Elizabeth Gaskell may have been one of the first to write a ‘picket-line’ romance, in her much-loved classic North and South but she was certainly not the last.

In the centenary year of the ‘General Strike’ we uncover another novel which combines romance with industrial relations — Clash by another iconic Manchester woman: Ellen Wilkinson, one of the first woman Labour MPs (Member of Parliament) and best known for leading the ‘Jarrow March’ of the unemployed in 1936.

In 1926 Ellen Wilkinson spoke at rallies and meetings in support of the ‘General Strike’, when workers walked out in of support striking miners.

Three years after the strike, she published Clash, a semi-autobiographical novel in which a young woman searches for romantic and personal fulfillment in the midst of economic and social unrest.

How did these two trailblazing women write about strikes? Are there any similarities between Clash and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Victorian novel? And what does these two women have to say about changing attitudes to strikers in literature?

Marking the 2026 centenary of the General Strike.

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