In the same year she co-sponsored a bill to limit shopworkers' hours to 48 a week, and poured scorn on Conservatives opposing the measure who seemed, she said, to think that all shop work was carried out in the "soothing atmosphere" and "exquisite scents" of Jermyn Street and Bond Street. The bill was referred to a parliamentary committee, but got no further. As the parliament progressed, it became increasingly difficult to promote social legislation in the face of the mounting financial crisis and the use by the Conservative-dominated House of Lords of its statutory delaying powers. The divisions in the Labour Party became more acute during 1931, as the government struggled to meet the May Report's recommended expenditure cuts of £97 million, the majority (£67 million) to be found from reductions in unemployment costs. The government collapsed on 23 August 1931. To implement the required cuts, MacDonald and a small number of Labour MPs formed a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals, while the bulk of the Labour Party, including Wilkinson, went into opposition. In the general election that followed in October the Labour Party was utterly routed, retaining only 52 of its parliamentary seats. In Middlesbrough East Wilkinson's vote was nearly the same as her 1929 total, but against a single candidate representing the National Government she was defeated by over 6,000 votes. Out of parliament, 1931–35 Wilkinson rationalised Labour's defeat in a Daily Express article, arguing that the party had lost because it was "not socialist enough", a theme she built on in numerous radical newspaper and journal articles. In a less serious vein she published Peep at Politicians, a collection of humorous pen-portraits of parliamentary colleagues and opponents. She wrote that Winston Churchill was "cheerfully indifferent as to whether any new [ideas] he acquires match the collection he already possesses", and described Clement Attlee as "too fastidious for intrigue, and too modest for over-ambition". Her second novel, The Division Bell Mystery, set in the House of Commons, was published in 1932; Paula Bartley, Wilkinson's biographer, acknowledges that Wilkinson was not a first-class novelist, but "the autobiographical topicality of [her] books made them very appealing". In 1932 Wilkinson was invited by the India League to join a small delegation, to report on conditions in India. During the three-month visit she met Gandhi, then in prison, and became convinced that his co-operation was essential to any prospect of