Local Labour parties are best placed to choose their candidates, argues Janet Anderson
I was a late convert to all women shortlists. I was selected in 1996 as Labour candidate for Rossendale and Darwen on an open shortlist. At that time, we were facing a Tory majority of nearly 9,000. And then the penny dropped. Yes, some of us were being selected on open shortlists. However, as the proportion of women candidates selected increased, the proportion of those elected hardly moved.
The reason was simple. Constituency parties were more willing to select women in marginal or unwinnable seats than they were in safer Labour seats. Something had to be done to improve women’s representation in Parliament.
Women-only shortlists were the obvious answer and they worked. I recall speaking to several CLPs in the north-west of England at the time with Eileen Murfin, then Labour’s regional director, trying to persuade them to adopt all women shortlists. Our first success was Liverpool Riverside, where they went on to select Louise Ellman from a list of women.
Our efforts were rewarded in 1997 – that famous photograph of Tony Blair surrounded by 101 Labour women MPs. That would never have happened without all-women shortlists. We should be proud of that.
But the difference has been made and the argument won. No one any longer doubts that women are just as capable of being MPs as men.
Moreover, the changes in the working hours of Parliament, predominantly sought by women MPs, have made it easier to combine family life with a career in politics – something that has benefited not just women but men, too. So why is there the need to continue with all-women shortlists?
Where CLPs want to proceed in this way, they should be encouraged to do so since there is still a long way to go to achieve equal numbers of men and women in the House of Commons. But to impose all-women shortlists on constituency parties who are fiercely opposed to them is short-sighted to say the least.
Let us not forget, for example, the lesson of Blaenau Gwent – previously one of the safest Labour seats in the country but now apparently lost to us forever.
And there is an additional problem. Sometimes the imposition of all-women shortlists has nothing to do with wanting more women in Parliament, but rather more to keep out a man some may consider unsuitable or because there are those who want to block potential candidates they perceive as a threat to their own advancement.
A rumour of such dark deeds is now circulating in Burnley, where the organisational sub-committee has decided to impose an all-women shortlist, despite the fact that the local Labour Party passed a near-unanimous vote against it.
The members did so, not because they are anti-women (although there may still be those in London who believe that we in Lancashire are all flat caps and whippets), but because they believe very strongly that, if we are to retain Burnley (a seat that has been Labour for 74 years), then a local candidate is needed to fight off the threat from the Liberal Democrats – and there are no women locally who are interested.
So let us not abandon all-women shortlists, but let common sense prevail. We must listen to local parties which are best placed to understand their voters and make sure that the need to win and keep seats for Labour takes precedence over the imposition of all-women shortlists on party members who know better.
A reversal of the Burnley decision by the National Executive Committee would be a start.
Janet Anderson has been the Labour MP for Rossendale and Darwen since 1997 and was shadow minister for women 1996-97
