Edith Summerskill

Edith Summerskill was a remarkable politician, feminist, physician, campaigner and writer. At a time when there were few powerful women in public life, Dr Edith, as she was known, served in Clement Attlee's transformational post-war Labour government and oversaw the National Insurance scheme which solidified the welfare state in Britain. Here, the biographer Mary Honeyball, herself a Labour MEP, provides the first biography of this remarkable early pioneer for women in politics. Honeyball shows how Edith Summerskill' direct campaigning was instrumental in promoting women's causes throughout her life - focussing for example on her remarkable achievements in securing the equal rights of housewives and divorced women over property. This is a readable and entertaining account of a forgotten Labour hero--