Suffrage Pilgrimage of July 1913, when more than 50,000 women marched from all over the country to a mass rally in Hyde Park, London. She began to develop a fuller understanding of the mechanics of politics and campaigning, and became an accomplished speaker, able to hold her own even in the most hostile public meetings. When the First World War began in August 1914, Wilkinson, like many in the Labour movement, condemned it as an imperialist exercise that would result in the deaths of millions of workers. Nevertheless, she took the role of honorary secretary of the Manchester branch of the Women's Emergency Corps (WEC), a body which found suitable war work for women volunteers. With the advent of war the NUWSS became divided between pro-war and pro-peace factions. They ultimately separated, the peacemongers (including Wilkinson's Manchester branch) eventually aligning themselves with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WIL), and included Agnes Harben. With little suffrage activity to organise, Wilkinson looked for another job, and in July 1915 was appointed as a national organiser for the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees (AUCE), with particular responsibility for the recruitment of women into the union. In this post she fought for equal pay for equal work, and for the rights of unskilled and lower-paid workers when these interests conflicted with those of the higher-paid craft unions. She organized a series of strikes to attain these goals with notable successes in Carlisle, Coatbridge, Glasgow and Grangemouth. She was less successful in managing a lengthy dispute at the Longsight print works in Manchester, in the summer of 1918, where opponents described her tactics as "unreasonable guerrilla warfare". As a result of her actions Wilkinson briefly lost her job at the union, only to be swiftly reinstated after protests by members and after apologising for her role in the strike. From 1918 she served as her union's nominee on several Trade Boards—national consultative bodies which attempted to set minimum wage rates for low-paid workers. In 1921 AUCE amalgamated with the National Union of Warehouse and General Workers to form the National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers (NUDAW). Wilkinson's work for the union brought new alliances, and useful new friendships—including one with John Jagger, the union's future president. She remained an active Fabian, and after the Fabian Research Department became the Labour Research Department in 1917, served on the new body's executive committee.