Woman's Leader described her as a "vigorous, uncompromising feminist and an exceedingly tenacious, forcible and hard-headed politician". A policeman once attempted to prevent Wilkinson from entering the House of Commons' smoking room based on her sex; Wilkinson responded, "I am not a lady - I am a Member of Parliament." As an unofficial spokesperson for women's rights, Wilkinson encouraged open debate on birth control, reprimanding Catholic trades unionist Bertha Quinn for calling it a 'crime' at a Labour Women's convention in 1925. Wilkinson went on to achieve one of her first parliamentary victories in that same year, when she persuaded the government to correct anomalies affecting widows in its Pensions Bill. In March 1926, she combined with Lady Astor from the Conservative benches to attack the government's proposed decrease in expenditure on women's training centres. Wilkinson's ODNB biographer, Brian Harrison, acknowledges that while "women's issues" were often to the fore in her speeches, she was primarily a socialist rather than a feminist, and if forced to decide between them would have chosen the former. During the nine days' duration of the May 1926 General Strike, Wilkinson toured the country to press the strikers' case at meetings and rallies. She was devastated when the Trades Union Congress called off the strike. Early in June she joined George Lansbury and other leading Labour and union figures on the platform at an Albert Hall rally which raised around £1,200 for the benefit of the miners, who continued on strike despite the TUC decision. Wilkinson's reflections on the strike were recorded in A Workers' History of the Great Strike (1927), which she co-authored with Raymond Postgate and Frank Horrabin, and in a semi-autobiographical novel, Clash, which she published in 1929. She also visited the United States in August 1926 to raise financial support for the miners, provoking criticism from the Conservative prime minister Baldwin who denied that the lockout was causing hardship. Throughout her career Wilkinson was an opponent of imperialism. In February 1927 she attended the Founding Congress of the League Against Imperialism in Brussels, where she met and befriended the Indian nationalist leader Jawaharlal Nehru. In 1927 she was elected to the Labour Party's National Executive, which gave her a voice in the formulation of party policy. Her advance was noted with approval by Beatrice Webb, who saw in her a future candidate for high office—ahead of more senior Labour women such