Blue plaque for Alice Bacon is unveiled in Normanton

The plaque for pioneering Alice Bacon (1909-1993), who was born and raised in Normanton, will be placed on Normanton Town Hall.

Normanton MP Yvette Cooper joined Alice Bacon’s family and local campaigners to unveil the plaque last Friday.

Alice Bacon was an MP in Leeds. She served as chairwoman of the Labour Party and as a Minister in both the Home Office and the Education Department, before retiring and being made a Baroness of Leeds and Normanton in 1970.

Yvette Cooper said: “Alice was Yorkshire’s first woman MP - born here in Normanton at a time when women weren’t even allowed to vote, daughter of a miner who became a pioneering Labour Minister. She is a brilliant Yorkshire woman to celebrate in the centenary year of the first women’s votes.

“Alice played a crucial role in getting Labour’s great liberal reforms, like the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the abolition of the death penalty, through Parliament. She also fought all her life for equality, for a better deal for mining families, and for better education opportunities for working class communities. She never forgot her roots in Normanton - leaving a legacy of community investment for the town when she died, which the Alice Bacon Committee and Normanton Town Council have continued on her behalf so strongly ever since. That’s why so many jammed into the town hall on Friday for tea and tributes.”