Purple Plaque for fearless Cornish rebel

Wales’ 18th Purple Plaque will be unveiled in Brynmawr to celebrate the fearless rebel, Minnie Pallister.

Unremembered until the meticulous research of Alun Burge for his biography Minnie Pallister: Voice of a Rebel, Minnie Pallister was an outstanding feminist whose exceptional advocacy of women’s rights from the 1920s to the 1950s made her a forerunner of the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Tackling issues of equality and gender relations with messages that still resonate, she confronted the men of the South Wales valleys head on over their wives’ domestic drudgery, which she described as a form of slavery.

One of the earliest advocates of family allowances, she helped lay the foundations for women’s rights today.

Pallister was born in Cornwall, and was the daughter of a clergyman. She was trained as a teacher at Cardiff University, and taught in Brynmawr for a decade.

She was the leading woman opponent of the First World War in Wales when such opposition was highly unpopular.

“Formidable”

As Welsh secretary of the No Conscription Fellowship, she looked after the welfare of 900 conscientious objectors and their dependents. Twice accused of sedition, she remained a prominent, lifelong pacifist.

Minnie’s intellect, personality and platform presence took her to the high echelons of the labour movement, in which she was considered the best woman orator in Britain.

She was the first full time woman labour organiser in Wales, agent to Ramsay MacDonald, Wales President of the Independent Labour Party and Parliamentary candidate for Bournemouth when such positions were very rare for a woman – and all when she was still in her thirties. In 1926, when catastrophic ill-health forced her to stand down from her national labour roles, she was replaced by Ellen Wilkinson and Oswald Mosely respectively.

During years of infirmity and near-destitution, often bedridden, lying flat on her back and without the strength in her fingers to be able to type, to survive economically Minnie wrote newspaper articles in longhand.

After her health returned, her journalistic career blossomed and she became a successful journalist with the Daily Herald and the Daily Mirror, writing 600 articles, five books, including an autobiographical account and a clutch of pamphlets.

In 1938-9, she twice travelled to Nazi Germany and helped rescue Jewish people, which she continued to do up to the outbreak of the Second World War.  

By the 1950s, her career as a formidable broadcaster, which had begun in 1938, saw Minnie bring a cutting edge to Woman’s Hour’s more housewifely fare of light entertainment and domestic assurance.

Rejecting the prevailing conservative consensus around the role of women, with its artificially constructed ideals to which women were expected to aspire, her withering condemnation of women’s magazines and beauty pageants found echo more than a decade later in a new generation of feminists.

Made a Guest Editor of Woman’s Hour, so compelling a figure was she that her ‘Life Story’ was serialised on radio over five days during her lifetime. For good measure she provided the inspiration for Spike Milligan’s Goon Show character Minnie Bannister.

Courage

Alun Burge’s biography of Minnie Pallister, Minnie Pallister: Voice of a Rebel, is launched by Parthian to coincide with the unveiling of the purple plaque.

The author said: “With this biography, Minnie Pallister is now restored to her proper place in the history of Wales and her contribution to the labour and women’s movements can now be fully recognised.”

Sue Essex, Chair of Purple Plaques Wales, said: “Thanks to Alun’s book we can at last rediscover and shine a light on this remarkable woman. A dedicated feminist, Minnie was always completely courageous and committed and in her day she clearly had enormous influence. Thanks to Blaenau Gwent CBC and Brynmawr Museum and Historical Society Minnie Pallister will be remembered with a Purple Plaque.”

The Minister for Health, Mark Drakeford, will be unveiling the plaque at the ceremony in Brynmawr. He said “On every page of this fine new book I found myself asking, “Why didn’t I know that already?” A remarkable life, a formative influence on the labour movement, and the pivotal role of women within it-all just waiting to be discovered.

“Marking Millie Pallister’s life with a Purple Plaque is just the start of that journey.”

The plaque unveiling will take place on Wednesday 18 September at 6pm at Market Hall/Brynmawr Museum, Brynmawr.