Coalition: from the Diary of James Chuter Ede, 1941–1945, London, 1987, pp. 37–38 (7 January 1942), pp. 67–68 (26 March 1942), p. 150 (3 November 1943). 31 Raymond Challinor, ‘The Second World War and its Hidden Agenda’, Critique, 27 (1999), pp. 81–95. 32 LPASC NEC minutes, 21 January 1941. 33 The Times, 7 October 1941. 34 Manchester Guardian, 12 May 1942. 35 Daily Mail, 18 August 1942. 36 Daily Worker, 12 October 1942. Reporting that she persuaded them back to work after five minutes, Daily Mail, 12 October 1942. 37 Bill Hunter, Lifelong Apprenticeship: the Life and Times of a Revolutionary, London, 1997, p. 103. 38 Time and Tide, 21 March 1942 39 Croydon Advertiser, 30 November 1942. 40 Perth Advertiser, 8 August 1943. 41 Fenner Brockway, Towards Tomorrow, London, 1977, pp. 139–140. 42 MU GC 205 Wilkinson to Catlin, 7 January 1941. Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain: a Life, London, 1995, pp. 387, 392–394, 398, 407. 43 NUSC TDWR Conze to Reid, 30 July 1974. 44 South West Star, 30 October 1942. 45 Wilkinson, ‘Social justice’, pp. 119–143. Coming to similar conclusion was Raymond Postgate who was also at the Ministry of Home Security during the war and put down his ideas in a letter to Wilkinson, Postgate and Postgate, A Stomach for Dissent, p. 244–246. 46 Wilkinson, ‘Social justice’, p. 119. 47 Ibid., pp. 120–121. 48 Ibid., pp. 143. 49 NUSC TDWR Paton to Reid, 3 March 1975. 50 Harrison, ‘Wilkinson’. Being a vote of confidence in the government, HC Deb, 30 March 1944, cols 1654–1656. 51 NUSC TDWR Richard Acland to Reid, 9 October 1974. Asking to hear Keynes’s proposals on compulsory saving NEC’s policy sub-committee, LPASC NEC minutes, 20 March 1940. 52 Juliet Gardiner, The Blitz: the British under Attack, London, 2010, p. 359. 53 Angus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz, London, 1992. Juliet Gardiner, ‘The Blitz Experience in British Society 1940–1941’, in Claudia Baldoli, Andrew Knapp and Richard Overy (eds), Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940–1945, London, 2011, pp. 171–183. 391
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 54 BBCWA NO T650 script for Wilkinson, War injuries compensation, 22 September 1940. The Times, 23 September 1940. 55 South Wales Post, 19 October 1940. 56 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 7 March 1925. 57 Daily Worker, 12 October 1940. 58 BBCWA NO T650 script for Wilkinson, Air Raid Shelters, 5 December 1940. 59 Richard Overy, ‘“The Weak Link”? The Perception of the German Working Class by RAF Bomber Command, 1940–45’, Labour History Review, 77, 1 (2012), pp. 11–33. 60 Lambeth Palace Archives Wilkinson to Rev. Collins, 13 December 1944. 61 NUSC TDWR Sir Phillip Allen to Reid, 23 August 1975. 62 NUSC TDWR Allen to Reid, 23 August 1975. 63 Mass Observation Collection (MOC), report 449, Second Weekly Report for Home Intelligence, October 1940, p. 14. 64 NUSC TDWR Angus Calder to Reid, 14 January 1974. 65 Attlee, As It Happened, p. 119. 66 Director of Public Relations at the Ministry of Supply and then from 1943 the Principal Assistant Secretary at the Home Office. NUSC TDWR S.C. Leslie to Reid, 20 October 1975. 67 Daily Worker, 18 October 1940. 68 Phil Piratin, Our Flag Stays Red, London, 1978, pp. 74–75. 69 TNA HO 205 168 Note on meeting with representatives of the SJC, 14 November 1940. 70 TNA HO 205 168 Conference of Social Welfare Organisations, 26 November 1940. 71 TNA HO 205 168 Solomon to Wilkinson, 4 December 1940. 72 NUSC TDWR Professor Sir John Baker to Reid, 16 October 1974. 73 Churchill Archives Centre (CAC) Arup Papers Arup 2 11 Arup to Wilkinson, 1 November 1940, enclosing his London’s Shelter Problem; Arup to Wilkinson, 7 December 1940, on mathematical fallacy of the official dispersal policy; Arup to Wilkinson, 13 December 1940, on error of wasting time on ill-conceived schemes; Wilkinson to Arup, 3 January 1941; Arup to Wilkinson, 6 January 1941, complaining she had to choose between two sets of experts; Wilkinson to Arup, 8 January 1941; Arup to Wilkinson, 15 February 1941; Wilkinson to Arup,18 February 1941; Arup to Wilkinson, 25 February 1941. 74 NUSC TDWR Ove Arup to Reid, 16 June 1974. Peter Jones, Ove Arup: Masterbuilder of the Twentieth Century, New Haven, CT, 2006, pp. 66–88, citing letters at length Arup to Wilkinson, 13 December 1940 and 6 January 1941, Wilkinson to Arup, 1 January 1941. 75 CAC Arup 2 11 Arup to Wilkinson, 15 February 1941. 76 Daily Worker, 22 January 1943. 77 Time and Tide, 15 February 1947. 78 News Chronicle, 11 October 1940. 79 Dundee Advertiser, 21 February 1941. Lincoln Times, 12 April 1941. Eastern Press, 2 May 1942, 392
In government, 1940–47 80 Manchester Guardian, 4 December 1940. TNA CAB 67 8 80 Herbert Morrison’s Memorandum: Air Raid Shelter Policy, 31 October 1940; TNA CAB 67 9 7 Herbert Morrison’s memorandum: Air Raid Shelter Policy, 15 January 1941. 81 The Times, 17 February 1938. J.B.S. Haldane, ARP, London, 1938. 82 MOC, report 800, Morale in Glasgow, March 1941, p. 14. Geoffrey Field, ‘Night Underground in Darkest London: The Blitz, 1940–1941’, International Labor and Working-Class History, 62 (2002), p. 13. 83 Daily Worker, 7 January 1941 and 17 January 1941. 84 Time and Tide, 19 October 1940. 85 MOC, report 1481, Morale in October 1942, p. 8. 86 Manchester Guardian, 23 November 1940. 87 Manchester Evening Chronicle, 14 May 1941. 88 BBCWA NO T650 script for Wilkinson, Fire-watching for women, 9 August 1942; Details of the fire-watching scheme for women, 18 September 1942. 89 Manchester News Chronicle, 15 May 1941. 90 Perth Advertiser, 8 August 1943. 91 Helen Jones, ‘Civil Defence in Britain, 1938–1945: Friendship During Wartime and the Formation of a Work-Based Identity’, Labour History Review, 77, 1 (2012), pp. 113–132. 92 Manchester News Chronicle, 25 April 1941. 93 Daily Mail, 7 September and 10 September 1940. 94 Worthing Gazette, 8 October 1941. 95 BBCWA NO T650 script for Wilkinson, Britain speaks, 11–12 January 1941. 96 The Times, 7 October 1942. 97 Torquay Times, 5 June 1942. 98 Worthing Gazette, 8 October 1941. 99 Manchester Guardian, 5 October 1942. Daily Mail, 7 October 1942. Sonya O. Rose, Which People’s War?: National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939–1945, Oxford, 2003, p. 174. For a discussion of the gendered citizenship of civil defence, Lucy Noakes, ‘“Serve to Save”: Gender, Citizenship and Civil Defence in Britain 1937–41’, Journal of Contemporary History, 47 (2012), pp. 734–753. 100 HC Deb, 13 April 1943, vol 388, col. 1061. 101 Daily Mirror, 16 April 1943. 102 Sonya Rose, ‘Women’s Rights, Women’s Obligations: Contradictions of Citizenship in World War II Britain’, European Review of History, 7, 2 (2000), pp. 280–281. 103 Juliet Gardiner, The Blitz: the British under Attack, London, 2010, p. 249. 104 TNA HO 207 144 Registration of women for firewatching. 105 BBCWA NO T650 script for Wilkinson, Fire watching for women, 9 August 1942. 106 Rose, Which People’s War, p. 111. 107 Daily Mail, 5 October 1942. Birmingham Gazette, 5 October 1942. 108 NUDAW Industrial General Secretary’s Report (IGSR), 12–13 July 1941. 109 Ibid., 13–14 June 1942. 393
