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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Emily Dugan

The women who came before: Rachel Reeves’s three Labour leading lights

Ellen Wilkinson speaks at a May Day event in Hyde Park, London, in 1939: in this black and white photo she wears a wide-brimmed hat and black jacket over a white blouse, and has a hand raised as she speaks; two bespectacled men wearing ties and suits are seen in the background, one taking notes.
Ellen Wilkinson, the Labour MP for Middlesbrough East (1924-1931) and Jarrow (1935-1947), was the only woman in Clement Attlee’s 1945 government. Photograph: Daily Herald Archive/National Science & Media Museum/SSPL/Getty Images

In just over two weeks Rachel Reeves could become Britain’s first female chancellor of the exchequer.

Reeves has named three women on whose shoulders she would stand if she got the post. These are their stories.

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