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Dr Marion Phillips
Marion Phillips was Sunderland’s first female MP. She was elected as a Labour candidate in the first ever election in which men and women had equal voting rights. She marched down to the shipyards in her round glasses, demanding free trade and paid holidays for the shipbuilders. A salty wind blew up from the Wear and whipped her face, but she wrapped her big coat tightly around her shoulders and stood her ground. The workers cheered and stamped their feet. She was a fierce feminist who wanted working-class people to enjoy their lives.
Marion was born into a Jewish family in Melbourne, Australia. She won a scholarship and sailed across the world to London, where she read History and Economics books on the top decks of red buses. She became interested in the politics of poverty and wanted to help change the lives of the poor.
She was outspoken and resilient and became the leader of the Women’s Labour League. She saw women at home sweating over stews and their children with snotty noses and sooty faces and she wanted to make things better for them. She believed that everyday life would be easier if people worked together. She campaigned for communal kitchens in social housing so that well-worn recipes and fresh gossip could be passed over soap-slicked sinks. She fought for libraries so that workers could escape into different worlds, and she wanted to build concert halls so that people could twist and spin at the weekends.
She was self-sufficient and independent and wanted women to know they had the strength to change society, even if the odds seemed stacked against them. She gave a speech to a crowd of local women in Hartlepool and her voice echoed across the docks, ‘There is still a lot of educating to do.’ She called over the water, ‘and we are going to begin by educating ourselves!’