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 110 Ibid., 11–12 July 1942. 111 Ibid., 7–8 November 1942. 112 Time and Tide, 24 September 1942, p. 761. 113 Harold L. Smith, Britain in the Second World War: a Social History, Manchester, 1996, pp. 65–69. 114 NUSC TDWR Sir Phillip Allen to Reid, 23 August 1975. McMaster University George Catlin Papers (MU GC) 205 Wilkinson to Catlin, 1 March 1941. Daily Mail, 29 January 1941. Also showing around Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s special envoy, Daily Mail, 31 January 1941 115 TNA PREM 4 25 6 L.B. Namier (Jewish Agency for Palestine) to J.M. Martin (10 Downing Street), 22 April 1941. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error, New York, 1949, p. 522. Weizmann to John M. Martin, 17 April 1941 and Weizmann to Lord Moyne, 21 June 1941, in Chaim Weizmann, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann: Volume 20 Series A. July 1940– January 1943, Jerusalem, 1979, pp. 131–132 and 156–163. Helen Reid, and Carey Longmire of New York Herald Tribune and Zionist leader Dr Chaim Weizmann. Illustrating her popularity, Theodore Draper described her as his favourite MP, New Masses, 12 September 1939. 116 TNA PREM 4 25 6 Longmire to Churchill, 27 June 1941. Telephone message from Willkie (New York) to Wilkinson, 26 June 1941. 117 TNA PREM 4 25 6 Josiah Wedgewood (New York) to Churchill, 7 July 1941 118 Daily Herald, 18 November 1943. Churchill’s friend and Mosley’s mistress Lady Metcalfe had lobbied the Prime Minister for this, PREM 4 39 5 reporting on a visit of Lady Metcalfe, letter from Brendan Bracken to Churchill, 3 November 1943. Letter from ‘Baba’ [Lady Metcalfe] to Churchill, 3 November 1943. Prime Minister’s secretary to Lady Metcalfe, 6 October 1943. Report of Medical Officer of Prisons (J.C.W. Methuen), 7 October 1943. CAB 127 335 WM (43) 156th conclusions, minute 4, confidential annex, 17 November 1943. Naval cipher Churchill to Morrison, 21 November 1943. 119 Daily Worker, 29 November 1943. 120 Ibid., 30 November 1943. 121 New Dawn, 4 December 1943. NUDAW General Secretary’s reports, 1943, p. 8. 122 Ibid., 4 December 1943. 123 Ibid., 18 December 1943. 124 Ibid., 15 January 1943. 125 Ibid., 1 January 1944. NUDAW General Secretary’s reports, 1943, p. 190; NUDAW General Secretary’s reports, 1944, p. 7. 126 CAB 127 335 Sir Edward Bridges to J.M. Martin (Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister), 25 January 1944. 127 Daily Worker, 5 January 1944 and 4 May 1944. 128 Jefferys, Labour, p. 166 (27 January 1944). 129 Daily Express, 18 October 1944. Western Daily Press, 18 October 1944. 130 Lilliput, June 1939. 131 Recalling when she nearly drowned in Lake Geneva, NUSC TDWR Vernon 394
In government, 1940–47 Bartlett to Reid, 16 June 1974. 132 Manchester Guardian, 29 January 1943. 133 Ibid., 30 January 1943, 1 February and 9 February 1943. Manchester Guardian, 29 March 1943. 134 Hull University Archives DWH 1 58 Notebook ‘Personal notes, Psychology’, 1945. 135 MU GC 205 Wilkinson to Catlin, 9 June 1944. 136 Wilkinson was assigned to the Preamble Purposes and Principles Committee which operated under the General Provisions Commission. Manchester Guardian, 2 May 1945. 137 TNA PREM 4 31 7 Eden to Churchill, 8 March 1945. 138 Ibid., Eden to Churchill, 14 March 1945. 139 Ibid., War Cabinet minutes, 19 March 1945. 140 Ibid., Churchill to Wilkinson, 22 March 1945. Wilkinson to Churchill, 22 March 1945. 141 Wilkinson had received a delegation from the National Committee for the Celebration of International Women’s Day about a women’s charter, The Times, 7 April 1945. 142 Canberra Times, 23 March 1945. 143 Manchester Guardian, 15 May 1945. 144 Ibid., 17 May 1945. 145 BLPES MISC 723 10 Wilkinson’s General Election Manifesto, 1945. 146 LPACR, 1945, pp. 86–87. 147 Stephen Brooke, Labour’s War: the Labour Party during the Second World War, Oxford, 1992, pp. 315–316. 148 Neil Redfern, Class or Nation: Communists, Imperialism and the Two World Wars, London, 2005, p. 182. Thorpe, British Communist Party and Moscow, p. 272. 149 LPACR, 1945, pp. 78–81. Later in the conference, she also moved on behalf of the NEC a motion of appreciation for those socialists who had been sent to concentration camps in their fight against fascism. LPACR, 1945, p. 150. 150 Jon Lawrence, ‘Labour – the Myths it has Lived by’, in Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo (eds), Labour’s First Century, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 360–361. On historiography of consensus, Ben Pimlott, ‘The myth of consensus’, in Lesley M. Smith (ed.), The Making of Britain: Echoes of Greatness, Houndmills, 1988, pp. 129–141. Brooke, Labour’s War, pp. 2–11. Austin Mitchell, Election ’45: Reflections on the Revolution in Britain, London, 1995. 151 Henry Pelling, ‘The 1945 General Election Reconsidered’, Historical Journal, 23, 2 (1980), pp. 408. 152 Ellen Wilkinson, Plan for Peace: How the People Can Win the Peace, London, 1945. 153 CHAR 2 558 General Election: Press cuttings of broadcasts. 154 BBCWA NO T650 script for Wilkinson’s election speech, 14 June 1945. The Times, 15 June 1945. 155 The Listener, June 1945. 395
