Hi Harriet,
I heard you on the radio recently telling a story about when, as Robin Cook's deputy, you missed an important parliamentary occasion as you'd promised to take your son to the cinema. You said that, after being initially furious with you, when you insisted you were just "not available" Cook made the leap to presuming you were having an affair, and switched instantly from fury to "conspiratorial glee". And yet had he known you were prioritising your child, and not a lover, he would still have been furious, and probably would have sacked you.
It's a brilliant, shocking story.
On a tangent from that: I am frequently shocked about how women's - and children's - rights seem to be thrown under the bus by the Labour Party whenever there is a conflict between those rights and the rights of a minority group. The way for example the grooming gangs in Rochdale, Rotherham, Oldham etc were allowed to keep operating for years after they were first identified because it was seen as "Islamophobic" to say that gangs of Muslim men were sexually abusing non-Muslim girls. This was with the collusion of Labour led councils: instead of being listened to, people were sent by those councils on racism awareness courses for saying that this was happening.
Even when the people speaking up are themselves part of that minority they are ignored - for example, when the Muslim Women's Network wrote to Corbyn about the way they are routinely blocked from standing for council election by sexist men in their communities, enabled by the local Labour Party apparatus - Jeremy did the fingers in ears thing and mouthed platitudes about the Labour Party being the party of equality etc, but completely failed to address their very real concerns.
I am a lifelong Labour voter and I take my hat off to women like you and Jess Phillips who have worked so hard to bring about change in women's lives, but I now find myself really struggling to support the Party.
I always used to see the Labour Party as the party for social justice, but I now see a huge problem with the liberal left - the problem of the "regressive left" as it's been called. I see reactionary, oppressive views being touted as "progressive" attitudes, nowhere more clearly than in the realm of women's rights. It seems the rights of any minority take precedence over the rights of women and children in the hierarchy of the left; and Robin Cook's total devaluing of your role as a mother seems to me to be part of that culture.
Which leads me (finally!!) to my question: do you agree that there is still a fundamental issue of sexism and misogyny in the Labour Party, and in liberal society in general, that needs challenging; and if so, what's the best way to go about it?