MINNIE PALLISTER : THE VOICE OF A REBEL

By Alun Burge

Parthian. 368 pages. £20. ISBN 978-1-914595-79-0

Reviewed by Jim Burns

It may be that not many people will have heard of Minnie Pallister, any more than they will know much, if anything, about the Independent Labour Party (ILP), the organisation to which she devoted much of her time and energy, especially in the period leading up to, during, and after the First World War. It would be unfair to suggest that both Pallister and the ILP have been consigned to oblivion, but it’s surely true that they linger in the shadows insofar as the history of radicalism in Britain is concerned. The records of their existence do exist, but you won’t see them too often turned out for inspection. With this in mind it’s good to find Alun Burge’s fact-filled book redressing the balance in their favour.

Minnie Pallister was born in Cornwall in 1885. Her father, a one-time miner, was an itinerant Wesleyan Methodist preacher, and her mother likewise was a practising Methodist. The family moved to South Wales in 1889, and Minnie always thought of that as being her true place of origin. She had a good, if strict upbringing, with piano and drawing lessons, and attended what Burge describes as “an elite girls’ school, where she won scholarships and prizes for scholastic achievement”. Additionally, she read “the socialist William Morris, the Christian socialist Charles Kingsley, and the reports of Seebohm Rowntree and General Booth on social conditions”. In 1903 she enrolled at Cardiff University and trained as a teacher.

She obtained a post at a school in Brynmawr, in what was then “an economically booming South Wales”. It was sometimes referred to as “American Wales” because of the rapidity of expansion in industries like steel and coal. Burge says that “Nothing Minnie had experienced prepared her for life in industrial South Wales. When she arrived in 1906 it was to enter an alien world”.  In Burge’s words : “Her exposure to the brutal economic and social realities of coal society had a profound effect, posing questions to which her religious faith and hesitant, vaguely liberal politics had inadequate answers”.

Hearing the Labour MP Victor Grayson give a speech in which he addressed ”unemployment, poverty and ownership of the land”, and an encounter with the “socialist propagandist” Katharine Bruce Glaiser, brought Minnie to the realisation that collective action was likely to be the only corrective to social problems resulting from low pay, poverty, and other factors. She joined the ILP, and from that point on devoted her life to activities on its behalf.

It’s worth saying a few words about the ILP. It was founded in 1893 and “was the political heart……of the loose alliance of trades unions and socialist societies that made up the Labour Party”. And with Minnie’s background as a Methodist, “The Party’s mystique, with its own value system based on ethical socialism, and asking moral questions of every issue”, clearly appealed to her. Burge explains, “The ILP went beyond having an economic analysis of how society should be changed and who owned the means of production to take on the ethical and spiritual aspects of building a new social order”. And he adds that “The ILP’s ‘Campaign for Socialism’ directly challenged industrial unionism, which in South Wales was a competing conception of how to build a new society”.  The ILP insisted on the need to obtain power through Parliament, and not, as industrial unionists and syndicalists theorised, through the actions of the unions, no matter how strong they thought they were.

Minnie threw herself into working for the ILP to the point where she gave up her job as a schoolteacher and started to undertake the arduous life of an organiser, touring through towns and villages, speaking on street corners and in halls, and going from door to door to spread the gospel of ILP socialism. It wasn’t a world of smart suits and sound bites, but rather one of rough travelling, often inadequate food, and uncomfortable accommodation. But people like Minnie had an almost-religious fervour in the way they approached their roles as apostles of the word. For her there was a dual purpose in what she was doing, in that, although she never acknowledged being a feminist, she placed a great deal of importance on women’s rights. It was a man’s world she functioned in, and she had been impressed by miners’ wives whose lives, she said, were “an epic of impossibilities achieved”, as they struggled to keep families together in circumstances of poverty and deprivation. Minnie argued for family allowances, and other forms of welfare, which would lighten the burden women had to carry.

When the First World War started in August 1914, Minnie, a lifetime pacifist, campaigned against it, and on behalf of conscientious objectors, particularly those who chose to go to prison rather than take on any kind of work that could be seen as part of the war effort. Later, she spoke out against conscription when it was introduced in 1916. I would guess that her activities in support of the ILP might have already brought her to the attention of the authorities, even though her intentions were not threatening in any way. But she was never afraid to speak out against what she saw as injustices. And there is no doubt that campaigning against the war did mean that the police began to track her movements, and keep a record of what she said. In addition, she faced a great deal of opposition from members of the general public. Meetings were frequently disrupted and speakers like Minnie shouted down, and often physically assaulted.  

When the news about the February 1917 Revolution in Russia reached Britain Minnie welcomed it, but she did not react in the same way when, later that year, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government. Unlike some of her contemporaries she was never at any time caught up in the enthusiasm for communism. Her loyalties always lay with the ILP.

When limited voting rights for women were introduced in 1918 Minnie was unable to participate in the election process : “As a single woman over thirty who was not a house owner, or married to a man who owned a house, nor strictly the holder of a degree, although she held a university qualification, Minnie’s eligibility to vote depended on whether or not she provided her own furniture for her rented accommodation. It appears she did not”. Little wonder that “her socialist politics were now infused with a gender-based analysis that challenged the male domination of society”.

