| Biography | Edith Clara Summerskill, Baroness Summerskill CH PC (19 April 1901 4 February 1980) was a British physician, feminist, Labour politician and writer. She was appointed to the Privy Council in 1949.Summerskill was educated at King's College London and trained as a doctor at Charing Cross Hospital. She was one of the founders of the Socialist Health Association which spearheaded the National Health Service (1948). She pressed for equal rights for women in the British Home Guard. In 1938 she initiated the Married Women's Association to promote equality in marriage and became its first president.
Summerskill entered politics at 32 when she was asked to fight the Green Lanes ward in Harringay in the Middlesex County Council elections. She then served as a councillor on Middlesex County Council from 1934 until 1941. She stood for a seat in the House of Commons unsuccessfully in Putney in 1934 and Bury in 1935, before becoming Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Fulham West thanks to the working women's vote. She caused some disquiet by taking the seat in her maiden name. When the Fulham West constituency was abolished for the 1955 general election, she was returned to the House of Commons as MP for Warrington.
Summerskill was included in Clement Attlee's Labour government following the election victory in 1945. She served as a Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Food, and was later promoted to the Ministry of Social and National Insurance, heading the department she was profiled as the Minister of National insurance, however she was not a cabinet minister.
As well as her service in government, Summerskill also served on the House of Commons Political Honours Scrutiny Committee from 1967 to 1976.
Summerskill served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (194550) and as Minister of National Insurance (195051). She was a member of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee from 1944 to 1958 and served as Chair of the Labour Party 1954-5). She left the House of Commons in 1961 and was made a life peer as Baroness Summerskill, of Kenwood in the County of London. Furthermore she was awarded an additional honour being initiated into the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1966.
Summerskill appears in a specially selected list of Fabian Society members from 1942 to 1947, showing continuity and prestige. An active feminist, she was instrumental in promoting womens causes throughout that period, starting with the Clean Milk Act in 1949. Later, as the president of the Married Womens Association, she campaigned in and outside the parliament to assure the equal rights of housewives and of divorced women, which resulted in the Married Womens Properties Act in 1964 and the Matrimonial Homes Act in 1967
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