Ellen Wilkinson's Contributions

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Ellen Wilkinson (1891–1947) was a British Labour Party politician, Member of Parliament (MP) for Jarrow from 1935 to 1947 and Minister of Education from July 1945 until her death. In 1936 she was a leader of the Jarrow March, an iconic symbol of 1930s unemployment and impoverishment. On graduating from the University of Manchester in 1913, Wilkinson worked mainly as a trade union official, and was briefly a member of the British Communist Party before becoming Labour MP for Middlesbrough East in 1924. After losing her seat in the 1931 general election she worked as a writer and journalist before resuming her parliamentary career in 1935. A strong advocate for the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War, she made several visits to the battle