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 156 MOC, report 2265, General Election July 1945. 157 MOC, report 2270, General Election July 1945: Detailed Observations in East Fulham, p. 17. 158 MOC, report 2270, p. 21. 159 MOC, report 2270, p. 23. 160 Simon Garfield (ed.), Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain, London, 2004, p. 64. 161 BLPES Misc 723 10 General Election Manifesto of Wilkinson, 1945. 162 MU GC letter Wilkinson to George Catlin, 3 August 1945. 163 Reading University Astor Papers Wilkinson to Astor, 30 August 1945. 164 Shinwell, I’ve Lived Through It All, pp. 181–182. Manny Shinwell, Lead with the Left: My First Ninety-Six Years, London, 1981, p. 130. 165 BLPES Dalton papers Dalton diary, 19–23 May 1945. 166 Francis Williams, Nothing So Strange, London, 1970, pp. 212–213. 167 Manning, A Life for Education, pp. 165–166. Morrison, Herbert Morrison, p. 248. 168 NUSC TDWR Reid to Dame Manning, 2 August 1971. Reid’s questions returned undated with annotated responses. 169 Education, 8 December 1945. 170 NUSC TDWR Harold Dent to Reid, 17 July 1972. 171 Daily Express, 18 April 1932. 172 Attlee, As it Happened, p. 153. C.R. Attlee, A Prime Minister Remembers, London, 1961, p. 80. 173 New York Post, 14 August 1945. 174 NUSC TDRW Tom Braddock to Reid, 18 December 1974. Braddock, Labour MP for Mitcham in 1945. 175 Time and Tide, 2 April 1932, p. 867. Wilkinson, Division Bell Mystery, London, 1932, pp. 145 and 187. 176 Daily Telegraph, 24 August 1945. 177 Conze, Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, p. 15. 178 Williams, Nothing So Strange, p. 213. 179 NUSC TDWR Lord Moyle to Reid, 19 July 1972. 180 Shinwell, I’ve Lived Through It All, p. 182. 181 Bodleian Library MS Attlee 12 27 Wilkinson to Attlee, 3 January 1944; MS Attlee 12 41 Attlee to Wilkinson, 4 January 1944. 182 See also her preface in Cyril Clemens, The Man from Limehouse, Webster Groves, 1946, pp. xiii–xiv. 183 TNA CAB 195 3 Cabinet notebooks, 20 December 1945, p. 423. 184 Arguing for a 30-week limit for national insurance benefits, TNA CAB 195 3 Cabinet notebooks, 6 December 1945, pp. 389, 398. CAB 195 4 Cabinet notebooks, 17 May 1946, p. 224; 5 June 1946, pp. 231–234. 185 Daily Mirror, 29 October 1945. Western Mail, 30 October 1945. 186 Daily Mirror, 30 October 1945. 187 Daily Express, 1 November 1945. 188 TNA CAB 195 3 Cabinet notebooks, 30 October 1945, p. 306. 189 MOC, report 2291, Dock Strike investigation October 1945, p. 5. 190 MOC, report 2291, p. 16. 396
In government, 1940–47 191 192 193 194 195 196
Daily Mail, 13 September 1946. London Observer, 15 February 1946. The Times, 18 February 1946. The Times, 27 April 1946. Star, 23 May 1946. BLPES Redcliffe-Maud Papers 7 7 notes on Ellen Wilkinson 13 November 1946–6 February 1947. 197 Evening News, 5 August 1945. Believing Wilkinson acted vindictively, NUSC TDWR Frida Laski to Reid, 10 August 1971. 198 David Phillips, ‘Lindsay and the German Universities: An Oxford Contribution to the Post-War Reform Debate’, Oxford Review of Education, 6, 1 (1980), pp. 91–105. Also making a 12-day trip to the Mediterranean in January 1946, Daily Express, 14 January 1946. TNA ED 136 764 on the visit. 199 Manchester Dispatch, 8 October 1945. 200 Times Educational Supplement, 13 October 1945. 201 The Times, 5 October 1945. 202 Arthur Hearnden (ed.) British in Germany, London, 1978, pp. 98–99. 203 The Times, 22 December 1945. 204 Ibid., 16 January 1946. 205 Birmingham Mail, 2 February 1946. 206 Bodleian Library MS. Attlee 23 131 Wilkinson to Attlee, 1 October 1945; MS. Attlee 23 143 Attlee to Wilkinson, 5 October 1945. TNA CAB 129 5 Minister of Education’s memo on UNESCO, 27 November 1945. Richard Hoggart, An Idea and Its Servants: UNESCO from within, London, 1978, pp. 24–25. 207 John Toye and Richard Toye, ‘One World, Two Cultures? Alfred Zimmern, Julian Huxley and the Ideological Origins of UNESCO’, History, 95, 319(2010), pp. 308–331. 208 TNA ED 136 788 Maxwell-Hyslop to Graham-Harrison, 18 November 1946. BLPES Redcliffe-Maud Papers 7 7 notes on Ellen Wilkinson 13 November 1946–6 February 1947. 209 BBCWA NO T650 script for Wilkinson, The Aims of UNESCO, 15 November 1946. 210 The Times, 19 January 1946. 211 Richard Aldrich, ‘Soviet Intelligence, British Security and the End of the Red Orchestra: The Fate of Alexander Rado’, Intelligence and National Security, 6, 1 (1991), pp. 196–217. 212 The Times, 6 October 1945. Manchester Guardian, 6 October 1945. 213 Tibor Hajdu and György Litván, ‘Count Michael Károlyi In Wartime England: From His Correspondence, 1941–1946’, Hungarian Quarterly, 44, 172 (2003), pp. 98–112. 214 TNA CAB 195 4 Cabinet notebooks, 12 April 1946, p. 142. 215 Billy Hughes, ‘In Defence of Ellen Wilkinson’, History Workshop Journal, 7, 1 (1979), p. 160. 216 Reid interviews: Billy Hughes. 217 The Times, 28 September 1946. 397
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 218 And cancelling a trip to France, Sunday Dispatch, 29 September 1946. News Chronicle, 1 October 1946. 219 NUSC TDWR Alwyn to Reid, 2 September 1974. Alymer to Reid, 5 September 1974. 220 Borthwick Institute, York University, Halifax A2 278 58 3 Peake to Halifax, 28 February 1955. 221 BBCWA NO T650 script for Wilkinson, New Learning, 27 October 1946. Stephen Spender, European Witness, London, 1946. 222 NUSC TDWR Lionel Elvin to Reid, 20 September 1975 223 Oxford, Myself When Young, p. 403. 224 Notts Evening News, 25 March 1927. She did not abolish this as it was the prerogative of local authorities but did welcome the decline in its use, HC Deb, 18 July 1946 vol 425 c1360. 225 Newcastle Evening World, 9 March 1931. Daily Express, 13 December 1930. 226 New Leader, 29 July 1927. 227 Daily Herald, 9 August 1936. 228 Derby Evening Telegraph, 19 October 1937. 229 LPACR, 1946, pp. 189–91. 230 New Leader, 29 July 1927. 231 LPASC LP NEC minutes, 24 July 1929. She also tried to intervene on behalf of teaching unions over the lack of tenure of secondary school teachers in July 1929. TNA ED 12 451 Wilkinson to Trevelyan, 5 and 17 July 1929. 232 HC Deb, 29 October 1930, cols 45–174. 233 NUSC TDWR Barraclough to Reid, 25 September 1974. 234 NUSC TDWR William Owen Lester-Smith to Reid, 13 April 1975. 235 NUSC TDRW Rev Gordon Lang to Reid, 11 July 1974. 236 NUSC TDWR Pearson to Reid, 13 June 1974. 237 NUSC TDWR Dent to Reid, 17 July 1972. 238 TNA ED 136 774 Conclusions of Lord President’s Committee, 7 December 1945. Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 1 February 1946. 239 TNA ED 136 774 Legislative Committee minute, 8 January 1946. 240 TNA ED 136 782 Wilkinson to Butler, 16 January 1946. Butler to Wilkinson, 17 January 1946. 241 NUSC TDWR Frank Barraclough to Reid, 25 September 1974. 242 Manchester Guardian, 29 March 1946. 243 The Times, 3 January 1945. 244 Ibid., 23 May 1946. 245 TNA ED 136 785 notes for ministerial press conference, 14 March 1946. 246 Observer, 26 May 1946. Times Educational Supplement, 1 June 1946. 247 BBCWA NO T650 script for Wilkinson, Return to Home Life, 28 December 1945 and Women in Office, 7 January 1946. 248 Times Educational Supplement, 14 September 1946. 249 HC Deb, 19 December 1946 col. 435. The Report of the Royal Commission on Equal Pay, Cmnd 6937, 1946. Harold L. Smith, ‘The Politics of Conservative Reform: the Equal Pay for Equal Work Issue, 1945–1955’, Historical Journal, 35, 2 (1992), pp. 401–415. 250 Sussex University Special Collections Kingsley Martin Papers Sx Ms 60 398
