First name/s: Marion
Last name: Veitch
Known names / nicknames:
Date of birth: 08/07/1913
Year of birth: 1913

Life before Ruskin

Date and place of birth: Scunthorpe

Family: parents Arthur Edward Veitch and Elizabeth Veitch (nee Lockwood).

Work: initially employed as a dressmaker, later moved to work as a clerk in an insurance company where she promoted as a chief clerk.

Politics/Trade union activity: Member of the Guild of Insurance and National Union of General and Municipal Workers .  Member of the Labour Party, WEA and Fabian Society.  City councillor for Tinsley ward from 1945-1956. During this period she was chair of the Children’s Committee, member of the Education Committee and deputy chair of three sub-committees, Child Welfare, Scholarships and Blind School.  Veitch stood (unsuccessfully) as Labour Candidate for North-West Leeds in October 1951.

Trade Union membership (at time of entry to Ruskin) ~ other Trade Union

Life at Ruskin

Dates at Ruskin: 1956-1957

Source of funding: NUGMW scholarship

Campaigns/political activity:

Subjects studied at Ruskin:

Dissertation:

Qualification:

Life after Ruskin

Education: WEA, Sheffield University

Work: 1957 Yorkshire District Officer, 1960 National Woman Officer NUGMW.  1962 executive member Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions. Member of working party set up in 1968 by Barbara Castle, Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity during the engineering dispute.  Also member of the following committees in the 1960s: Engineering Training Board, Food Standards Committee, Women Workers’ Committee of the International Metal Workers Federation and in 1969-70, Chairman Women’s Committee of the International Federation of Industrial Organisations

Politics/trade union activity:

Family: married Donald Barnie (fellow Ruskin student) July 1965

Place & date of death: 24 July 1973 Chertsey Hospital

Date of death: 24/07/1973
Year of death: 1973

Achievements / Publications

Veitch was in important positions in trade unions and government committees in the 1960s. Her activism contributed to the Equal Pay Act 1970.

Material in archives or already published articles

Image

Notes on Image/s

Comment of contributor/s and sources

This entry has been summarized from a contribution in Dictionary of Labour Biography  (vol 3) by Margaret ’Espinasse.

Veitch was a trade union activist in the struggle for Equal Pay in the 1960s.   She raised issues of employment inequality and accused male colleagues of ‘selling women down the river.’ She challenged Barbra Castle on her view of the prospects of job evaluation improving the position of women workers.

We do not know what Veitch studied at Ruskin, or details about her education post Ruskin.

 

Author/s

Annie Skinner