Red Ellen: The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist

by Laura Beers

In 1908 Ellen Wilkinson, a fiery adolescent from a working-class family in Manchester, was “the only girl who talks in school debates.” By midcentury, Wilkinson had helped found Britain’s Communist Party, earned a seat in Parliament, and become a renowned advocate for the poor and dispossessed at home and abroad. She was one of the first female delegates to the United Nations, and she played a central role in Britain’s postwar Labour government. In Laura Beers’s account of Wilkinson’s remarkable life, we have a richly detailed portrait of a time when Left-leaning British men and women from a range of backgrounds sought to reshape domestic, imperial, and international affairs.

Wilkinson is best remembered as the leader of the Jarrow Crusade, the 300-mile march of two hundred unemployed shipwrights and steelworkers to petition the British government for assistance. But this was just one small part of Red Ellen’s larger transnational fight for social justice. She was involved in a range of campaigns, from the quest for official recognition of the Spanish Republican government, to the fight for Indian independence, to the effort to smuggle Jewish refugees out of Germany.

During Wilkinson’s lifetime, many British radicals viewed themselves as members of an international socialist community, and some, like her, became involved in socialist, feminist, and pacifist movements that spanned the globe. By focusing on the extent to which Wilkinson’s activism transcended Britain’s borders, Red Ellen adjusts our perception of the British Left in the early twentieth century.

Genres: Feminism, Biography

568 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Sennen Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this so, so much. It was so evocative and compelling - I felt genuine dread reading the chapters about Ellen’s anti fascist work, knowing that she would not be listened to until it was too late. The author’s admiration of Ellen was clear but the book wasn’t afraid to grapple with some of the political decisions she made that were contradictory or bad. The chapter on her work in education reform I found particularly interesting, especially as my own grandfathers were both lifted out of poverty by the grammar school system. It gave me a lot to think about! Red Ellen was a hero of mine before I read this because of Clash, and now she has a permanent piece of my heart.

[Sue Chant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meticulous account of Ellen Wilkinson's involvement in socialist, feminist and internationalist groups in Britian in the early part of C20th. A slow and detailed read, worthwhile for anyone interested in the history of these movements or of women in politics.