‘Sunderland Has Lost a Figure That Will Go Down in History’: Marion Phillips in the North East of England, 1923–1932

Abstract

Selected as the Labour Party’s chief woman officer in 1918, Dr Marion Phillips played a prominent role in the British labour women’s movement before, during and after the Great War. However, her brief stint as Labour MP for Sunderland between 1929 and 1931 has not attracted the same level of academic attention as the parliamentary careers of other early women MPs. Phillips’s connection to the North East of England throughout the 1920s illuminates her work as chief woman officer, as well as the prominence of the labour women’s movement in the region. This article focuses on Phillips’s relationship with the labour movement in County Durham to understand how she was selected as a parliamentary candidate for Sunderland. The annual women’s gala, first held in June 1923, and the Women’s Committee for the Relief of Miners’ Wives and Children formed in response to the 1926 General Strike, are crucial to understanding her early connections to the region. Phillips’s sudden death in early 1932 led to a wave of local and national commemorations demonstrating the legacy of her political work.