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Nombre legal: Wilkinson, Ellen Cicely
Fecha de nacimiento: 1891-10-08
Fecha de fallecimiento: 1947-02-06
Género: female
Nacionalidad: UK
UK
Lugar de nacimiento: Ardwick, Manchester, England, UK
Lugar de fallecimiento: London, England, UK
Lugares de residencia: Manchester, Lancashire, England, UK
Educación: University of Manchester
Ardwick Higher Elementary Grade School
Stretford Road Secondary School for Girls
Manchester Day Training School
Ocupaciones: Member of Parliament
Cabinet Minister
journalist
writer
teacher
women's rights advocate (mostrar todos 7)
novelist
Organizaciones: Independent Labour Party
Fabian Society
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
Premios y honores: Privy Councillor
Biografía breve: Ellen Wilkinson was born in Manchester, England, to a strict Methodist working-class family. She made up for a poor early eduction by her own reading. In 1906, she won a scholarship that enabled her to begin training as a teacher, one of the few occupations open to women. At age 16, she joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP), where she was deeply impressed by socialist politician Katharine Bruce Glasier and suffragist Hannah Mitchell. She won a scholarship to attend the University of Manchester, where she joined the Fabian Society. After graduation, she went to work for the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and later as a trade union organizer. In 1924, she was elected Labour MP for Middlesbrough East, and supported the 1926 General Strike. She published A Workers' History of the Great Strike in 1927, and Clash, her first novel, in 1929. Other works from this time included Peeps at Politicians (1931) a collection of humorous essays on of her parliamentary colleagues. After being out of Parliament for a few years, she returned in 1935 as MP for Jarrow. She became a national figure in 1936 when she led the Jarrow March of the town's unemployed to London. She was a strong advocate for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and made several visits to the battle zones. Other published works during this time included The Terror in Germany (1933), Why Fascism? (1934), Why War? (1935), and The Town That Was Murdered: The Life-Story of Jarrow (1939). During World War II, she served as a junior minister at the Ministry of Home Security and began to turn away from many of her former extreme left-wing positions. After the war, Clement Attlee appointed her as Minister of Education, where she applied much of her energy to reforms such as raising the school leaving age from 14 to 15, free school milk, and an increase in university scholarships. She died in office at age 55 in 1947 after developing pneumonia.

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Collection as part of a Publishers Series? en Librarything Series (octubre 2021)

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The Division Bell Mystery (British Library Crime… por Ellen Wilkinson

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.

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fernandie | 12 reseñas más. | Sep 15, 2022 |

The Division Bell Mystery por Ellen Wilkinson

The Home Secretary has invited an American financier George Oissel to a private dinner at the House of Commons to discuss the terms of a government loan. On leaving Oissel on his own a shot is heard and Oissel is found dead. Inspector Blackitt is brought in to investigate with various help including Robert West M.P. and Parliamnetary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary.
Set and written in 1930's England, with a writing style that is reflective of the period and including political details which is not surprising as Wilkinson was a M.P. at the time. Overall an enjoyable and interesting mystery.
A NetGalley Book… (más)

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Vesper1931 | 12 reseñas más. | Jul 29, 2021 |

The Division Bell Mystery (British Library Crime… por Ellen Wilkinson

The thing that makes 'The Division Bell Mystery', a tale of a murder in the House Of Commons in the late 1920s, worth reading is that it was written by Ellen Wilkinson, one of the first women to be an MP.

Ellen Wilkinson knew the environment and the people she was writing about very well. She was elected as a Labour MP in 1924. She was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Junior Health Minister from 1929-31 (the same role that the hero of the novel performs for the Home Secretary).

She wrote 'The Division Bell Mystery' after she lost her seat in 1931. She returned to Parliament in 1936, supported the Jarrow March and served as Minister of Education under Attlee until her death in 1947.

'The Division Bell Mystery' is a fairly average locked-room puzzle, with a plot that needs some serious suspension of disbelief and has a heavy dependence on the sexual charisma of young American heiress, whose impact on the men I found unfathomable.

What made this an interesting novel for me was the insight it provided to the Parliament of the day and the gentle wit it displayed, which I found to be far more damning than outrage would have been.

Wilkinson cast Robert West a young, up and coming, Tory MP on the lowest step of the ladder leading to Ministerial rank as the amateur detective tasked with unravelling how a guest of the Home Secretary, an American millionaire, is shot dead while alone in a private dining room in the House of Commons.

I've seen reviews of this book that have praised Ellen Wilkinson for picking a young Tory MP as the hero and refraining from scoring party political points. That's not a view I share. I think Ellen Wilkinson demonstrated very clearly how broken the House of Commons was and she also showed that our earnest young Tory had enough intelligence to know that something is out of kilter but was too much a product of the culture that dominates the House and causes the problem to be able to analyse it.

