Red Ellen (General)

by ChrisW , Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 12:14 (6111 days ago) @ ianfhoyle

No I don't Ian, but I reckon she was named after Ellen Wilkinson MP aka Red Ellen. The following edited extract is from www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUwilkinson.htm

Ellen Wilkinson, the daughter of a worker in a textile factory, was born in Manchester on 8th October, 1891.

There were very few women trade union officials at this time but in July 1915 she was employed by the National Union of Distributive & Allied Workers (AUCE). Wilkinson, the first woman organizer of the AUCE, was also active in local politics and in 1923 was elected to serve on the Manchester City Council.

In the 1924 General Election she was elected to represent Middlesbrough East. In the House of Commons Wilkinson became known as Red Ellen (both for the colour of her hair and her politics). Active in the 1926 General Strike, afterwards she was co-author with Frank Horrabin and Raymond Postgate of The Workers History of the Great Strike (1927).

In the 1935 General Election Wilkinson re-entered Parliament as MP for Jarrow. The town had one of the worst unemployment records in Britain. In 1935 nearly 80% of the insured population was out of work. Of the 8,000 skilled manual workers in Jarrow, only 100 were working. In 1936 Wilkinson organised a march of 200 unemployed workers from Jarrow to London where she presented a petition to parliament calling for government action. Wilkinson later wrote an account of the Jarrow Crusade and its outcome called The Town That Was Murdered (1939).

Following the 1945 General Election, the new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, appointed Wilkinson as Minister of Education, the first woman in British history to hold the post. Wilkinson's plans to increase the school-leaving age to sixteen had to be abandoned when the government decided that the measure would be too expensive. However, she did manage to persuade Parliament to pass the 1946 School Milk Act that gave free milk to all British schoolchildren. Ellen Wilkinson, depressed by her failure to bring in all the reforms she believed necessary, took an overdose of barbiturates and died on 6th February, 1947.