Ellen Cicely Wilkinson

Ellen C. Wilkinson, M.A., P.C., was born in the Midlands of the U.K. and educated at Ardwick Higher Elementary School and the University of Manchester. She worked as an organizer for the Union of Women's Suffrage Societies from 1913 to 1915 and thereafter for the Union of Distributive and Allied Workers. On the Manchester City Council from 1923 to 1926, she became Labour M.P. for Middlesbrough East (1924-1931) and for Jarrow (1935-1947), then Parliamentary Private Secretary to several Ministers from 1940, and Minister from 1945 until her death. Her avocations were golf, reading, and chess. She published Clash, a novel (1929), Peeps at Politicians (1930), the mystery novel The Division Bell Mystery (1932), Why War?, and Why Fascism? (both in 1934).