Interview with playwright Lindsay Rodden about her new play Jennie Lee, about the radical Labour MP (and wife of Nye Bevan)

It all began with a conversation between Rodden and Marianne McNamara, artistic director of Mikron, who is also directing the production. “We were talking about new ideas and Marianne mentioned that she had stumbled across a story about Jennie Lee,” says Rodden. “The name was familiar to me but I didn’t know very much about her at all. Once I started to find out about her, I couldn’t stop and I knew I had to tell this story. Her life is astonishing – I think I could have written three plays about her.”

Lee was born into a coal mining family in Fife in 1904. A bright, intelligent child whose thirst for knowledge was encouraged by her parents, she won a scholarship to Edinburgh University, graduating in 1927. Two years later she was elected as Labour MP for North Lanark becoming, at the age of 24, the youngest woman ever elected to Parliament. That was quite a feat considering that at the time women under 30 weren’t even allowed to vote. “She grew up in a Socialist household, so politics were part of her life from very early on,” says Rodden. “She believed passionately in social justice, she was a brilliant speaker with a real sense of theatre and drama, and she was unafraid.”

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She quickly made a name for herself at Westminster – in her maiden speech in the House of Commons she took on Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, challenging him on his budget proposals and accusing him of ‘cant, corruption and incompetence’. She certainly didn’t hold back. “Afterwards, Churchill took her to one side and told her that ‘the richer the rich become, the more able they are to help the poor’,” says Rodden. “She didn’t believe his budget would create better conditions for the poor at all. She knew what it was like to have to watch every penny. Before the welfare state or the NHS, working people were at the mercy of an industrial-capitalist system that was not accountable to them and she set out to change that.”

After losing her seat in 1931, she became a journalist and speaker, contributing to many left-wing journals and newspapers, including travelling to Spain in 1937 to report on the Spanish Civil War, and lecturing in America, Canada and Europe. She returned to Parliament as an MP in the Labour landslide general election of 1945, representing the constituency of Cannock in Staffordshire and was appointed as the first Minister for the Arts by Harold Wilson after Labour’s win in 1964.

“As Minister for the Arts she said she wanted to create the conditions in which the arts and artists could thrive and for the arts to reach as many people as possible,” says Rodden. “It wasn’t a vanity project; it was an extension of her politics. She really did make arts accessible to people all over the country, that was ground-breaking and we can’t lose that.”

Lee also played a key role in the establishment of the Open University, another cause that was very close to her heart. “She really believed in the importance of education being open to everyone and this was her opportunity to make that a reality,” says Rodden. “By that point Nye had died – he died in 1960 – and she wasn’t sure there was another chapter in her but this really fired her up.”

Rodden hopes that audiences will be inspired by Lee’s story. “I want people to know about her and pass her story on,” she says. “She was so tenacious despite all the setbacks along the way – I think she is a wonderful role model. I wish I had met Jennie but getting to create her as a character on stage has been a real privilege.”

Jennie Lee is at Marsden Mechanics, April 5, Otley Courthouse, April 6, Bingley Arts Centre, April 16, and tours to community venues around Yorkshire. mikron.org.uk