In 1923 Minnie began work as “National Propagandist” on the ‘Now for Socialism’ campaign. This involved “criss-crossing Britain….in a punishing schedule……Relying on the generosity and hospitality of local people who accommodated her, sometimes in unspeakable conditions”. It wasn’t the kind of life likely to improve her health. In addition, there were problems in the ILP, with “conflict between the regions and the London intellectuals attracted to (Clifford) Allen’s ILP who began to dominate the Party”. Allen had changed the title of the ILP paper, Labour Leader, to the New Leader, and made its contents “more intellectual”. It was, opponents claimed, to now represent only a “literary clique”. It’s unlikely that many of them would be prepared to propagate socialism in the way that Minnie, and others like her, did.

As well as her involvement in meetings around Britain, Minnie contributed written material to a variety of publications, including “the Daily Herald, the radical Daily News owned by the Quaker Cadbury family, the Star, London  Opinion, and even the Sunday School Chronicle”. Her pamphlet, Socialism for Women, published in 1924, covered such topics as “The Alleged Inferiority of Women; Sex Antagonism; Equality; Marriage; Prostitution; Women, Salaries, and Equal Pay for Equal Work, and Women and Political Power”.

In 1924 Minie was the ILP candidate for Bournemouth in the General Election called when the minority Labour Government was defeated in a no-confidence vote. Minnie fought hard to challenge the sitting Conservative candidate, but to no avail : “Publication of the ‘red scare’ Zinoviev letter, later shown to be a forgery, derailed Labour’s national campaign”. There have been different opinions about who actually composed the letter purporting to be from  Zinoviev and instructing the British Communist Party to engage in seditious activities. Some have suggested that personnel from MI5 were involved. Whatever its origins, the Daily Mail publicised it widely and it had the desired effect of persuading voters to look on left-wingers generally with suspicion and return the Conservatives to power.

1926 was the year of the General Strike. But Minnie seems not to have been caught up in any activities surrounding it. Her health had taken a turn for the worse, and she had what appeared to be a breakdown, mostly due to sheer exhaustion. She was told that “the muscles on her face and throat were becoming paralysed……she would have to give up her political life and never speak in public again”. If she failed to do so she was “in grave danger of becoming completely paralysed”.  It was likely that she would lose her power of speech completely. It later transpired that she had been given only two years to live. Despite this, she carried on addressing meetings in support of the miners who were still holding out after the TUC had called off the General Strike. She was particularly concerned to raise money for the Relief of Miners’ Wives and Children fund.

It was at this point that her life changed. For a time she was an invalid and looked after by her mother and sister. She was bedridden, with periods in hospital, and unable to work. When she began to slowly recover she turned to writing. Her book, Rain on the Corn, brought together some of the pieces she had written earlier for the Daily Herald and Daily News.  She also continued to contribute to magazines : “Often confined to bed, or lying flat on her back and without the strength in her fingers to be able to type, Minnie wrote everything in longhand…..From 1929, through the New Leader, New Clarion, Daily Herald and elsewhere, she wrote forty to fifty articles a year on war and peace, and the Iniquities of capitalism, including poverty, slums and disease. Her pieces in the co-operative movement’s People’s Weekly were small cries for social justice”. Another book, Heaven for Tuppence, similarly collected some of Minnie’s magazine and newspaper articles. Her Gardener’s Frenzy, “an imaginative, engaging and quirky alphabetical approach to gardening”, proved to be popular and attracted attention around the world : “One chapter. ’O is for Onion’ developed a life of its own….An adapted version was published widely, including as far away as New Zealand”.

If Minnie was less active on behalf of the ILP she did become involved with the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) in the 1930s. She visited Germany and witnessed what was happening to Jews and opponents of Hitler. Towards the end of the decade she helped some Jewish friends to move to Britain. She continued to write and worked on programmes for radio. Her relationship with the BBC was not always a smooth affair, and she was looked on with a certain degree of suspicion because of her activities with the ILP and as a pacifist. This was apparent during the war years and there were periods when she was effectively banned from broadcasting. During the 1950s, however, she was a regular on Woman’s Hour and achieved some popularity as a broadcaster.

It’s amusing at this point to tell how, when she lived in Bexhill-on-Sea during the war, she met Spike Milligan. He was sent there as a member of a unit engaged in manning coastal defences, but also led a small band that played for local dances. Minnie, a more-than-competent pianist, got to know Milligan, and he later based the character Minnie Bannister in the 1950s radio series, The Goon Show, on the behaviour of the eccentric Minnie Pallister.

Minnie died in 1960. I’ve raced through the latter part of her life, not because it’s necessarily less interesting than the years prior to her illness. But it was during her active years with the ILP that she encountered a broad selection of men and women from the world of politics and the unions. She knew Ramsay MacDonald and Bertrand Russell, and it’s probable that she had close relationships with both. MacDonald seems to have always retained a strong affection for her.

Minnie Pallister : The Voice of a Rebel  tells the story of a woman who never gave up her beliefs, whether they related to the role of women in society, her pacifism, or her dedication to the cause of socialism. Circumstances may have compelled her to develop her commitments in different ways, whether by addressing political meetings or writing for radical publications. But she kept the faith. Alun Burge has delved deep into the archives to find out as much as he could about her life. His book is a mine of information. I might add that it’s a useful reminder, too, of an organisation, the ILP, that had its day in the sunlight, and then almost faded from sight. It deserves to be remembered for what it represented.