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Remembering Jennie Lee — the ‘Lioness of Labour’ who founded the Open University

Scottish Labour politician Jennie Lee, Minister for the Arts, announces the decision to create a ‘University of the Air’ - Hulton Archive
Scottish Labour politician Jennie Lee, Minister for the Arts, announces the decision to create a ‘University of the Air’ - Hulton Archive

To celebrate 100 years since British women were given the right to vote, The Telegraph – alongside the Mayor of London’s #BehindEveryGreatCityCampaign – is running a weekly series.

‘Hidden Credits’ looks back and celebrates individual women who have smashed glass ceilings, helped change society for the better and given the UK’s capital something to boast about.

“Bright, brave and wilful,” Jennie Lee, a miner's daughter, was a political firecracker who fought tirelessly to bring arts and adult education to all.

Her ascendance into public life was mapped out from an early age. Born into a “comfortably off” household of committed socialists in 1904  in the Scottish mining town Lochgelly, Fife, politics ran deep through Lee’s family. Her grandfather founded the local Independent Labour Party and her father, James Lee, was its branch leader. So it wasn’t long before Jenny herself took a marked interest in local politics, an industrious spirit having been imbued in her from the generations of miners — both Lee’s grandfather and father worked down the pits — that came before.

Growing up, Lee loved reading and would while away hours down at the local bookshop on Cowdenbeath High Street, and found herself particularly taken by The Story Of The Working Class Throughout The Age.

Labour Party Conference, Blackpool. Harold Wilson applauded by women. - Credit:  Ken Mason/The Telegraph
Jennie Lee seen applauding Harold Wilson's speech at a Labour Party Conference in Blackpool Credit: Ken Mason/The Telegraph

“She was a compassionate child, who hated bullying at school, who worried about the acute poverty of some of her classmates,” explained her biographer, Baroness Patricia Hollis in Jennie Lee: A Life. “Jennie was the son of the family... demanding, achieving and self-reliant.”

After moving to Edinburgh for university, where she studied Education and Law, graduating in 1927,  Jennie found her place in the University Labour Club and atop the Mound, a hill off Princes Street where she campaigned fiercely for the rights of women and the poor. She was, according to fellow politician G.R.Strauss, who knew her well, “indignant about anything and everything.”

Following a couple of years spent as a teacher back home in Fife, Lee soon turned her sights on the political arena, celebrating her first big win in North Lanarkshire in 1929. Claiming her seat at just 24, Lee became the youngest member of the House of Commons, vowing to wage “war on poverty.”

Though still too young to even vote, Lee was “never willing to adapt to others’ expectations.” A rebel to her very core, she gave a vigorous opening speech to Parliament, rejecting usual protocol and seizing the opportunity to attack Churchill’s budget proposals as “a mixture of can’t, corruption and incompetence.”

Lee’s political life faltered when she lost her seat in 1931 due to her increasingly left-leaning views. But on joining the Labour party in 1944, she returned to the Commons the following year after winning Cannock, a Midland mining area, and remained there for 25 years. During her term, she married politician Aneurin Bevan, son of a former miner and architect of the NHS, in 1934 and the duo formed a potent political power couple.

But it wasn’t until Bevan’s death in 1960 that Jennie carried out her most notable work: improvements to arts policy. After being appointed Britain's first Minister of Arts under Harold Wilson's government, she tackled accessibility head-on, believing that culture should always be inclusive.

Lee’s vision included supporting the building of London’s South Bank complex and even producing the manifesto: A Policy for the Arts in 1965, the first white paper of its kind.

Lee also believed adult education was “a little dowdy and mouldy,” and the days of “old-fashioned night schools” were over. In 1967 Lee helped create a ‘University of the Air’, the Open University, founded on the principle of open access education, irrespective of qualifications. 

It was to cater to those who “for one reason or another have not been able to take advantage of higher education,” outlined Harold Wilson at the Labour Party Conference in 1963. This distance learning approach proved hugely popular, and by 1984, it had already racked up 100,000 students.

So if you've ever had your interest sparked by an Open University course, it's Jennie Lee, the disarming renegade MP who once outraged the Commons Chamber “as she entered in a clinging emerald velvet evening dress” that you have to thank for it.