In government, 1940–47 3 1 1 23 John Haly to Martin, 21 October 1945; Martin to Wilkinson, 29 October 1945; Wilkinson to Martin, 7 November 1945. 251 NUSC D.H. Leadbetter to Reid, 5 February 1975. 252 An experimental 11-plus exam appeared in her ministry’s two-year action plan in January 1946. TNA ED 136 786 Action Plans 1946–1948. 253 NUSC TDWR Reid to Dame Manning, 2 August 1971. Reid’s questions returned undated with annotated responses. 254 Yorkshire Post, 27 October 1945. 255 NUSC TDWR Harold Dent to Reid, 17 July 1972. 256 TNA ED 136 787 Minute by Sir Robert Wood on problems of secondary education, 15 April 1946. 257 TNA ED 136 778 Secondary Modern Schools, Part II of minute by Minister. 258 NUSC TDWR Lucy Middleton to Reid, 8 October 1970. 259 Manning, A Life for Education, p. 204. 260 TNA ED 136 784 Standing Committee B minute, n.d. 261 BLPES Redcliffe-Maud Papers 7 7 notes on Ellen Wilkinson 13 November 1946–6 February 1947. 262 NUSC TDWR Reid to Dame Manning, 2 August 1971. Reid’s questions returned undated with annotated responses. 263 The Times, 9 June 1946. 264 LPACR, 1946, pp. 191–5. 265 HC Deb, 1 July 1946, cols 1759–1922. 266 HC Deb, 18 July 1946, cols 1358–1359. 267 TNA ED 136 782 departmental minute, 13 November 1946. TNA ED 136 782 R.J. Yeatman (Central Information Office) to D.H. Leadbetter (Ministry of Education), 10 December 1946. 268 TNA Leadbetter to Yeatman, 21 January 1947. Leadbetter to Dent, 20 May 1947. This fixed publication for 10 June 1947. 269 TNA ED 136 782 EW handwritten minutes to secretary, 12 January 1947. 270 Ibid., final draft foreword. 271 TNA ED 136 786 ARAH memo, 21 January 1947. 272 Shields Gazette, 2 January 1941. 273 Lord Butler, The Art of Memory: Friends in Perspective, London, 1982, p. 24. Butler attributed the impetus for an increase in the school leaving age to fifteen to Bevin who served alongside Butler on the wartime Reconstruction Committee. 274 TNA CAB 129 1 Minister of Education memorandum to Cabinet, Raising the School Leaving Age, 16 August 1945. 275 Bodleian Library MS. Attlee 23 171 Wilkinson to Attlee, 5 October 1945. 276 Bodleian Library MS. Attlee 23 172 Tawney to Wilkinson, 30 September 1945. 277 NUSC Trevelyan papers CPT 161 21 Wilkinson to Trevelyan, 1 October 1945. 278 Yorkshire Post, 27 October 1945. 279 The Times, 2 February 1946. 280 TNA ED 136 765 Minister’s Standing Committee, Minutes, 4 February 1946. 399
‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson 281 TNA ED 136 786 Wilkinson to Morrison, Wilkinson to Attlee, 11 April 1946; Attlee to Wilkinson, 13 April 1946; Morrison to Wilkinson, 15 April 1946. 282 Hull University Laski papers, Wilkinson to Harold Laski, 3 June 1946. 283 BLPES Fabian Society G 64 3 Fabian Jubilee speeches, 3 November 1946. 284 Daily Herald, 24 April 1928. 285 TNA ED 136 786 memo G.G.W., 13 August 1945. 286 TNA CAB 129 16 Minister of Education memorandum to Cabinet: Proposed Postponement of the Raising of the School Leaving Age, 14 January 1947. 287 NUSC TDWR Alexander to Reid, 27 September 1974. 288 NUSC TDWR Frank Barraclough to Reid, 25 September 1974. 289 NUSC TDWR Sir Martin Flett to Reid, 20 March 1975. 290 BLPES Redcliffe-Maud Papers 7 7 notes on Ellen Wilkinson 13 November 1946–6 February 1947. 291 Townsville Daily Bulletin, 15 May 1946. 292 Daily Mirror, 29 July 1946. 293 Reid interviews: Amy Mitchell (née Wild). Perhaps with the headline ‘Ellen may be shifted’, Daily Mail, 25 September 1946. 294 Daily Mirror, 13 and 14 December 1946. 295 NUSC TDWR Sir Geoffrey de Freitas to Reid, 23 January 1975. 296 BLPES Redcliffe-Maud Papers 7 7 notes on Ellen Wilkinson 13 November 1946–6 February 1947. 297 Reading University Astor Papers Wilkinson to Lady Astor, 30 August 1945. 298 NUSC TDWR Pearson to Reid, 13 June 1974. 299 NUSC TDRW Lucy Middleton to Reid, 15 June 1971. 300 NUSC TDWR Pearson to Reid, 13 June 1974. 301 Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 26 April 1946. 302 Manning, A Life for Education, p. 204. 303 NUSC TDWR J.P.M. Millar to Reid, 9 August 1977. 304 NUSC TDWR Woodburn to Reid, 30 September 1974. 305 NUSC TDWR Leadbetter to Reid, 5 February 1975. 306 Bodleian Library MS. Attlee 41 143 Telegram Attlee to Wilkinson, 29 September 1946. 307 NUSC TDWR Paton to Reid, 3 March 1975. 308 NUSC TDWR Brooks to Reid, 18 July 1972. 309 Shields Gazette, 28 February 1947. Manchester Guardian, 1 March 1947. NUSC TDWR W.W.W. Brooks to Reid, 18 July 1972. 310 BLPES Redcliffe-Maud Papers 7 7 notes on Ellen Wilkinson 13 November 1946–6 February 1947. 311 TNA FO 370 1447 Condolences on the death of Miss Wilkinson MP, Minister of Education, 1 January 1947 – 31 December 1947. 312 The Times, 14 February 1947. 313 Shields Gazette, 17 February 1947. 314 Ibid., 5 February 1947. 315 Ibid., 22 February 1947. 316 NUSC TDWR Berthie Archdale to Reid, 3 May 1972. Another acquaintance disputing suicide, NUSC TDWR Phyllis Bentley to Reid, 29 June 1972. 400
In government, 1940–47 317 Manning, A Life for Education, pp. 90–91 and 204. 318 Angela Jackson, British Women and the Spanish Civil War, London, 2002, p. 239. 319 Williams, Nothing So Strange, p. 228. 320 Bernard Donoughue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician, London, 1973, p. 392. 321 Red Ellen, BBC 2, 1986. 322 J.F. Horrabin is cited as providing insider information on this in Anon, Drug-Related Suicides in England, Memphis, 2011, pp. 16–18. See also, Horrabin told Taylor this, C. J. Wrigley, A. J. P. Taylor: Radical Historian of Europe, London, 2006, p. 116. 323 Conze, Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, p. 15. 324 Borthwick Institute, York University, Halifax A2 278 58 3 Sir Charles Peake to Earl of Halifax, 28 February 1955. 325 Presumably Robert Graves, King Jesus, London, 1946. 326 Anthony Masters, Nancy Astor, London, 1981, p. 136. 327 Reid interviews: Harold Wilkinson. 328 Plebs, September 1926. 329 Time and Tide, 9 April 1932. 330 Ibid., 23 April 1932. 331 Ibid., 7 March 1936. How love undermined the confidence of the modern spinster, Wendy Gan, ‘A Return to Romance: Winifred Holtby’s Spinster Novels from Between the Wars’, Orbis Literarum, 58 (2003), pp. 202–218. 332 TNA CAB 128 9 Cabinet conclusion, 16 January 1947. With the note of 29 January 1947 cited earlier, TNA ED 136 782.
