Tagged with Positive Action

Labour still underperforms in selection of women and BAME council candidates

Leeds Town HallFigures reported to Labour’s national executive committee yesterday show that, whilst it may be doing better than other parties, it is still failing to ensure that its candidates for English local councils reflect their populations. With selections now having taken place in the vast majority of winnable seats, the proportion of women candidates is as low as 26% in the Eastern region and 28% in the North West where candidates have already been selected for 94% of  contests. The best performing region for female candidates is the Northern, where 45% of candidates are women.

Performance on BAME candidates also falls similarly short of what is required. Yorkshire has achieved 39% women as well as 12% BAME (compared with 11% in its population). Continue reading →

Have the feminists won, or did Blairism see us off?

NEC member Christine Shawcroft looks at the history of women’s organisation in the Labour Party.

When I first tried setting up local women’s organisations in the Labour Party, it was the late 70s and they were generally known as Ladies’ Sections. The word “women” was considered rather uncouth. You needed the agreement of your (overwhelmingly male) GC, or General Management Committee (GMC) as it was then. We had to go cap in hand and plead with an uncomprehending GMC for permission to set up a women’s section. They were absolutely mystified: why would a group of women want to meet? Who would they be making the tea for: each other?

When I moved to London in the early 80s, the story was slightly different. There were many more younger members, as the activism of the times seeped into the Party – most of whom considered themselves feminists. Continue reading →

A business class hero is something to be

So you are a reasonably successful business person with an interest in politics, but you lack the elementary ideological commitment actually to take out a Labour Party membership card. Well, you’re in luck. Ed Miliband will today unveil his plans to make you a Labour councillor, or even an MP.

The news comes just one day after a proposal to encourage greater numbers of working class candidates was rather timidly trailed in the Murdoch press, a story I picked up on in a post on this blog yesterday. Continue reading →

A gender balanced leadership – the least-bad option?

All credit to Harriet Harman for using her position to advance the cause of gender balance significantly within the party and who now proposes a gender-balanced leadership which has been taken up by Peter Hain’s Refounding Labour to win. The solution proposed is electing Labour’s leader and deputy on a joint ticket with a deputy (of another gender), who would be nominated as a running mate by each leadership candidate, just as in the selection of US Presidential candidates.

It’s a proposal fraught with difficulties. Some, like Rob Marchant, will argue it’s a step too far; others that it weakens accountability and extends a leader’s patronage. Perhaps it will downgrade the post (if that’s possible) and the result would be all the more tokenistic.  But, if you want to ensure we don’t have an all-male leadership, which we’d certainly like to, it could be the least bad option. Continue reading →