Mansell Edith

Edith Mansell

Edith worked at Cadbury’s where she was a long-term activist for the Transport and General Workers Union. A highly motivated trades unionist, she would go to work early so as to meet members of the night shift, which she also represented, to ensure their problems were dealt with.

He father was Ted Mansell, a staunch member of the Communist Party, which Edith joined in the 1930s. She became a close comrade and friend of Daisy Vaughan and Jessie McCullough (see separate entry). A gutsy woman, Edith maintained a high level of activism in the Party, especially as an inveterate knocker of doors and seller of literature on the streets. She also served in the fire service during the war.

Edith was a delegate to Birmingham Trades Council and a regular elected delegate to the T&G’s Biennial Delegate Conference.

A Co-op activist and sometime candidate for the local board of directors, Edith became justly identified with the highly successful Key Books during the 1970s, which she was manager of. She was chair of her Party branch when she died in around 1986.

sources: FW oration; GS personal knowledge