|
Myers Literary Guide:
|
The North-East
|
|
ELLEN WILKINSON (1891 - 1947) Ellen was born in Manchester. She took an active part in left-wing politics and was a member of the Communist Party for a time, but resigned in 1924. Small and fiery, with red hair, she was a fluent speaker and writer, with an impish liveliness of temperament. For all these reasons she became known as 'Red Ellen'. Ellen was MP for Middlesbrough East when she wrote her 1929 novel Clash and it contains a highly sympathetic portrait of the town ('Shireport'). In 1932, she wrote a detective novel The Division Bell Mystery. The story is so unconcerned with politics that the hero can say:' A bread-march was not like England.' Murder is done in the House of Commons by means of a fixed revolver which fires through the division bell grating at the sound of the bell. Ellen Wilkinson became Labour member for Jarrow and led the Jarrow march to London, walking the greater part of the way herself. Three years later, she wrote her most important book The Town that was Murdered. At the end of the march, after Ellen Wilkinson's speech in parliament and the petitions had been presented, Walter Runciman solemnly told members that the unemployment position at Jarrow, while still far from satisfactory, had improved during recent months. When pressed to answer why, with a great shipyard and skilled workers available, and ships needed in a hurry, the government couldn't put two years work there, he had no answer; nor to the question of whether it was in the public interest for a private company to take away the livelihood of an entire district. In her later career, Ellen carried the hire purchase bill through the commons, and served as minister of education in Attlee's cabinet of 1945. She ensured that the 1944 Education Act would be implemented
|
|