401
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Women’s Library Joint Committee on Women in the Civil Service papers
Selected newspapers and periodicals ABC Agence Espagne All Power Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter AUCE Journal Clarion Communist International Communist Review Co-operative Employé Co-operative News Daily Express Daily Herald Daily Mirror Daily Worker El Día Electrical Age (for Women) El Socialista El Sol 406
Select bibliography Fabian News Fight Guild Socialist House of Commons Debates (HC Deb) Independent Woman International Press Correspondence John Bull L’Internationale Syndicale Rouge: Bulletin du bureau executive Labour Leader Labour Magazine Labour Monthly Labour Party Conference Report Labour Woman La Claridad La Lutte de Classes: Bulletin de L’Internationale Syndicale Rouge Lansbury’s Labour Weekly La Voz Les Femmes dans l’action mondiale Lilliput Lincoln Gazette and Lincolnshire Times Manchester Guardian Nation National Conference of Labour Women Report New Dawn New Leader New Statesman and Nation North Eastern Daily Gazette Pearson’s Weekly Plebs Scottish Co-operator Shields Gazette Student Outlook Sunday Referee Sunday Sun Sunday Worker The Blackshirt The Communist The Guildsman The Listener The Star The Strand The Vote Time and Tide Trades Union Congress Report Tribune Völkischer Beobachter Weekly Summary 407
Select bibliography Weekly Worker Women’s Leader
Wilkinson’s writings Atholl, Duchess of, Eleanor Rathbone, Ellen Wilkinson and Dame Rachel Crowdy, Report of a Short Visit to Valencia and Madrid in April 1937, London, 1937. Postgate, R.W., Ellen Wilkinson and J.F. Horrabin, A Workers’ History of the Great Strike, London, 1927. Whately, Monica, Ellen Wilkinson, Leonard W. Matters and V.K. Krishna Menon, Condition of India: Being the Report of the Delegation sent to India by The India League in 1932, London, 1933. Wilkinson, Ellen, The Terror in Germany, London, n.d., Wilkinson, Ellen, ‘Introduction’, in Scott Nearing, The British General Strike, New York, 1926. Wilkinson, Ellen, The Clash, London, 1929. Wilkinson, Ellen, Peeps at Politicians, London, 1930. Wilkinson, Ellen, Division Bell Mystery, London, 1932. Wilkinson, Ellen, German Relief: Feed the Children: What Is Being Done to Relieve the Victims of the Fascist Regime, London, n.d. [1933]. Wilkinson, Ellen and Conze, Edward, Why Fascism? London, 1934. Wilkinson, Ellen and Conze, Edward, Why War? a Handbook for those who will take part in the Second World War, London, 1934. Wilkinson, Ellen, The Town That Was Murdered: the Life Story of Jarrow, London, 1939. Wilkinson, Ellen, ‘Social justice’, in Fabian Society, Programme for Victory: a Collection of Essays Prepared for the Fabian Society, London, 1941. Wilkinson, Ellen, Plan for Peace: How the People Can Win the Peace, London, 1945.
408
Index
Note: ‘n’ following a page references indicates the number of a note on that page. Abyssinia 179, 187, 190, 239, 320 Addams, Jane 158, 191 n23, 282 Agence Espagne 310, 314, 316–317, 327, 331 air raid protection (ARP) 356–358 Allen, Jay 303–304, 312 All-Russian Co-operative Society (Arcos) 50 Amalgamated Union of Cooperative Employés (AUCE) 2, 32, 72, 116–130, 145–147 American Federation of Labour (AFL) 142, 276, 361 Amritsar 172 Anderson, Sir John 13, 170, 208, 352, 356, 358 André, Edgar 284, 296 n169 Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee 50 Anomalies Act 43, 224 Antikainen, Toivo 274–275, 284 appeasement 238–240, 351 Archdale, Betty 233, 307, 387 Arnot, R. Page 23, 61 n79 Arup, Ove 357–358, 392 n73 Ashton, Margaret 70, 89 Ashton-under-Lyne 35, 37–38 Astor, Lady Nancy 47, 77–88, 98, 204, 257, 259, 351, 367, 374, 384, 388 Asturias 145, 290, 303–307 Atholl, Duchess of 112 n233, 208, 235, 302, 314–321, 333 Attlee, Clement 11, 49, 180, 189, 230, 234, 236, 237–238, 313, 323, 325, 327–35
Baldwin, Stanley 40, 83, 88, 91, 102, 135, 142–143, 163, 205, 212–213, 217–220 Bamber, Mary 24, 28, 37, 93, 203 Barbusse, Henri 163, 256, 300–301, 306 Beaverbook, Lord 227, 366 Bentham, Dr Ethel 86–87, 97 Bevan, Aneurin (Nye) 48–49, 185, 237, 270, 273, 335, 368, 375, 386, 388 Bevin, Ernest 124, 180, 299, 312, 325, 367, 370, 372 birth control 5, 6, 12, 73, 75, 93–94, 105 Black and Tans 158–159, 183, 258, 269 Blatchford, Robert 4, 20 Blitz 350, 355–360, 384 Bloomsbury 13, 43, 73, 105, 131, 166, 260, 268, 356 Bolshevisation 18, 57 bombing 160, 163, 184, 187, 316, 320, 322, 326, 332, 354–356 Bondfield, Margaret 77, 90, 95, 202, 220–221, 224 Brailsford, H.N. 48, 70, 93, 326, 338 Breitscheid, Rudolf 254, 255, 264 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 1–3, 85, 99, 139, 142, 206, 225, 227, 233, 236, 306, 355, 356, 359, 365, 368 British Union of Fascists (BUF) 48, 233, 270
Index Brittain, Vera 73, 98, 354 Brockway, Fenner 7, 22, 44, 70, 164–165, 178, 269, 354 Brown Book of Hitler Terror 259, 261–262, 267, 301 Brown, Isabel 7, 18, 256, 258, 260, 264, 271, 275, 302, 310–312, 321 Bulgaria 8, 40 Butler, R.A.B. 368, 374, 380 Caballero, Largo 273, 303–304, 308, 310, 315, 317, 319–322 Catholicism 17 n60, 19, 92–94, 159, 217, 226, 300, 305, 311, 317, 323, 331, 334, 340 n6, 375 Catlin, George 7, 265, 311, 338, 354, 363, 367 Chamberlain, Neville 188–190, 205, 212, 225, 235, 237–240, 281, 324, 330, 332, 335–336, 351, 365 China 160, 162–163, 187–188, 211 Christian Science 47, 79 Christian socialism 1, 13, 18, 45–47 Churchill, Winston 3, 11, 50, 189, 202, 211–212, 218, 230, 240, 339, 350–352, 354, 361, 363–367, 386 Citrine, Sir Walter 140, 254, 299, 313–314, 325–326, 334 Clash, The 4–6, 9, 12, 13, 98, 134, 140–141, 144, 157, 351 Cockburn, Claud (‘Pitcairn’) 80, 316, 337, 358 Cole, G.D.H (Douglas) 21–22, 52–53, 136, 224 Cole, Margaret 48, 224 Commons, House of 1, 2, 8, 12, 40, 44, 45, 50, 54, 79–89, 92, 95–96, 98–102, 130, 134, 144, 161, 163–167, 175, 179, 189, 201–250, 278, 310, 312, 322–324, 330, 333, 351, 361, 367, 369, 374 Communist International (Comintern or Third International) 24–28, 42, 53, 57, 77, 164, 256, 261, 272, 276, 302, 321, 323, 338, 372
Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) 12, 18, 22–42, 45, 48–49, 53, 56–58, 72, 76, 104, 131, 158, 166, 179, 185, 233, 235, 275, 357, 365, 371 Communist Unity Convention (1920) 22–24 Congress, Indian National 156, 161– 162, 164–165, 167–172, 174–175, 177–181 Connolly, James 119, 157, 183, 313 Conze, Edward 53, 179–184, 190, 199 n201, 255, 268–269, 275, 338, 354, 368, 388 Cook, A.J. 40, 141–143, 161, 193 n55, 215–216 Cove, W.G. 375, 378–380, 383 Coventry 136–137, 213, 360 Crawfurd, Helen 28, 30, 34, 42, 73–74, 161 Cripps, Sir Stafford 47–49, 58, 224, 234, 236–237, 263, 270, 322, 325–326, 331, 333–335, 367, 382 Crowdy, Rachel 314–315 Czechoslovakia 187–188, 190, 234– 235, 239, 275, 336, 372 Daily Worker 352–353, 358, 361 Dalton, Hugh 9, 48, 53, 215, 230, 237–238, 299, 333–334, 350, 367, 384, 387 Davies, Rhys J. 35, 95, 131, 147 Davies, Stella 3, 35, 70 death 35, 350, 380, 384–390 Del Vayo, Julio Álvarez 187, 273, 302–303, 310, 315, 319, 330 Dimitrov, Georgi 257, 259, 264, 267–268, 293 n92, 371 Durham Miners’Association (DMA) 48, 143–144, 229, 231 Dutt, Rajani Palme 21–22, 33, 39, 276 education 135, 163, 287, 350, 365, 368–384 Einstein, Albert 261–262, 293 n76 Election Fighting Fund (EFF) 70–71
410
Index Electrical Association of Women (EAW) 7, 81–82 engineering lock-out (1922) 30, 32 equal pay 85, 96–97, 99–102 Fabian, Dora 267, 274 Fabianism 11, 21–23, 40, 55, 156, 167, 189–190, 352, 354–355, 377, 381 family allowances 6, 48, 73, 94–96, 105, 219 fascism 1, 8–11, 13, 26, 47–48, 58, 100, 102–103, 105, 172, 180, 184, 187, 190, 223, 235, 239, 251, 256–279, 288–290, 299, 302–303, 306, 310, 326, 335, 354, 362 Fawcett, Millicent 69, 78, 88, 89 Felling 177, 227–229, 231–232 feminism 4–7, 13, 29, 42, 62 n95, 73, 76, 83, 87–89, 94–95, 97, 103– 105, 111 n188, 147, 165–166, 189, 240, 252, 352, 359, 361 Finland 49, 55–57, 189, 274–275, 284, 352 First World War 22, 71, 115–130, 134, 185, 189, 354 Flint 282–284, 290 France 8, 53, 104, 160, 163, 183–184, 187, 238–239, 266, 279–281, 306, 311, 325 Franco, General Francisco 231, 235, 305, 307, 313, 315–320, 323–324, 327, 329–331, 339 Gallacher, William 24, 28, 36, 42 gambling 45, 95 Gandhi 156, 166, 168–170, 176–177, 181 General Strike (1926) 5, 40, 44, 46, 134–144, 325, 351 Geneva 22, 163, 181, 187, 257, 333 Germany 8, 27, 36, 102–103, 183–187, 253–266, 268–269, 271–272, 275–276, 277–279, 289, 301–302, 311 Gillies, William 254, 325–326 Glasier, Katherine Bruce 20–21
Goering, Hermann 261, 263–264 Gold Standard 212 Gollancz, Victor 49, 235, 259, 261, 335 Gorton 35–37, 201 Greenwood, Arthur 137, 219, 230, 237–238 Guernica 307, 322 guild socialism 4, 13, 18, 21–23, 52–53, 119, 147, 204, 276 Halifax, Lord 188, 238, 324 Hallsworth, Joseph 119, 121, 123, 126, 131–132, 273–274 Hardie, Keir 41, 165, 187, 216 Hebburn 228–229, 231–232, 311, 386 Henderson, Arthur 87, 94, 215, 220, 223, 225, 325 hire purchase 48, 82, 206, 252, 366 Hitler, Adolf 11, 48–49, 53–54, 56, 182–184, 188, 209, 238–239, 255–256, 260–262, 265, 268–269, 272–279, 283, 301–302, 322, 339, 352–353, 355–356, 364 Hoare, Sir Samuel 160, 175, 177, 179, 324 Holtby, Winifred 7, 73, 92, 97–98, 179, 389 Horrabin, J.F. (Frank) 3, 7, 15 n18, 18, 42–44, 48, 89, 134–139, 152 n162, 166, 190, 367, 388, 401 n322 Hubback, Diana 3, 77, 179, 208, 210, 231, 275, 279 Hughes, Beryl 337, 377, 387 Hughes, Billy 4, 372, 377, 383 ill health 5, 19–20, 79, 82, 207, 210–211, 289, 337, 362–363, 372, 384–386 imperialism 7–9, 13, 26, 42, 74, 78, 155–184, 189, 354, 363, 371 Independent Labour Party 1–2, 18, 20–22, 34, 38, 43–46, 48, 57, 70–71, 94–95, 106 n18, 111 n184, 131, 141, 160, 185,
411
Index 213–216, 218–219, 221–223, 224, 229, 231, 235, 258, 321 India 1, 8, 31, 46, 79, 104, 155–157, 160–182, 185, 189, 207, 219, 252, 258, 266, 284, 302, 305, 311, 314, 369, 387 Industrial Unionism (for Women) 13, 104, 116, 119–120, 122, 134, 146–147, 283 International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship (IAW) 80–81, 86 International Brigade 286, 311, 315, 328, 331, 334–336 International Class War Prisoners’ Aid (ICWPA) 40 International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) 26, 34–35, 311 International Peace Council (IPC) 7, 187–189, 335 International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) 71, 79, 81, 88, 144 Ireland 8, 157–158, 175, 182, 192 n26, 258, 266, 305 Jagger, John 3, 18, 32–35, 54, 67 n264, 129, 131–132, 146, 176, 199 n201, 210, 273–274, 325, 333, 353, 367 Jarrow 3, 13, 31, 48, 51, 143–144, 185–186, 202, 227–229, 231–234, 240, 284–289, 300, 311, 314, 324, 340 n6, 352, 356, 358, 366, 369, 386, 389 Jobling, Wilfred 286, 298 n212 Joint Committee on Women in the Civil Service (JCW) 73, 101–102, 113 journalism 6, 8, 31–32, 43–44, 54, 57, 84, 97, 134, 160, 163, 168–169, 190, 204, 208, 211, 218, 233, 237, 238, 258, 261, 263, 266, 268, 282, 284, 289 Joynson-Hicks, Sir William 40, 83, 141
