What to know about ‘Red Ellen’, the radical MP whose portrait is now hanging at 11 Downing Street

Before announcing changes to Britain’s tax system in her first budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves redecorated her own digs. The headline change was swapping a portrait of Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor, with one of Ellen Wilkinson – a trailblazing politician known as “Red Ellen”.

Wilkinson was one of British politics’ most intriguing and complex politicians, and most remarkable campaigners against injustice.

From a humble background, she was first elected to parliament as the Labour MP for Middlesbrough East in 1924 and served until she lost her seat 1931. After four years out of parliament, she became the MP for Jarrow in South Tyneside in 1935, ascending to the rank of minister in the 1945 Labour government.

Wilkinson was much more than a conventional Labour politician. She wrote journalism, political theory and novels. She was both a socialist and a feminist. At times, she described herself as a revolutionary. She was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, though kept her membership of the Labour party throughout her political career.

She met with Lenin and Trotsky, and visited Gandhi during his imprisonment. She attended the General Motors sit-down strikes in Michigan as well as republican Spain during the civil war on three occasions. As a journalist, she also exposed to the world Hitler’s intention to march into the Rhineland in 1936.

Given this history, some papers took an alarmist “reds under the bed” approach to the news that Wilkinson’s portrait was now hanging in Number 11.

The Daily Mail observed: “It’s Red Rachel!” While the Daily Express warned “Rachel Reeves puts communist on wall”.

Neither the Mail nor Express articles acknowledged that said dangerous leftist wrote in their own newspapers. Indeed, it was in the Daily Express on April 18 1932 that Wilkinson admitted to coveting one of the “big boys’ jobs” in cabinet, but believed them to be unfairly out of a woman’s reach.

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Journalism was a sideline to Wilkinson’s political career. For the rightwing press, she wrote as a celebrity parliamentary correspondent on the personality and the conventions of the Commons.

For leftwing publications, she engaged in economic and foreign policy, as well as the great social movements of the day from anti-imperialism to the equalisation of the franchise.

She trenchantly commented on Winston Churchill during his time as chancellor of the exchequer, applying a class and gendered critique of his “rich man’s budgets”. She described his decision to return to the gold standard as the “cross of gold” for working-class people. And she denounced his cavalier indifference to the plight of mining families during the general strike and lockout.

She vividly recounted the effects of Churchill’s economic policy on housewives, trade unionists, the unemployed and malnourished children.

On taking office, Reeves pledged that all the paintings and photos hung in Number 11 would be by or of women. The choice of Wilkinson, who defied the male cosiness of Westminster and was the most audacious of the pioneering generation of women MPs is telling. Reeves also tried to have the private urinal in the chancellor’s office removed.

Red Ellen’s life, in pictures

Press coverage of Wilkinson was filled with disproportionate commentary about her appearance and a great number of cartoon and photographic representations. The cartoon prevailed in the 1920s but with the rise of photojournalism that was set to change.

A renowned photographic portrait agency took the image now hanging in 11 Downing Street on June 25 1924, just months before Wilkinson entered the Commons. Its afterlife says something of her politics.

Wilkinson had contested Ashton-under-Lyne the previous year and was selected for Middlesborough East in April, winning a byelection there in October. She had left the Communist party that year. The Daily Express used the image on her election in Middlesborough East on October 30 1924.

The image continued to appear (though less frequently) up to the reception of her first novel, The Clash, published in 1929.

An Evening Standard article bearing the same image on March 11 1927 quoted Wilkinson on the difficulty of being a female parliamentarian. In the article, she objected to being asked what she did with her £400 salary, what she cooked and ate, about which clothes she wore and not her ideas.

It appeared in an article about Wilkinson speaking to thousands at the Labour Women’s rally in Sunderland AFC’s Roker Park stadium in June 1927. To resounding cheers, she condemned Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin’s anti-union Trades Disputes Act.

And it adorned an article in which Wilkinson denounced women’s unpaid labour in the home as slavery.

Ultimately, it became part of the National Portrait Gallery collection to add to several other more widespread images of Red Ellen. Notably, these include images of her as education minister in 1945 (not a “big boys’ job”) and on the Jarrow Crusade, a march of 200 unemployed shipyard workers from her constituency to London, over 282 miles.

If Wilkinson was among the most iconic, most photographed, most caricatured politicians of her day, conventional representations do not do justice to the complexity, radicalism and richness over her politics.

Matt Perry receives funding from British Academy and Economic and Social Research Council.