Harman - A Womans Work

Id always denounced political memoirs as male vanity projects and vowed never to write mine so this book requires an explanation. I read the mounting pile of memoirs of the men whod been my Cabinet colleagues. They wrote about themselves and each other but there was nothing about women. Nowhere could you see the huge changes in womens lives over the past thirty years, nor the transformation women have wrought in our politics, nor the battles the womens movement have fought and won. There was no mention of womens votes having been key to Labours victory in 1997, or of how there being 101 Labour women MPs changed not just the policies of our government but the face of British politics. Our work as women in the Labour party, as the political wing of the womens movement, was being written out of history. And, since my thirty years in politics, twenty-eight years on Labours front bench, eight years as Deputy Leader and two stints as Leader of the Opposition were not going to get an airing in the memoirs of my male colleagues, Id clearly have to write my own.

My first piece of luck was happening on my agent, Clare Alexander. As a woman whos lived through the times described in the book, she understood exactly what I wanted to do before I did and found me the dream team at Penguin. It has been a revelation to work with my editor, Helen Conford, and to benefit from her fierce intelligence and deep empathy. And Annabel Huxley brought total commitment and enthusiasm to the book as Penguins Senior Publicity Manager.

Writing this book gave me the excuse to relive the highs and lows, the triumphs and defeats, with those whom Ive worked over the years, and the opportunity to thank them. The essence of the womens movement is that it is about women doing things together, not on their own. Its not about heroines or leaders above all, its about the solidarity of women working together. The NCCL Womens Rights Committee Anna Coote, Tess Gill and Patricia Hewitt inducted me into the womens movement and were the most dynamic, supportive sisters anyone could hope for. The members of the Peckham Labour Party took a big gamble when in 1981 they selected me to be their next MP, and Ill always be grateful to them. The Wentworths, the Kennedys, Vicky Naish, Mary Ellery, Bill Skelly, Barrie Hargrove, the Situs, and so many more were the backbone of the Peckham party in good times and bad and always gave me wise counsel. My constituency staff have, over the years, done so much for me, and for the people of Peckham, and Id like to thank them all, especially, Alun Hayes, Charlotte Hill, Charlotte Montague and Dora Dixon-Fyle.

No MP, let alone any minister, does it on their own, and one of the most exhilarating aspects of politics is working with a great team. It has been such a privilege to work with outstanding special advisers, Labour party staff and civil servants. Liz Kendall, Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper were excellent advisers who then went on to become MPs. Scarlett McGwire and Deborah Mattinson have been key both to the advance of women in the Labour party and in helping me navigate the byzantine obstacles of the Labour party and government. With Anna Healy heading up my team as my special adviser when I was Leader of the House and Labour Deputy Leader, I was able to rely on great wisdom and unassailably good values. She and Ayesha Hazarika were integral to the progress we were able to make in our last years of government and in the nerve-wracking times I spent as interim Labour Leader and Leader of the Opposition. Sophie Wingfield and Mabel McKeown supported me in my role going all around the country as Deputy Leader. Clare Gosbee has been a rock, by my side in the constituency, in the House of Commons and on the road, in both the pink bus and the EU Referendum bus. Kate Wilson and Amanda Jordan have been my lifelong friends.

After a lonely start in Parliament, I ended up surrounded by good friends and allies. Id like particularly to pay tribute to Joan Ruddock, Margaret Hodge, Ann Coffey, Vera Baird, Julie Morgan, Margaret Curran, Fiona Mactaggart, Anne Campbell and all the women Labour MPs, councillors and party members who constitute the political wing of the womens movement. There were, especially in the early days, few journalists who thought it worth reporting womens issues, so those who did were very important. Polly Toynbee, Jackie Ashley and Yvonne Roberts, in particular, could always be counted on to take what we were trying to do seriously.

I wouldnt have enjoyed the triumphs, let alone weathered the political storms, without the endurance, advice and support of my amazing family; my mother, my late father, my sisters and my three children. And Jack, with whom Ive shared this great political and personal journey, has surely more than earned the right to be regarded as an honorary member of the sisterhood.

Because I didnt plan to write my memoirs, I never wrote a diary during my time in politics. I thoroughly disapproved of colleagues who sat in meetings writing theirs; I thought they should have been focusing on getting things done in the here and now, rather than anticipating their place in history. So, I had no diaries to remind me of events that go back over forty years. But what I do have are three sources, which Ive used as the basis of this book. From 1981, I wrote, every month, a report for Peckham Labour Party. These reports, which I typed initially on an ancient typewriter, told my local party members what I was doing and what I thought of the politics of the time. MPs then did not report to their local parties in writing, but I did, for a number of reasons. When they selected me to be their candidate, my local party members hardly knew me. My reports showed them who I was. My political agenda, full of concerns about childcare, domestic violence and womens equality, was so profoundly different from that of my predecessor, Harry Lamborn, that I had to spell out what I was doing and why it mattered. And as a pregnant MP, and later one with three young children, I felt I needed to show them that I was fully on the job and not sitting at home. In addition, as the party was so turbulent and so bitterly divided in the eighties, I felt I needed to put down on paper what I was doing and saying in order to protect myself against malicious rumours. I am a lawyer, so recording meetings and actions and keeping those records is second nature to me, and Id seen how Patricia Hewitt used her written reports as NCCL General Secretary to shape the agenda of the organization. So this book is based firmly on what I was saying and doing at the time, rather than on private reflections. My second source was press clippings, which, from 1981, local party members pasted into scrapbooks for me. I took these to my monthly party meetings to show the members that I was making Labours case publicly. My third source was the people I was working with over those decades, who generously sat down with me to remember what we did together.

Im grateful to Scarlett McGwire, Sarah Harman, Sarah Childs and Patricia Hewitt for reading the draft and to Joyce Gould for delving into the annual reports of the National Labour Womens Conferences right back to the eighties, to check what I remembered.

Looking back at these documents, Ive been struck by how identical my analysis and demands in the eighties are to what I implemented in government. And while its gratifying to see the consistency even down to the same language and arguments being used over the forty-year period its startling to reflect on how long it took. We went from having ten Labour women MPs to having 101, but our arguments about the low proportion of women MPs started in the seventies and we didnt breach the 20 per cent barrier until 1997. Our demands for childcare, which fill my reports of the eighties, did not start to be rolled out until the first decade of the new century. In 1985, I reported to my General Committee my protest about the provocation defence for domestic homicides, but it was abolished only in 2009. At least those demands of the womens movement which were so controversial then are generally accepted now. But I hope the next wave of progress doesnt take so long.