Elizabeth Leah Manning DBE (née Perrett; 14 April 1886 – 15 September 1977) was a British educationalist, social reformer, and Labour Member of Parliament (MP) in the 1930s and 1940s.

[2] Her parents were Charles William Perrett, a captain in the Salvation Army, and Harriet Margaret (née Tappin), a teacher from Bethnal Green.

She became a teacher in Cambridge where she had met fellow undergraduate Hugh Dalton and joined the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party.

She was appointed headmistress of a new experimental Open Air School for undernourished children which Cambridge education authority had established on a farm site, and found this work exceptionally rewarding.

She did not support Ramsay MacDonald's National Government and stayed in the Labour Party, losing her seat a few months later at the 1931 general election in October.

Her book, What I Saw in Spain [Victor Gollancz, London, 1935], followed her visit to the country in the wake of the Asturias uprising late the prior year.

[9] Manning visited the Model Prison in Madrid and interviewed opponents of the Lerroux Government that had admitted three fascists to Cabinet, the said spark of the uprising.

[6] A key highlight in Manning's political career was her involvement in Harlow New Town as it interested her and her constituents in nearby Epping.

[6] She was remembered in 2002 by the renaming of a Bilbao square as Plaza de Mrs Leah Manning; a commemorative plaque from the Basque Children of '37 Association was presented to the British House of Commons.

[18] A blue plaque was erected to Leah Manning in 2020 on the site of the former ragged school in New Street, Cambridge which is now owned by Anglia Ruskin University and is used as their Institute of Music Therapy.