Jennie Lee, Baroness Lee of Asheridge

Her grandfather Michael Lee, born in 1850 to Irish Catholic parents, was a friend of Keir Hardie, a disputes secretary of the miners' union and founder of the Fifeshire ILP federation.

Janet Lee, Baroness Lee of Asheridge, PC LLD HonFRA (3 November 1904 – 16 November 1988), known as Jennie Lee, was a Scottish politician.

After graduating initially in 1927 with an MA, an LLB and a teaching certificate, she worked as a teacher in Cowdenbeath.

She was a Labour Member of Parliament from a by-election in 1929 until 1931 and then from 1945 to 1970.

She later joined the Labour Party, and served as an MP from 1929 to 1931 and from 1945 to 1970.

Lee was educated at Beath High School and was dux of the school in her final year.

The Carnegie Trust, Fife County Council and the Fife Education Authority agreed to pay her university fees and she attended the University of Edinburgh as a student teacher.

She later won a bursary to study law.

At university she joined the Labour Club, the Edinburgh University Women's Union and the editorial board of the student newspaper.

One of her first campaigns was to elect Bertrand Russell as Rector of the University.

Lee was adopted as the ILP candidate for the North Lanarkshire constituency, which she won at a 1929 by-election, becoming the youngest woman member of the House of Commons.

At the time of the by-election, women under the age of 30 were not yet able to vote.

Her victory meant that she became the first Labour woman to represent a Scottish seat in the House of Commons.

She was re-elected at the subsequent 1929 general election.

In Westminster she immediately came into conflict with the Labour Party's leadership in the Commons.

She insisted on being sponsored by Robert Smillie and her old friend James Maxton to be introduced to the Commons, rather than by the leadership's preferred choice of sponsors.

Lee also associated with Ellen Wilkinson.

Lee's first speech was an attack on the budget proposals of Winston Churchill (accusing him "of 'cant, corruption, and incompetence', her gestures more fitting to the storming of platforms than the measured tones expected from a young MP in the house") that met even with his approval, with him offering his congratulations after their exchange in the Commons.

Lee forged a parliamentary reputation as a left-winger, allying herself to Maxton and the other ILP members.

She was totally opposed to Ramsay MacDonald's decision to form a coalition National Government, and in the 1931 general election lost her seat in parliament to Unionist candidate William Anstruther-Gray.

In her private life at the time she had formed a close relationship with fellow Labour MP Edward Frank Wise, a married man who considered divorcing his wife for Lee, but who did not do so in the end.

Wise died in 1933 and the following year Lee married the left-wing Welsh Labour MP Aneurin Bevan, with whom she remained until his death in 1960.

Her biography suggests that she to some extent suppressed her own career after marriage, which 'was the more remarkable precisely because as a woman in politics she had always laid claim to a 'male' life, public, itinerant and unencumbered by family responsibilities'.

She had no history in the women's movement, did not align herself with the separate women's branches within the Labour Party and stated that she voted on policy not candidate gender, believing that equality for women would follow from the introduction of true socialism; it was not a separate cause.

Nonetheless she practised feminism 'of a sort' and was known to walk out of dinner parties if it was expected that women were to withdraw to another room when the port was circulated.

Despite being out of the Commons Lee remained active politically, trying to secure British support for the Spanish Popular Front government under threat from Francisco Franco's Nationalist faction in the Spanish Civil War.

She also remained active inside the ILP and took their side in their split from the Labour Party, a decision that did not meet with her husband's approval.

She was married to the Welsh Labour politician Aneurin Bevan from 1934 until his death in 1960.

Born in Lochgelly, in Fife, to Euphemia Greig and James Lee, a miner who held the post of fire and safety officer, and later a hotelier.

She had a younger brother, Tommy.

She inherited her father's socialist inclinations, and like him joined the Scottish Independent Labour Party (ILP).

She attempted re-election in North Lanarkshire at the 1935 general election, coming second behind Anstruther-Gray but ahead of the Labour Party's candidate.

Attending the Labour Party Conference in Edinburgh in 1936, Lee met the Spanish Republican delegates who attended with a petition for support against the fascists, including meeting with Isabel de Valencia, who had a Scottish mother.

Lee went to Spain herself in 1937 to report as a war journalist.

She travelled in Aragon and Barcelona with George Orwell and the teenage grandson of her Commons sponsor, Robert Smillie, MP, while reporting for New Leader and they were all caught up in some violent incidents.

Young Bob died a year later in a Communist prison.

Lee attended a torchlit parade of the British Battalion of the International Brigades volunteers at Modejar with Clement Attlee and others in the Labour Party, during the war.

She was again unsuccessful in seeking re-election as an "Independent Labour" candidate in a 1943 by-election at Bristol Central, being defeated by the Conservative Lady Apsley and opposed by the ILP.

She also worked as a journalist for the Daily Mirror.

As Minister for the Arts in Harold Wilson's government of 1964–1970, she played a leading role in the foundation of the Open University working directly with Harold Wilson to establish the principle of open access: Enrolment as a student of the University should be open to everyone … irrespective of educational qualifications, and no formal entrance requirement should be imposed.