Leah Manning

Dame Elizabeth Leah Manning (April 14, 1886 – September 15, 1977) was a British educationalist, social reformer, and Labour Member of Parliament (MP) in the 1930s and 1940s. She organised the evacuation of orphaned or at risk Basque children during the Spanish Civil War.

She was christened Elizabeth Leah Perrett. Her parents emigrated to Canada when she was 14, but decided that she (alone among her siblings) should remain in Britain, and she was looked after by her maternal grandparents. They were Primitive Methodists and strongly left-wing.

She was educated at St John's School in Bridgwater, and at Homerton Teacher Training College, Cambridge. She became a teacher in Cambridge where she had met fellow undergraduate Hugh Dalton and joined the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party.

Her school was in a poor area of the city and she pressed the city authorities to improve the health by providing free milk, using her position on Cambridge Trades Council to raise the issue. She married William Manning, a scientist working for the University Solar Physics Laboratory, in 1914. He was a pacifist and a Liberal in politics.

Manning welcomed news of the October revolution in Russia and became a member of the 1917 club. After the end of the war she became an active speaker on behalf of Labour candidates in elections around the country. She was also appointed headmistress of a new experimental Open Air School for undernourished children which Cambridge education authority had established on a farm site, and found this work exceptionally rewarding. In 1929 she served as organising secretary of the National Union of Teachers. She became its President in 1930.

In 1931, Manning was elected as MP for Islington East in a by-election on 19th February. She did not support Ramsay Macdonald's National Government and stayed in the Labour Party, losing her seat a few months later at the 1931 general election in October. She served on the Labour Party National Executive Committee from 1931 to 1932, and in the 1935 general election unsuccessfully contested Sunderland.

She was meanwhile moving away from her previous strict pacifism towards a more active anti-fascism. At the 1936 Labour Party Conference, several party members, including Ellen Wilkinson, Stafford Cripps, Aneurin Bevan and Charles Trevelyan, argued that military help should be given to the Popular Front of Spain, which fought Francisco Franco and his right-wing Nationalist Army. Despite a passionate appeal from Isabel de Palencia, the Labour Party supported the Conservative Government's policy of non-intervention.

Manning disagreed with the official line and became Secretary of the Spanish Medical Aid Committee. In the spring of 1937, she helped to arrange the evacuation of almost 4,000 Basque children to Britain as well as around 200 adults, accompanying the children on the SS Habana. While there she witnessed the bombing of Gernika. In 1938 Manning returned to Spain where she wrote a report on the hospitals where British doctors and nurses were working.

Back in England, she continued to be involved with the Basque children, visiting them and highlighting their plight. She was remembered in 2002 by the naming of a Bilbao square "Plaza de Mrs Leah Manning". A commemorative plaque from the Basque Children of '37 Association was presented to the British House of Commons.

After the end of the civil war, Manning tried many times to return to Spain but was refused a visa and never visited the Basque Country again. Many of the refugee children too never returned as they were likely to be imprisoned, and emigrated instead to Latin America.

Manning was selected as the Labour Party candidate for Epping and won the seat in the 1945 general election. In Parliament, she was known for her commitment to education. Defeated in the 1950 general election, she unsuccessfully contested Epping in 1951 and 1955.

Manning was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966. She remained active in educational work (opposing comprehensive schools) and her autobiography (called "A Life for Education") was published in 1970. Her last years, before her death at age 91, were spent in the NUT Home for Retired Teachers at Elstree, England.

External links

* [http://www.basquechildren.org Basque Children of '37 Association]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/immig_emig/england/southampton/index.shtml BBC history of the Basque Children]