Monica Felton

Monica Felton (1906 – March 1970) was a British writer, town planner, feminist and social activist, a member of the Labour Party.

Felton had been living in Majorca when the Spanish Civil War started[3] and, on her return to the UK, gave talks about what she saw in Spain at that time.

In 1937 Felton was elected to the London County Council as a Labour Party councillor representing St Pancras South West, holding the seat until 1946.

However, she also took an interest in rural planning, foreseeing the coming war and food problems:“Do we want to make farming profitable if it means destroying the countryside, or if it means running risks of losing people off the land, or if it means running risks of not having sufficient supplies of food in war time?” [7] During the war she worked for the British Ministry of Supply and was recommended by Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin for a role in a secretarial capacity on the Select Committee on National Expenditure for the house of Commons.

[10] In 1951, Felton visited North Korea as part of the Women's International Democratic Federation commission[11] and outlined her impressions in the book That's Why I Went (1954), adhering to an anti-war position.

During her visit, she was urged to take the full-scale North Korean view of the origins of the conflict,[12] and briefly met the leader, Kim Il Sung.

After her visit to Korea she was fired from her job as Chairman of the Stevenage Development Corporation, expelled from the Labour Party and threatened with prosecution for treason.

[13][14] Her visit to North Korea included viewing the aftermath of Korean War atrocities, which she was told by locals were committed by the United States, British and Syngman Rhee forces.