22 December 1934 – 27 May 2026
By Helen Penn
Marion (far left) with her sister, Hadassa, and David, Ralph and Ed Miliband on holiday in Scotland, 1987
I worked with Marion in the early 1980’s. I was then the paid organizer of a feminist collective, the National Childcare Campaign. (NCCC) At the time there was a prevailing view – from politicians to psychologists – that young children were best off at home with their mothers, and only neglectful mothers left their young children to go to work. NCCC challenged this consensus and campaigned for radical revisions of the role of working mothers and for collective state funded childcare and education that would benefit young children, as well as enabling mothers to work or study. There were many collective attempts to provide childcare through community initiatives such as local community nurseries, and many large authorities, including, most prominently, the GLC were supporting them.
Quite unexpectedly NCCC was offered a large grant from the Conservative Government to set up and monitor a community nurseries programme. NCCC appointed Marion to run and research the programme. As a feminist collective, NCCC was very ambivalent about taking government money, and the government in turn was anxious about giving money to a radical campaigning organization. So Marion’s first job was to set up a sister organization, the Daycare Trust as a non-campaigning arm of NCCC to receive the grant monies and run the community nurseries programme. With Linda our finance officer, she set up the Trust very efficiently and straightforwardly but she never ceased to try to further the aims of NCCC or hesitated to critique government policy or held back on agitating for what she believed was important for women and children.
Marion became a good friend, especially since her son Ed and my daughter Loveday were the same age, and were following a similar trajectory in state schools, and then applying for Oxford, and we swopped stories about their progress. She was a very devoted mother and deeply concerned that her sons should do well, but also not lose sight of the socialist principles that were at the heart of her family life. She was always nice to young people, taking their views very seriously and my daughter was very touched by her consideration and remembers her fondly. She was also devoted to and greatly respected her husband Ralph Miliband and family conversations round the dinner table were always stimulating. Marion was devastated by his early death.
The word that best describes Marion is indefatigable. Once she thought something should be done, it was almost impossible to deflect her. She had a very strong sense of what was right and fair and she pursued her objectives whatever the obstacles in her way. She took my breath away sometimes by the lengths she was prepared to go to in order to obtain information or try to change the minds of those who disagreed with her. At the same time, she was always pleasant; what motivated her was the logic and conviction of her position, and she was convinced that others would act properly if they fully understood the arguments she put forward.