Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
A socialist heroine
DAVID NICHOLSON is fascinated by one of the early pioneers of the women’s movement and of the early days of the Labour Party
SOLIDARITY WITH THE REVOLUTION: The presidium of the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1920, Vladimir Lenin first from right, at the height of the foreign military intervention by 13 states acting in unison [Public Domain]

Minnie Pallister: The Voice of a Rebel
Alun Burge
Parthian Books, £20

 

AN ADOPTED daughter of Wales, a dimly remembered heroine of the labour and peace movement, and a renowned broadcaster and journalist makes for the fascinating tale of the life of Minnie Pallister. Alan Burge’s biography of Pallister is a story of the labour movement itself.

One of three daughters born to Durham coal miner William Pallister, who became a Wesleyan Methodist minister and took his young family to live in Haverford West in Pembrokeshire in 1899. The young Minnie was the middle daughter and became a confirmed socialist and pacifist and campaigned against the Great War alongside her friends Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Andrew Fisher and King O'Malley (bearded), minister for home affairs, at the naming of Canberra in 1913 / Pic: Public domain
History / 28 February 2026
28 February 2026

KENNY MacASKILL reminds us of the unprecedented political career of a Scottish miner’s militant son who stayed the course and true to his roots

Jeremy Corbyn (second left) and Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South (second right) on the picket line outside London Euston train station, August 18, 2022
Features / 20 August 2025
20 August 2025

Corbyn and Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ represents the first attempt at mass socialist organisation since the CPGB’s formation in 1921, argues DYLAN MURPHY

HIGHLY PRINCIPLED: (Left) Gavin Henderson, 2nd Baron Faringd
Features / 28 March 2025
28 March 2025
MAT COWARD recalls the communist and pacifist aristocrat whose commitment made a difference in the Spanish civil war, the Blitz and WWII Europe