There has, until recently, been a dearth of books about Labour’s women parliamentarians. Alice in Westminster, a new book by Labour member of parliament Rachel Reeves, redresses that imbalance and shines a new light on the life story and achievements of her subject.

Alice Bacon made her introduction into politics at the age of 16 when she spoke at the Railway Men’s Institute in her home town of Normanton.

She was born into a family with deep roots in the social and political fabric of working class West Riding. As a young girl she was taken by her father a miner and a Labour councillor to the coal face of the pit where he worked. Here she saw what colliers had to experience every day of their working lives. Throughout the rest of her life there is strong evidence that this visit and the poverty she saw in the community strongly influenced her future actions.

The importance of this book is that it also links up the significance of this personal history with the industrial, political and community development of the areas that Alice Bacon represented. If the West Riding was her natural home, the Labour party became Alice’s vehicle for pursuing the changes to society she clearly saw were necessary.

Selected as the parliamentary candidate for North East Leeds in 1938, she had to wait until 1945 to be elected as my MP, as war intervened and the three main political parties accepted an electoral truce. Alice became one of a handful of women MPs and the only woman to be elected for a constituency in Leeds until our author made a breakthrough in May 2010, becoming the MP for Leeds West.

Following redistribution of constituencies in 1955 Alice moved to be the MP for South East Leeds until her elevation to the House of Lords in 1970. Being a minister herself, Alice was in no way overshadowed by her neighbouring MPs, Hugh Gaitskell, James Milner, Denis Healey, Charlie Pannell and Merlyn Rees – all cabinet members except James Milner who became a Commons deputy speaker. She had a close working relationship with Hugh Gaitskell before she became an MP through her elections in 1941 to the National Executive Committee of the Labour party. My personal view of her in the early days was as an archetypal right wing hard liner, willing to accept dissent and disagreement only until these views threatened to become the majority. Rachel Reeves, however, pinpoints another side to her character, determined that only a Labour government could implement a programme of radical and social change.

She bravely championed to decriminalise homosexuality, the right for women to have access to a legal abortion, so saving them from having to resort to back street abortionists, and introduced a private members’ bill to abolish capital punishment. She was passionate about the abolition of grammar schools and was a key mover in persuading the Labour party of the value to children of comprehensive education.

She was an assiduous local MP, a champion for her constituents and had an excellent relationship with the members of her constituency party.

Her close friend Bernard Atha describes her in the book as ‘a rock of the Labour Party, she was strong without being an exhibitionist, she was sound, solid and with common sense, she was not dour, had a good sense of humour. There was no messing with Alice.’

Reaching the age of 60, she quit parliament and returned to her beloved Yorkshire, where she had a happy contented retirement until she died on 24 March 1993, being buried alongside her parents in Normanton Parish Church. We are indebted to Rachel Reeves for this biography and for filling one more gap in the so far neglected stories of Labour women.

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Joyce Gould is a member of the House of Lords. Alice in Westminster by Rachel Reeves was published on 1 December and can be bought here

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Image: IB Tauris