24 Facts About Leah Manning

Dame Elizabeth Leah Manning DBE was a British educationalist, social reformer, and Labour Member of Parliament in the 1930s and 1940s.

Leah Manning organised the evacuation of orphaned or at risk Basque children during the Spanish Civil War.

Leah Manning's parents were Charles William Perrett, a captain in the Salvation Army, and Harriet Margaret, a teacher from Bethnal Green.

Leah Manning's parents emigrated to the United States when she was 14, but decided that she should remain in Britain, and she was looked after by her maternal grandparents, who were Methodists.

Leah Manning was educated at St John's School in Bridgwater, and at Homerton College, Cambridge, then a teacher training college.

Leah Manning became a teacher in Cambridge where she had met fellow undergraduate Hugh Dalton and joined the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party.

Leah Manning's 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.

Leah Manning married William Henry Manning, an astronomer working for the University Solar Physics Laboratory, in 1914.

Leah Manning was a pacifist and a Liberal in politics.

Leah Manning welcomed news of the October revolution in Russia, and became a member of the 1917 Club.

Leah Manning was 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.

Leah Manning 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.

Leah Manning served on the Labour Party National Executive Committee from 1931 to 1932, and in the 1935 general election unsuccessfully contested Sunderland.

Leah Manning was meanwhile moving away from her previous strict pacifism towards a more active anti-fascism.

Leah Manning disagreed with the official line and became Secretary of the Spanish Medical Aid Committee.

In 1938, Leah Manning returned to Spain, where she wrote a report on the hospitals where British doctors and nurses were working.

Leah Manning was selected as Labour candidate for Epping and won the seat in the 1945 general election.

On 9th March 1946, International Women's Day, Leah Manning chaired an international conference at Beaver Hall in London.

Leah Manning edited a Labour Party pamphlet, Growing up - Labour's Plan for Women and Children detailing plans and party policies for women and children.

Leah Manning spoke up for a Family Planning Service as part of the newly-created NHS.

Leah Manning served on the Commons Committee considering the 1946 New Towns Bill which proposed a designating New Towns around London to re-house Londoners, one of which was Harlow.

Leah Manning was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966.

Leah Manning remained active in educational work and her autobiography was published in 1970.

Leah Manning was remembered in 2002 by the renaming of a Bilbao square as Plaza de Mrs Leah Manning; a commemorative plaque from the Basque Children of '37 Association was presented to the British House of Commons.