In 1947, the immediate post-war period, the V&A Circulation department recruited three women who were to become legendary curators in their own V&A lifetime and beyond: Elizabeth Aslin (furniture), Shirley Bury (metalwork) and Barbara Morris (textiles, glass and ceramics). In the late 1940s, a time of progressive socialism not just austerity, Bury and Morris were both members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Reflecting on her affiliations and on being a’ rebel’, Barbara Morris spoke to me about her disillusion with party politics, identifying instead her allegiance with the idealist socialism of William Morris. Both were rebels with a cause: art and design for all.