George Middleton that Glasier had "brought me into the Socialist movement ... It always makes me humble to think of her indomitable courage". After meeting the suffragist Hannah Mitchell, Wilkinson took up the cause of women's suffrage, the major women's rights issue of the day. Although initially engaged in everyday tasks such as distributing leaflets and putting up posters, she made a considerable impression on Mitchell, who later remembered her as "brilliant and gifted". University Determined to carve a career for herself outside teaching, in 1910 Wilkinson sat for and won the Jones Open History Scholarship, which gave her a place at Manchester University. There, she found many opportunities to extend her political activities. She joined the university's branch of the Fabian Society, and eventually became its joint secretary. She continued her suffragist work by joining the Manchester Society for Women's Suffrage, where she impressed Margaret Ashton, the first woman member of Manchester City Council, by her efforts in the North Manchester and Gorton constituencies. Through these and other campaigning activities Wilkinson met many of the contemporary leaders of the radical left—the veteran campaigner Charlotte Despard, the ILP leader William Crawford Anderson, and Beatrice and Sidney Webb among others. She also came under the influence of Walton Newbold, an older student who later became the United Kingdom's first Communist MP. The two were briefly engaged, and although this was soon broken off, they remained close political associates for many years. In her final year at university Wilkinson was co-opted to the executive committee of the University Socialist Federation (USF), an inter-institutional organisation formed to bring together socialist-minded students from all over the country. This brought her new contacts, who would typically meet at Fabian summer schools to hear lectures by ILP leaders such as Ramsay MacDonald and Arthur Henderson, and trade union activists such as Ben Tillett and Margaret Bondfield. Amid these distractions she continued to study hard, and won several prizes. In the summer of 1913 she sat her finals and was awarded her BA degree—not the First Class honours that her tutors had predicted, but an Upper Second. Wilkinson rationalised thus: "I deliberately sacrificed my First ... to devote my spare time to a strike raging in Manchester". Early career Trade union organiser On leaving university in June 1913, Wilkinson became a paid worker for the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She helped to organise the