Kahle, Hans 336 Kantorowicz, Alfred 267, 336–337 Katz, Otto 54, 256–264, 267, 271–272, 275, 289, 296 nn 175–6, 302, 310–312, 314, 316–317, 321, 336–339, 371–372 Kenya 163 Keynesianism 11, 355 Koestler, Arthur 256, 259, 263, 322, 338, 371–372 Kollontai, Alexandra 12, 25, 75–76, 104 Labour and Socialist International (LSI) 155–156, 164, 258, 271, 313 Labour Party Conferences 36, 40, 42, 58, 91, 93, 95, 143, 170, 214, 216, 218–219, 223, 232, 234, 262, 271, 273, 325, 335, 353, 363–364, 373, 378–379 Labour Research Department (LRD) 21, 40, 55, 202, 324, 352 Labour Women’s Conferences 28, 30, 90–94, 97, 133 n258, 159, 177, 210, 370 Lancashire 2, 31, 70, 79, 128, 177 Lansbury, George 40, 43, 49, 66 n214, 141, 161, 163–164, 186, 203, 212, 215–216, 224, 230, 237, 254, 264, 312 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly 43–44, 140, 212 Laski, Frida 94, 397 n197 Laski, Harold 48–49, 180, 205, 208, 230, 234, 236, 268, 272–273, 367, 370, 372, 381 Lawrence, Susan 51, 55, 77, 80, 83, 204, 219, 276 League against Imperialism (LAI) 7, 145, 161–165, 185, 189, 223 League of Coloured Peoples 179 League of Nations 74, 77, 86, 90, 99, 184, 186–187, 268, 314 Lee, Jennie 7, 92, 224, 242 n41, 259, 270, 352 Left Book Club (LBC) 49, 55, 285
412
Index Left-Wing Movement 41–43, 47, 57, 212 Lenin, Vladimir 2, 24–25, 27, 57–58, 156, 161, 190, 302 Lerroux, Alejandro 273, 304–305, 307, 309 Liberal Party 37–38, 41, 46, 70, 89, 96–97, 201–202, 213, 218, 219, 221–222, 224–226, 230, 235, 238, 365 Listowel, Lord 7, 273, 302–307 Lithgow, Sir James 352 Living Wage Commission 43, 94–95, 216 Lloyd George, David 31, 143, 159, 189, 222 Local Education Authorities (LEAs) 375–376, 379–380, 382, 385 Lothian, Lord 167–168, 238, 267 MacArthur, Mary 21, 117, 127, 141, 153 n180 MacDonald, Ramsay 5–6, 40–42, 58, 80, 140, 143, 155, 165, 207, 213–218, 225, 227, 229, 256, 265 Malaviya, Madan Mohan 166–167 Manchester 1–2, 13, 19–22, 27, 30, 35–39, 69–71, 74, 81–82, 85, 87–88, 104, 115–116, 119, 131, 146, 157–158, 177, 187, 253, 312, 326–327 Mann, Tom 24–26, 40, 129, 185 Manning, Leah 54, 87, 190, 272, 307, 367, 377–379, 385, 387 Marley, Lord 166, 256, 258–261, 264, 267–268, 270–273, 300–302 Martin, Kingsley 22, 145, 257, 268, 310, 351–352, 376 Marxism 39, 41–42, 46, 190, 275, 371 Maud, John 370, 378, 382, 384–386 Maurín, Joaquín 25, 307–308 Maxton, James 44, 215–216, 221, 230, 270 Mayo, Katherine 165–166 Meerut prisoners 168, 170, 178, 189, 219 Mellor, William 18, 21, 23, 48
Menon, Krishna 166–167, 171–174, 179, 352 Methodism 1, 45–47, 177, 215, 323 Miaja, General José 317, 319, 328–329 Middlesbrough 3, 13, 39, 46, 49, 77, 96, 98, 103, 139–140, 142, 166, 201–203, 217–218, 223–228, 253 Middleton, James 236, 271 Military Intelligence (MI5) 3, 7, 264, 275 miners 1, 5, 10, 44–45, 48, 84, 92, 119, 122, 133–144, 174, 223, 228–229, 231, 285–286, 289 n212, 302–305 Mitchison, Naomi 114 n264, 237, 273 Mond-Turner Talks 144, 215 Montagu, Ivor 7, 50–51, 259, 264 Moorhouse, Mary 22, 28 Morrison, Herbert 4, 13, 55, 58, 180, 189, 215–216, 218, 220, 229–230, 234, 237, 331, 339, 350–353, 356, 358–359, 361–363, 367–368, 375, 381–382, 384, 387–388 Mosley, Sir Oswald 11, 141, 215, 223, 259, 270, 361–362, 394 n118 Münzenberg, Willi 26–27, 40, 56, 161, 164, 185, 256, 259, 261, 265, 271–272, 275, 289, 306, 310, 314, 337–338, 365, 372 Murphy, J.T. 24, 26, 28, 38 Naidu, Sarojini 167, 169 National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC) 41–42, 91, 133, 136, 145, 385 National Executive Committee (NEC of the Labour Party) 3, 6, 12, 37, 42, 49, 55, 90, 92–97, 105, 145, 165, 170, 180, 185, 190, 214–217, 220, 223, 230, 234–240, 254, 257, 262, 271–274, 307, 324, 326–327, 331–339, 350, 352–353, 364–365, 367, 374, 381, 385 National Guilds League (NGL) 21–23, 41, 47
413
Index National Shipbuilding Security Ltd (NSS) 288, 352 National Unemployed Workers’ [Committee] Movement (NUWCM or NUWM) 40, 55, 133, 223, 325 National Union for Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC) 73, 77–78, 83, 97, 99, 166 National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers (NUDAW) 2–3, 12, 24, 32–38, 52, 54, 58, 93, 95, 103, 131–134, 144–145, 147, 170, 201, 203, 210, 223–224, 226–228, 261, 273–274, 276–277, 353, 360–362, 384 National Union of Teachers (NUT) 83, 369–370, 375, 378–379 National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) 2, 69–71, 73, 76, 104 Nations Schools, The 377–380 Negrín, Juan 52, 303, 310, 321–322, 327, 330, 339, 363 Nehru, Jawaharlal 7, 156, 162–163, 169, 177–179, 284, 334, 363 New Deal 276–277, 290 New Economic Policy (NEP) 25, 28, 75, 107 n49 New Leader 34, 43–44, 93, 147, 207, 211, 216, 219–220 Newbold, J. Walton 3, 17 n60, 18, 21, 36, 41–42, 367 Noel-Baker, Phillip 221, 327, 332 non-intervention 186, 324, 311–313, 315, 318–320, 323–324, 327, 331, 334, 336 North-West Frontier Province 168, 172 not genuinely seeking work (NGSW) 202, 212, 221, 223 Open Door Council 73, 88 Orwell, George 332
pacifism 13, 90, 160–161, 182, 184–190, 230, 239, 252–253, 351, 353–354 Padmore, George 180 Palmer, Charles Mark 229, 286–288, 366 Pankhurst, Emmeline 6, 70, 88 Pankhurst, Sylvia 5, 24, 70, 90, 116, 185 Paris 50, 54, 73, 79, 103, 144, 160, 180, 187, 238, 256–259, 261, 263, 267, 269, 271, 280–282, 289–290, 304, 306–307, 310–312, 315, 327, 329, 330, 337–338 Parliamentary Committee on Film Censorship 50–51, 238 Pasionaria, La (Dolores Ibárruri) 103, 188, 299, 319–320, 331, 339 Passaic strike 142 Peace Pledge Union (PPU) 186, 189 Peeps at Politicians 208, 351 People’s Convention 352 People’s Theatre 232 People’s War 49, 181, 351, 356, 361 personality 3, 7, 72, 210–211, 299, 388–390 Phillips, Dr Marion 40, 117, 127, 141, 143, 203 Picton-Turbervill, Edith 92, 97 planning 23, 51–52, 73, 103, 167, 251, 276, 355, 364–367 Plebs 41–43, 47, 91, 100, 135–136, 139–141, 166, 170, 181, 190, 212, 275 Poland 55–56, 180, 363 Pollitt, Harry 24, 26, 33–35, 37, 39, 42, 58, 264, 269, 334–335, 351 Popular Front 47, 49, 54–56, 58, 234–236, 238, 240, 279–280, 299–300, 307–309, 311, 314, 321, 325–326, 333, 335, 337 Postgate, Raymond 18, 42, 49, 212, 391 n45 Price, Morgan Phillips 26, 35, 42 Prieto, Indalecio 319–320, 327, 330 Pritt, D.N. (Denis) 49, 54–55, 234, 236, 256, 263–264, 270, 353
