Just when you thought there were no more details to pour over for the Budget, along came another one which some said told you all you needed to know about Rachel Reeves, the first ever female chancellor of the Exchequer. And it was there for all of us to see in the corner of her office. A picture of ex-Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson, which had been put there by Rishi Sunak when he was running the Treasury, had been placed with a portrait of, gasp, a woman. And a socialist one at that.
As Reeves was photographed putting the finishing touches to her Budget, beady eyes zoomed in on the striking picture above her desk of Ellen Wilkinson, dubbed Red Ellen because of her hair and political beginnings in the British Communist Party.
As if £40bn in extra taxes wasn’t enough to get worked up about, the Tory press decided to get themselves into a further lather using this portrait as final proof of where Reeves’s sympathies lie. Of course, only a socialist/communist would raise employer’s national insurance, tinker with capital gains tax and add VAT on private schools where only 6 per cent of children in the UK go.
But this is an unfair reading both of Reeves and her politics and the incredible Ellen Wilkinson, who was not only Britain’s first ever female education secretary in the UK (taking up the role in 1945 under Clement Atlee), but who, in that job brought in free secondary education for all, raised the school leaving age to 15 and introduced free milk in schools.
Red Ellen is a female icon, a role model in the true sense of what a clever woman, from a poor background can achieve, not just for herself, but for those women born on the wrong side of the tracks.
Born to a poor family in Manchester, Ellen was a brilliant scholar from the off. As a sick child, she read Darwin, won a scholarship to Manchester University and made a name for herself in the Women's Suffrage movement, becoming the 10th ever female MP in 1924. And the second woman, after Margaret Bondfield, to achieve a place in the British cabinet.
She even served in Winston Churchill’s war cabinet where she was in charge of air raid shelters, saving millions of lives and overseeing a network of courageous and impressive, often female, air wardens.
But perhaps Ellen’s biggest claim to fame was as the leader of the Jarrow Crusade in 1936, which saw impoverished Tyneside workers walk to parliament to complain about poverty and poor working conditions.
Anyone who knows anything about Reeves can immediately understand why our first female chancellor would look to Ellen for inspiration in a moment of reflection. This is a woman, after all, who entered No 11 declaring all the pictures in the chancellor’s stateroom “should be of a woman, or by a woman”. Reeves also tried to have her predecessors’ private urinal removed from the chancellor’s private office… and fair enough, if that isn’t a negatively gendered indicator of who should do a job I don’t know what is.
Reeves comes from a modest background, the child of two teachers, who was a child chess prodigy, a self-proclaimed “girlie swot” who believes hard work and application can mean you can outperform chaps who are to the manor born. (Impressively, her younger sister is also an MP.)
Reeves also has a strong desire to make the world a fairer place: particularly in giving “every child the chance to flourish” – and refers often to her strong Christian faith and how her time working in Salvation Army shops with her grandparents as a child, or visiting food banks, spurs her on to improve the lot of working people.
And yes, so-called “Red Ellen” was a founding member of the British Communist Party, but when after four years, Labour said its members couldn’t also be part of the communist party, Ellen chose Labour, describing herself as a socialist.
Reeves, by contrast, denies being a socialist saying “I am a social democrat”, explaining that her belief in social justice is coupled with a firm conviction (honed through decades working for the Bank of England) in “a dynamic, capitalist economy”.
In a recent interview, she said: “I want people to be successful and to get on in life. That includes earning plenty of money.” Ok, it’s not quite Peter Mandelson saying he is “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” – but it is clearly not a communist or even a socialist perspective either.
As an entrepreneur who owns two businesses, I can understand that Reeves is trying to create a fairer way to distribute wealth in our country. I agree with her that in 2024, in the sixth richest country in the world, it is unacceptable that millions should be faced with the dilemma of eating or heating their homes. Or that for so many who are working hard, it is impossible to make ends meet or make a good life for their children. And I think Red Ellen would agree with that too.
When she died in February 1947, an obituarist wrote that “wherever there was a row going on in support of some good or even fairly good cause, that rebellious redhead was sure to be seen bobbing about in the heart of the tumult”.
Women stand on the shoulders of giants like the suffragettes who made it possible for us to vote and hold public office. Ellen Cicely Wilkinson was a remarkable woman who, like all the other bold and brilliant pioneers, made Reeves’ accession to the job possible.
That is something to celebrate, not sneer at – whatever your feelings are about her Budget.
Eleanor Mills is the founder of noon.org.uk, home of the Queenager, and the bestselling author of ‘Much More to Come, lessons on the mayhem and magnificence of midlife’, published by Harper Collins
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