ABSTRACT
From 1930 onwards, however, Ellen moved more to the centre of Labour politics. In Winston Churchill’s wartime Coalition Government she was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions in May 1940, Parliamentary Secretary to the Home Office in October 1940, and was made a Privy Councillor at the beginning of 1945. In August 1945 she became Minister of Education in Attlees post-war Labour government. It was in this capacity that she pressed ahead with campaigns for free school milk and secondary education for all. The free milk would be one-third of a pint and provided regardless of class. Indeed, Wilkinson reflected that ‘Free milk will be provided in Hoxton and Shoreditch, in Eton and Harrow’ (Vernon, 1982, p. 214). Unfortunately, her work in education was cut short by her untimely death, of heart failure, following bronchitis, on 6 February 1947.
