Minnie Pallister – Voice of a Rebel

‘the real lives of people as we set them in biographies are often so glamorous and so romantic and so fantastic that nothing – not even the most extraordinary thriller – can come up to them.’ (Minnie Pallister, ‘Talking About Reading’, Woman’s Hour, 10 May 1951)

Minnie Pallister’s life was so fantastic that not even a thriller writer could imagine it. A feminist, pacifist and socialist, she was twice accused of sedition in the First World War before travelling to Nazi Germany in late 1938 and 1939 to rescue Jews, helping bring them to Britain to the outbreak of the Second World War.

In between, having reached national prominence in the labour movement, in which she was considered the best woman orator, and with a Parliamentary career beckoning, she was struck down by an illness which cruelly robbed her of speech.

Suffering years of paralysing infirmity, which reduced her to the edge of penury, she eventually recovered to become a successful journalist with the Daily Mirror and the Daily Herald.

Fearless and principled and always challenging, not least in advocating gender equality, Pallister was initially barred from a position with the BBC because of her socialist politics, and later twice banned by the Corporation, first for her pacifist then her feminist politics.

An outstanding broadcaster who became for a time a household name, she was a regular contributor to Woman’s Hour and as an advocate of women’s rights from the 1920s to the 1950s, she was a forerunner of the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Pallister was such a compelling figure that her ‘Life Story’ was serialised on radio over five days during her lifetime.

Here her biographer Alun Burge introduces his book and his own fascination with this leading figure of Welsh political life.

Star

Even before she was identified by Keir Hardie in 1915 as a new star bursting over the political horizon, Minnie Pallister’s life was exceptional.

Later, whether she was making rousing speeches from halls and hillsides, under police surveillance and twice accused of sedition for her opposition to the Great War, rescuing Jews from Nazi Germany, being banned by the BBC for her politics or likely inspiring a character of Spike Milligan in his writing of The Goon Show, she was such a compelling figure that Woman’s Hour serialised her ‘Life Story’ over five episodes in one week during her lifetime.

Minnie Pallister emerged from the male-dominated, heavily industrial South Wales valleys, where women had difficulty being accepted as public figures, to become one of the most important woman Labour politicians from Wales of the first half of the twentieth century.

In the way she helped embed Labour as a political force and instil in people a belief that the future was in their own hands, she made an invaluable contribution to the shaping of modern Wales.

Fearless, principled and always challenging, not least around gender, Minnie worked tirelessly for the causes to which she was committed: socialism, pacifism and, of course, feminism.

As an outstanding woman to emerge from the Independent Labour Party, Minnie was to Wales what Jennie Lee was to Scotland and Ellen Wilkinson was to England.

Perhaps the first person ever to make a political broadcast on radio, she was one of the first women to stand for Parliament and between the two world wars influenced the development of a woman’s agenda within Labour both in Britain and abroad.

Hailed as the best woman socialist orator in the country, her intellect, personality and platform presence helped propel her to the high echelons of Labour politics. Through all, her voice – that voice – defined her and set her apart.

On the brink of an outstanding political career in which she could reasonably have reached high government office, Minnie suffered a catastrophic illness. Starting with a loss of her voice, it overwhelmed her body, removed her from public life and reduced her to the edge of penury.

Required to find different ways of expressing herself and earning a living, after years of invalidity, she recovered to reinvent herself as a journalist on the Daily Herald. Almost by chance she became one of the first pioneering ‘agony aunts’ on what was the largest newspaper in the country.

Then, after more than a decade of silence, she found voice sufficiently to become a lauded broadcaster for a new radio audience. Minnie’s willingness to publicly share her infirmity and its consequences, in print and on-air, mark her out as one of the early originators of the ‘illness memoir’, a comparatively rare phenomenon at the time.

Radical

Always pushing the BBC to get her radical agenda accepted, twice she was taken off-air because of her outspoken politics or principles, including for her pacifism during the Second World War when again she came under the watchful eye of the authorities.

A household name on the radio throughout the 1950s, Minnie was an outstanding presence on Woman’s Hour, lending a cutting edge to the more housewifely fare of light entertainment and domestic assurance. Often difficult to handle, she helped change the ways women saw themselves and their life situations.

All the while, Minnie worked with and through women’s organisations, not least Women’s Institutes, promoting radical change by gently forming the outlooks of ‘ordinary’ women. From the 1920s to 1950s, she was an exceptional advocate of women’s rights, tackling issues of equality and gender relations in a way that makes her a forerunner of the Women’s Liberation Movement, helping to lay the foundations for women’s rights today. Previously unrecognised, she is an outstanding feminist of the twentieth century.

Powerful intellect

Minnie’s character was paradoxical. Her gaiety of spirit masked a powerful intellect. Her inner strength was shot through with self-doubt. Combining fearlessness and insecurity, she was brave enough to take on police authorities in Nazi Germany, yet would not sleep in a house alone.

