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The Commons and the Parliamentary Labour Party
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Wilkinson's relationship to the Commons and the PLP is crucial to explaining her political and intellectual itinerary. On entering the Commons, she combined a Marxist rejection of parliamentary illusions with a feminist desire for women's representation albeit with a workerist twist. Although her scepticism and frustration continued for some time, gradually she habituated herself to Westminster’s practices and the associated state institutions. On occasion transgressing the boundaries of Commons immunity or PLP rules, disciplinary procedures helped to force Wilkinson into line. More generally, party loyalty, considerations of career and the exigencies of an NEC member or a PPS constrained her outlook. Between 1924 and 1940, Wilkinson lived in two different though mutually dependent worlds. Inside Westminster, she became a skilled parliamentarian seeking to influence the legislative process and to reshape her party's strategy and leadership. Outside parliament, her commitment to social contestation and the movements persisted. The connection between these two worlds would, in her view, be necessary for a Labour government intent upon introducing socialism. By the late 1930s, her battle on the NEC came to a frustrating dead end and with it the strategy of the Popular Front as a domestic and international possibility. This provided the circumstances for an abrupt turn in her politics, her rupture with the politics of social contestation and entry into Churchill's government. As she did, she left behind the world of the social movements to be fully assimilated into the realm of Westminster.

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‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson

Her ideas, movements and world

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