Dame Mabel Tylecote DBE (née Phythian; 4 February 1896 – 31 January 1987) was a British Labour Party politician, activist, humanitarian, and educationist from Manchester, England.

[3] In 1930, she defended a doctoral thesis on adult education, which she published in 1957 under the title The Mechanics' Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire before 1851.

She was on the (Manchester) Committee of the Free German League of Culture in Great Britain, founded by published by German and Austrian refugee organisations and supportive British groups, including Albert Einstein, the artist Oskar Kokoschka, writer Thomas Mann and actress Sybil Thorndike.

The League had its own publishing company, Inside Nazi Germany, and a major artist, John Heartfield, producing most of its illustrative material.

It housed teaching and learning space for the Department of Languages and the MMU School of Theatre as well as academic and administrative staff offices.

It was also the location of the Manchester Philosophy Society offices, the Green Room Refectory, and an open-air walk-through art gallery.

The collection comprises: general correspondence, both personal and official; letters of congratulation and condolence; files relating to particular topics such as adult education, by-elections and general elections, her career in Manchester politics and Mechanics' Institutes; Phythian family correspondence; letters to Lucile Keck of Chicago, from Tylecote and others; Sidebottom family correspondence, including earlier letters from A. J. Balfour (1888, 1893), John Bright (1848, 1864) and Richard Cobden (1864); personal diaries; and photograph albums.