The House of Commons and the Cabinet that Wilkinson describes is an extension of the culture of Eton and Harrow. Politics is treated as a game where the aim is to make sure your side wins. You need to show your team captains that you're a Good Chap while avoiding getting into trouble with the prefects. It is so evident to everyone involved that protecting the power and reputation of your team and its leaders takes precedence over everything else that idea of pursuing and exposing the truth is an option only to be exercised if it's in the interest of your team to do so. This is what being a good chap means and Robert West is a Good Chap above all else, at least until he completely loses all perspective because an overtly sexual woman allows him to take her to lunch.

In this story, we see a known-to-be-stupid Home Secretary exceeding his brief and endorsing criminal behaviour, we see a narcissistic Prime Minister ensuring that the truth is buried in the interest of looking after the Party and his own career. We see the police and the press and a senior industrialist colluding to bring this about. And we see that, while there is some sense that the triggering incident showed regrettably bad form, the ensuing cover-up is seen as statesmanship.

I'm tempted to say that nothing has changed but that's not true. Things have gotten much worse. Our current crop of corrupt, venal, narcissistic old-Etonians no longer care about getting caught. They focus not on cover-ups but on making sure that getting caught has no consequences. As I read 'The Division Bell Mystery', I could see that even ninety years ago, we were on a path where our Prime Minister is a serial adulterer who has been fired twice from civilian jobs for lying and our Home Secretary was fired by the previous Prime Minister for trying cut a private deal with the Israelis and is such a notorious bully that the government had to make a sizeable out of court settlement to a very senior civil servant for how she treated him.

The charming thing about 'The Division Bell Mystery' is that it's not overtly didactic. The main character is a decent young man who believes Parliament is important and who wants to do the right thing. He's also the embodiment of how Party always comes first and why Parliament has become increasingly powerless in the face of Ministerial ambition.

I've picked out some quotes to demonstrate the way Ellen Wilkinson displays Rober West's thoughts.

Here's Robert reflecting on the changing status of England, impoverished after the First World War and the rising power of Financiers (Dalbeattie, an English Financier and Tory Party bigwig and Oissel, an American millionaire and Financier:

England, "which Robert through school and university had been trained to think was the centre of the universe, governing itself by its own elected Parliament. Dalbeatties and Oissels held the power now. To them and their like, whatever their nationality, England was but an incident, a set of statistics. The scope of their interests was international."

I think that analysis is in play again today with 'The Sovereign individual' ideology driving the Tory Party sponsors on a path that benefits only billionaires.

West senses that the game is changing and that he doesn't understand the new rules:

"Not for the first time did Robert West rage angrily against that public-school education which had given him no clue to this new world."

Then we get West's impression of the Tory old guard Backbenchers:

"West felt sorry for the old man, his fierce pride, and his patriotism that could only see a little island leading the world."

Finally, I offer this insight into the mentality of Robert West, a thoroughly decent up and coming Tory Party star. This is him preparing for a discussion on the murder he's investigating

"Robert felt that he must appear to be frank."

The strategy of appearing to be frank as a way of getting what you want reminded me of a common piece of advice from my days as a consultant: 'Sincerity is the most important thing. If you can fake that, the rest is easy.'

If you're looking for a strong Golden Age Mystery, this is not the book for you. If you're interesting in seeing the workings of the House in the 1920s from one of the first women MPs, a woman who was one of the leaders of the Jarrow March and who became one of Attlee's Ministers, you'll find a lot here to reflect on.
… (más)

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MikeFinnFiction | 12 reseñas más. | Jul 21, 2021 |

The Division Bell Mystery (British Library Crime… por Ellen Wilkinson

This is the one mystery written by Ellen Wilkinson, one of the first women MPs (from 1924), a left-wing Labour Party member known from both her hair and her politics as "Red Ellen." It is set literally in the halls of Parliament, in a small private dining room where the Home Secretary is having dinner with an old friend, a very wealthy French-American who is negotiating a vitally important loan to the British government (the mystery was written in 1932, when the British economy, and hence the government, was very shaky). The division bell rings, signaling a vote in the House of Commons, the Home Secretary goes to vote, and while he is out of the room, a shot is fired and the guest is found dead. Forensic evidence eliminates suicide, but several witnesses were outside the door of the room --no-one came out and all the windows were solidly shut. It is quite a neat "locked room" mystery. To compound it, the same night the place where the wealthy man was staying is burgled, and a detective assigned to guard him is shot dead there. The police led by Inspector Blackitt investigate, and so does the Home Secretary's Parliamentary Private Secretary Robert West, (for those not into British politics, a PPS is a junior member of parliament assigned as assistant to a Cabinet minister). West is a handsome young man and attracted to both the American's grand-daughter and heiress Annette and a Labour MP, Grace Richards. The latter (though without the red hair) is based on Wilkinson herself, and at the traditional gathering of those involved, actually solves the method of the murder -- to which, incidentally, the title of the book is a clue.… (más)

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antiquary | 12 reseñas más. | Mar 18, 2020 |

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