Red Ellen: keeping up with the firebrand MP who led the Jarrow march

With England’s theatres under lockdown, our series of extracts from unstaged scripts continues with a play about 1940s Labour minister Ellen WilkinsonThe irony of “forgotten women of history” is invariably that the facts of their lives turn out to be acutely memorable. When I began researching the life of Ellen Wilkinson (following a commission from Lorne Campbell, then artistic director of Northern Stage) the more books and House of Commons transcripts I devoured, the larger her life became. To attempt to visualise all the people, politics and moments of history she was involved with, I printed out 180 blank calendar months and stuck them into an A4 notebook, filling in the last 15 years of her life, day by day. It was a hefty tome.At 4ft 10in with flame-red hair, Wilkinson’s nicknames included The Fiery Particle and The Mighty Atom. The sheer energy of her political conviction was earth-shaking. She was constantly falling over in parliament due to running in the corridors; she drove her beloved Austin Seven at great speed, often on the wrong side of the road, and “tirelessness” was her modus operandi. There was always so much to do, and so little time. After visiting Spanish republicans during the civil war her plane was struck by lightning, but she still managed to make it to the House of Commons in time to move her bill on hire purchase. She collided with a lorry during a blackout and still turned up to work the next day, with a fractured skull. Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/nov/09/red-ellen-keeping-up-with-the-firebrand-mp-who-led-the-jarrow-march #stage #culture #theatre #labour #politics #uk_news