Able to dominate audiences of thousands, she would be unable to enjoy the occasion as she fretted over the thickness of her ankles. Through it all, though, even when her voice was silenced by infirmity, one element was unshakable – Minnie Pallister was a rebel at heart.1

Minnie’s life defies easy categorisation. For the first thirty-seven years, hers was primarily a story of Wales and its politics, albeit one that impinged heavily on the wider British agenda. Minnie’s second thirty-seven years were lived in England and she operated at a British level, primarily in journalism, broadcasting and through women’s organisations and issues. Her career did not have linear progression and circumstances made her existence a series of sharp lurches, including occupying different jobs at different times in different places, complicated by her regular moves within and between Wales and England. Her sometimes erratic and uneven life comprised a series of disjunctures that render her elusive and contribute to her erasure from both Welsh and British popular memory.

The challenge in rescuing Minnie has been to strike a balance between locating her early importance in Wales with that more widely later.

Unnoticed

Minnie Pallister has lain practically unnoticed, largely absent from history as it has been written (rather than as it happened).

She is an almost unheard-of figure with just passing references, the occasional glimpse, sometimes inexplicable, in the stories of others. In an obscure Parliamentary debate about transport net-works in May 1970, Michael Foot evoked the memory of four socialist symbols – the Chartists, the hunger marchers, Minnie Pallister and Aneurin Bevan.2 Such was her importance that Foot claimed that after she spoke from a soapbox in Tredegar Circle, they carried it over the mountains to Merthyr as a sort of relic so that it could be seen there.

The playwright, Trevor Griffiths, in his 1997 BBC TV drama, Food for Ravens, has Aneurin Bevan, near to death, memorialising an episode from his youth:

“Once. When I was young and easy. Your age. I carried a stool across a mountain. For Minnie Pallister to sit on. I’d written her a poem. I had it in my pocket.”

What’s more, it happened. One of Bevan’s first political acts was to carry the stool for Minnie to speak on a mountain top.

Minnie died in March 1960, four months before Nye, and the story was repeated by Foot in his 1962 biography, adding Nye always re membered the event. But still no one grasped the importance of Minnie Pallister.

Puzzle

Writing the biography of an almost unknown person is like completing a gigantic jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box.

Normally, when starting research, you have a sense of what you’re looking for, based in an understanding of time and place built up over the years as well as using the work of others.

Searching for Minnie Pallister, by contrast, requires initially contending with a paucity of material. No collections of her papers exist, and her diaries are long lost. Other avenues, too, remain closed. Without any surviving close relatives, personal information – the sort that exists in family lore – was not passed down the generations to provide insight.

Although Minnie was an inveterate letter writer, apart from online references to a handful that survived in the collections of Vera Brittain, Norman Angell and George Orwell, initially there were only two sources of her correspondence – an incomplete and partial clutch in the papers of Ramsay MacDonald and her personal files at the BBC covering the last twenty or so years of her life.

The archival record is particularly scant in terms of her personal life, and specifically of her relationships with men. The fragments of evidence that remain from 1916 and 1919 offer tantalising glimpses that suggest that her personal life was as dramatic and colourful as her public persona. Salvation lays in Minnie’s published writings.

Clues

Over six hundred articles, mainly from labour papers from the 1920s and 1930s, over one hundred and fifty radio scripts between 1938 and 1960, and her books and pamphlets contain autobiographical material which provides essential clues.

This biography is mainly chronological, though it occasionally deviates, fast-forwarding across decades. Only in that way is it possible to create a sense of her being. Mirroring her experience of a life cleaved by illness, this book is divided in two parts, and is reflected in its feel. The more episodic account of her life until 1926 is built from the printed sources available and from Minnie’s own accounts. After 1927, access to personal correspondence gives the narrative a different texture.

Minnie’s life illuminates many aspects of British history in the twentieth century. She adds a personal nuance to the public events through which she lived and brings us insights into the lives of those around her. Avid watchers of Bertrand Russell will delight in the goings-on of the summer of 1916.

By looking at Ramsay MacDonald through Minnie’s life, he is seen less as a political outcast and viewed in a more human light. And yet she stands as a significant figure in her own right. Politician, orator, pamphleteer, organiser, Minnie Pallister contributed to the shaping of modern Wales and its politics. An outstanding feminist, she also helped define and redefine women’s broadcasting. Her messages on gender still resonate. Minnie Pallister remained a rebel until her last breath. Her voice deserves to be heard once again.

Minnie Pallister The Voice of a Rebel is published today (18 September)  by Parthian with a launch in Brynmawr at 7pm in the Brynmawr Social Club, entry is free to non members and all are welcome.

The talk is on the life of Minnie Palister by Alun Burge and follows the unveiling of a Purple Plaque in her honour by Mark Drakeford MS.

The unveiling will take place on the Square at 6pm.

Minnie Pallister The Voice of a Rebel is available to buy here.