Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 8, 2016
Ellen Wilkinson (1891–1947) was a British Labour Party politician, Member of Parliament (MP) for Jarrow from 1935 to 1947 and Minister of Education from July 1945 until her death. In 1936 she was a leader of the Jarrow March, an iconic symbol of 1930s unemployment and impoverishment. On graduating from the University of Manchester in 1913, Wilkinson worked mainly as a trade union official, and was briefly a member of the British Communist Party before becoming Labour MP for Middlesbrough East in 1924. After losing her seat in the 1931 general election she worked as a writer and journalist before resuming her parliamentary career in 1935. A strong advocate for the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War, she made several visits to the battle zones. During the Second World War Wilkinson served in Churchill's wartime coalition as a junior minister. By the time she achieved cabinet office in Clement Attlee's postwar Labour ministry she was in poor health due to constant overwork, and was able to promote only modest educational reforms. She died of an accidental overdose of medication while under treatment for an acute bronchial disease. (Full article...)