Red Ellen: The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist with Laura Beers

Ellen Wilkinson, a feminist and socialist, was Britain’s second female cabinet minister and a key figure in the ‘Attlee generation’ which forged the postwar welfare state. But her domestic political achievements represented only part of “RedEllen’s” larger transnational fight for social justice. By focusing on Wilkinson’s activism beyond Britain’s borders, Beers adjusts our perception of the British Left in the early twentieth century, underscoring the cosmopolitanism of a group too often depicted as parochial and inward looking.

Laura Beers is an associate professor at American University, and a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham. Red Ellen: The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist won the Stansky prize for best book in Modern British History from the North American Conference on British Studies. She is also the author of Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party (Harvard, 2010), and co-editor of Brave New World: Imperial and Democratic Nation Building in Britain (London, 2012).