Through these connections she became a member of the National Guilds League (NGL), an organisation that promoted industrial democracy, workers' control and producer associations in a national system of guilds. She maintained her connection with the WIL, whose 1919 conference adopted a non-pacifist stance that justified armed struggle as a means of defeating capitalism. After visiting Ireland for the WIL in 1920 she became an outspoken critic of the British government's actions there, in particular its use of the "Black and Tans" as a paramilitary force. She gave evidence about the conduct of British forces in Ireland at the Congressional Committee of Investigation in Washington in December of that year. She called for an immediate truce and the release of republican prisoners. Communism Along with many others in the Labour movement, Wilkinson's attitudes were radicalised by the Russian Revolution of 1917. She saw communism as the shape of the future, and when the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was formed in the summer of 1920, Wilkinson was one of a group of ILP members with Marxist leanings who became founder members. For the next few years the CPGB was the main focus of her political activity, although she kept her membership in the Labour Party, which at the time accepted dual CPGB/Labour memberships. In 1921 Wilkinson attended the Red International of Labour Unions Congress and the Second Congress of Communist Women in Moscow, where she met several Russian communist leaders, including the Defence Minister Leon Trotsky, and Nadezhda Krupskaya, the educationist who was Lenin's wife; Wilkinson considered Krupskaya's speech the best at the Congress. The main outcome of the gathering was the foundation of the Red International of Labour Unions, often known as the "Profintern". The aim of this organisation was to seek revolutionary change through industrial action, leading to the overthrow of world capitalism. At home, although she failed to persuade her union, NUDAW, to affiliate to the Profintern, Wilkinson continued to promote Russian achievements, especially its emancipation of women workers. In November 1922, at a meeting celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Wilkinson said that the Russian people could look forward with hope, and asked whether the same could be said of the people condemned to live their lives in the slums of Manchester. However, Wilkinson found herself increasingly at odds with communists in Manchester, over the party's industrial and wider international strategies. Seeking elective