Ellen Wilkinson, the first woman Labour MP, is best remembered for leading a march of unemployed from her constituency to London in 1936. Her first novel Clash is set a decade earlier, during the General Strike and Miner’s Lock-out of 1926. Wilkinson was sent by the
TUC to tour the country in support of the strikers, and the book bears all the marks of her first-hand experience.

ISBN-10: 1842330691
ISBN-13: 978-1842330692

Detailed Description

Clash moves skilfully between the comfortable world of the Bloomsbury artistic set and the poverty-stricken communities of the Yorkshire coalfields. The momentous events of the period are unfolded around the life of Joan Craig, a young trade union official torn between her commitment to the workers’ cause and her romantic love for a man not sharing her socialist ideals. The book raises questions about the relationship between the personal and the political and the public and the private that still resonate today.

This is the first critical edition of Wilkinson's novel. It is edited, with an introduction and notes, by Ian Haywood and Maroula Joannou. 

lan Haywood is Reader in English at the University of Surrey, Roehampton. Maroula Joannou is Senior Lecturer in English and Women's Studies at Anglia Polytechnic University, in Cambridge.