her uncompromising politics, gave rise to popular nicknames such as the "Fiery Particle" and "Red Ellen". With her bright, fashionable clothes and her forceful manner, she was easily noticeable—an obituarist wrote that "wherever there was a row going on in support of some good or even fairly good cause, that rebellious redhead was sure to be seen bobbing about in the heart of the tumult". In her later career, ambition and pragmatism led her to temper her earlier Marxism and militancy and work within mainstream Labour Party policy; she came to believe that parliamentary democracy offered a better route to social progress than any alternative. Yet, Vernon says, "she never lost her resolute independence of thought, and sought power not for self glory but to succour the weak of the world". In a tribute published when Wilkinson's death was announced, the former Conservative MP Thelma Cazalet-Keir summed up her personality: "Ellen Wilkinson was as far removed from being a bore as it is possible for any human being to be. Whatever she did, wherever she went, she created an atmosphere of excitement and interest ... and not just because of her red hair and green dress". In the course of her career Wilkinson contributed to reforms in numerous policy areas: women's equal suffrage, women civil servants' equal pay, provision of air raid shelters for city dwellers, and protection of hire purchase borrowers' rights. The historian David Kynaston cites as her greatest practical achievement her success in meeting the timetable for the raising of the school leaving age; her successor as education minister, George Tomlinson, recorded how hard she had fought to avoid postponement of the reform, and expressed his sorrow that she died before the set date. Wilkinson was sometimes criticised for extending her efforts too widely; a local newspaper, the North Mail, complained in May 1937 that "Miss Wilkinson is working for too many causes to do justice to Jarrow". Nevertheless, her book The Town that was Murdered brought to public notice the plight of Jarrow and the broader consequences of unbridled capitalism on working-class communities; the book, Harrison observes, "educated the nation". Wilkinson never married, although she enjoyed numerous close friendships with men. Apart from her early engagement to Walton Newbold, she was close to John Jagger for many years, and in the early 1930s enjoyed a brief romantic attachment with Frank Horrabin. Her long association with Morrison