LSE Literary Festival 2017 | Red Ellen: The life of Ellen Wilkinson, socialist, feminist, internatio

Speaker(s): Dr Laura Beers | In 1908 Ellen Wilkinson, a fiery, outspoken teenager from a working-class family in Manchester, was the only girl who spoke in school debates. By 1945, Wilkinson, still a rebellious redhead, had helped found the Communist Party, earned a seat in Parliament as Minister of Education, 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 played a central role in the post-war Labour government. Laura Beers’s new book about Wilkinson’s remarkable life is a richly detailed portrait of a time when left-wing 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 March, the 300-mile march of two hundred unemployed shipwrights and steelworkers to petition the government for help. But this was just one small part of Red Ellen’s larger transnational fight for social j