414
Index Privy Council 11, 164, 205 protective (or restrictive) legislation 73, 84, 87, 104 racism 157, 161, 165, 179 Rathbone, Eleanor 49, 78, 83, 87, 88, 95, 97–98, 102, 166, 224, 314, 316, 333 Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) 25–26, 28, 31–35, 63 n118 Red Shirts (KK, Servants of God) 172–174, 183 refugees 180–181, 258–259, 266, 268, 272, 274–275, 294 n117, 315, 320, 322, 332, 338 Regler, Gustav 258–259, 267, 317, 338 Reichstag fire trial 9, 41, 257, 259–263 Relief Committee for the Victims of German Fascism (RCVGF) 256–274, 300–302, 336, 340 n13 religion 1, 13, 45–47, 174, 300, 388 Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 69, 89 Rhineland 278 Rhondda, Lady 5, 48, 73, 78, 80, 97–98, 106 n34, 179, 237, 358, 360, 387 Robeson, Paul 179 Robinson, Annot 69–70, 74, 90, 157–158 Robinson, Wright 3, 35, 130–131, 133, 145, 203, 227–228, 234 Roosevelt, Eleanor 363 Roosevelt, F.D. 277, 282, 373 Runciman, Sir Walter 234 Russell, Dora 93–94, 111 n198 Russian Revolution 2, 11, 22, 32, 54, 72, 74 Saar 53, 258–260, 271–272 Saklatvala, Shapuri 35–6, 42, 185, 210 San Francisco United Nations Treaty Conference 104, 339, 363–364
school leaving age 4, 202, 369, 375, 377, 380–383, 385, 388–389 School Milk Act 375 Shaw, George Bernard 80, 92, 262 shelters 11, 332, 352, 356–359, 369, 392 n73 Sheppard, Rev Dick 7, 185–187, 234 shop stewards’ movement 11, 119, 128–129, 134, 147, 353 show trials 54, 338 Simon Commission 164, 166, 168, 172 Six Point Group 73, 78, 86, 102 Snowden, Ethel 74, 205 Snowden, Philip 212, 216–218, 221, 225, 227, 252, 351 Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) 254–256, 271, 335 Socialist League 47–48 Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda (SSIP) 48, 224 Soviet Union 2, 12, 24–28, 42, 49–57, 92, 268, 278, 290, 325, 352–353 Spain 1, 8, 48–49, 54, 56, 62–64, 186–188, 190, 210, 234–235, 238–239, 260, 273–274, 276, 278, 283–284, 286, 288, 290, 299–339, 352, 363, 358, 368, 372 Spain Campaign Committee (SCC) 325–327, 331–334 Spender, Stephen 372 Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women’s Organisations (SJC) 83, 88, 90, 92–93, 127, 145, 215, 254, 357 Stasova, Elena 76, 302 Stevens, Doris 87 Stoddart, Harry 228–229, 231–232 Strachey, John 49, 185, 268–270 Substituted Female Labour (SFL) 116–125 suffrage movement 1, 2, 5, 10–11, 18, 22, 69–100, 104–105, 115, 118, 129, 146, 158, 167, 186, 300, 350 suicide 5, 15 n20–1, 102, 338, 364, 387–389, 400 n316, 401 n322 Summerskill, Edith 49, 337 415
Index syndicalism 21, 26, 119, 120, 147, 303
Versailles Treaty 31, 90, 189, 265, 278 Voigt, Frederick 254, 257, 271
Tawney, R.H. 23, 374, 381 Terror in Germany 265–266 Thälmann, Ernst 267–268, 296 n169 Thomas, J.H. 5, 35, 135, 140, 213, 220, 222–223, 225, 252, 270, 276, 286, 379 Time and Tide 7, 48, 54, 73, 97, 102, 105, 167, 179, 237, 265, 307, 309, 358, 360 Toller, Ernst 163, 264, 269, 338 Town That Was Murdered 31, 49, 143, 285–289 trade boards 32, 34, 132–133 Trade Union Congress (TUC) 26, 29, 32–34, 39, 48, 90, 96, 116, 122, 129, 133–140, 142, 144, 147, 204, 225, 254, 257, 313–314, 330, 334, 360–362 Tribune 47–49, 55, 235, 331, 334, 352 Trotsky, Leon 7, 25, 27, 51, 58, 68 n284, 75–76, 263, 313, 317, 322, 338 unemployment 10, 19, 24, 29–32, 36, 38, 43, 48, 52, 76, 80, 83–4, 97–100, 130, 133–135, 163, 170, 202, 204, 209, 211–213, 215, 218–226, 228, 231–234, 251–255, 270, 272, 281–282, 285, 287, 289, 300, 327, 365, 374 United States of America 8, 11, 46, 82, 84, 102–104, 142–144, 158–159, 166–167, 179, 183, 187, 207, 251–253, 263, 274, 276–277, 282–285, 290, 339, 360–361, 364, 389 Unity Campaign 47, 56, 234, 325 University Socialist Federation (USF) 21–22, 47 Untouchables 169, 172, 176–177, 195 n96, 197 n150 Van der Lubbe, Marinus 259, 263– 265, 340 n13 Vansittart, Sir Robert 238, 353
Webb, Beatrice 21, 281 Webb, Sidney 21, 281 Whately, Monica 92, 100, 167–171 Why Fascism? 42, 53, 181, 268, 275–276, 303 Why War? 42, 52–53, 74, 181–184 widows’ pensions 42, 52–53, 78, 80, 83, 204, 207, 219–220 Wilkinson, Annie E. 3, 19, 74, 271, 274, 337, 368, 384 Wilkinson, Ellen (mother) 19–20 Wilkinson, Harold (brother) 19, 39, 387 Wilkinson, Richard (father) 19, 45, 207 Wilkinson, Richard A. (brother) 19 women police 82, 206 Women’s Compulsory Fire Guard Order 360–362 Women’s Cooperative Guild 71, 76, 90, 103, 121, 124, 126, 146 Women’s Freedom League (WFL) 72–73, 77–78, 201 Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF) 7, 71, 73–74, 76, 86–88, 157–158, 164, 166, 177, 184, 187, 277 Women’s Labour League (WLL) 58 n1, 70, 72, 127 Women’s Political and Social Union (WPSU) 5, 69–70, 73, 88, 104, 350 Women’s Relief Committee for Miners’ Wives and Children 141–142 Wood, Sir Robert 377–378 Woodburn, Arthur 42, 362 workers’ control 21, 23, 53, 74, 134, 147, 276, 281 Workers’ International Relief (WIR) 26, 40, 223, 256, 272 World Committee of Women against Fascism and War 103, 280, 302 Zinoviev letter 40, 49, 208, 212, 221, 261
416