75 years ago some may have thought that women
winning the full vote would change women’s lives and
the whole culture of adversarial politics. Certainly they
would have
expected, by three quarters of a century later, there would
have been elected more than the paltry 173 women MPs, given
that the parliament contains 659 MPs. There are 118 women
MPs today.
The big improvement only came in 1997. After Labour adopted
all-woman shortlists, 120 women MPs, mostly Labour, nearly
one in five of the whole Commons, were elected. This was
not a critical mass but the assumption must have been that
there was no going back. Having established themselves, the
number of women would go on increasing each election until,
at some point, gender parity would be achieved.
When the great boredom set in, something to do with the
huge majority and mainly because of the Conservative inability
to break out of its anti European old-fashioned mindset,
and Labour repeated its landslide, the 2001 general elections
seemed to have changed nothing. The reduction in woman MPs
however showed that in reality nothing had changed. The campaigns
of the main parties showed Cherie and Ffion in traditional
supportive roles, without giving a voice to them or leading
women members of parliament.
Without a mechanism for selecting women, women were not
chosen for safe seats when men or women retired. The opportunity
to replace the MPs who had become members of the Scottish
Parliament and the Welsh Assembly by equal numbers of men
and women was also lost. Early retirements of women MPs,
such as Mo Mowlam and Judith Church, left the incoming parliament
worse not better off in terms of gender balance.
This should have sent shivers down the body politic but,
apart from a Newsnight special by Naomi Woolf, complacency
set in. Predictions about the death of feminism or accusations
of political correctness probably silenced the rest of us.
Nor did we want to be seen to criticise the women MPs who
had begun to make a difference. They are best placed to know
that we still have a long way to go. The new Suffragettes
in the electoral reform movement were also unable to make
the arguments because the assumed wisdom was that landslide
victories would see change off for a long time to come.
Politics is still seen through the prism of predominantly
male political journalists. Coverage of assemblies which
had by 2000 been elected with higher percentages of women
in Scotland, Wales and London, were often covered as male
commentators would speak about women’s football. If
they were mentioned at all, it was their clothes, their shape
or their hormones rather the content and emphasis on policy.
Then in May 2003, and anyone who has been involved in Welsh
politics may be surprised, the breakthrough happened. Suddenly
there were an amazing 63 per cent Labour women AMs, and exactly
half of the Welsh Assembly were women. This is the highest
level of women’s representation in the world only marred
by the complete absence of black or minority ethnic women
or men AMs. Similarly in Scotland women improved on their
1999 position. There are now 50 woman MSPs, 39 per cent,
up from 48. 56 per cent of Labour SMPs are women. None of
this would have happened but for positive action within the
Labour Party, all woman shortlists, twinning and zipping.
These had been judged to be illegal but they have now been
given the green light by the Sex Discrimination (Election
Candidates) Act of 2002.
In New Zealand, women were the first to get the vote. On
19 September it will be 110 years since women were enfranchised
there. Helen Clark, a woman prime minister, has managed to
get reelected despite having to be elected under the Mixed
Member Proportional (MMP), a more proportional system than
any used or likely to be used in the UK. The voters have
choice and the New Zealand Labour Party has to campaign in
every constituency not simply targeting the marginals and
taking the rest for granted or ignoring them.
The first-wave suffragettes argued that having women voting
would clean up politics. Electoral reformers use similar
arguments. When votes for women were allowed in 1918 they
were restricted to those over 30. When 10 years later it
was clear that women voters did not upset ‘the male
system’, the franchise was extended to those under
30. But today women remain less enamoured of the politics
which fail to reflect their realities.
In June 2003, there occurred the most recent significant
event in the third wave of suffrage, if we count first, the
Chartists, then the Suffragettes and now the Electoral Reformers
to make votes count. This was Roy Hattersley’s article ‘Maybe
I was wrong after all’. He admitted to readers of the
Guardian that he persuaded Raymond (now Lord) Plant, LCER’s
President, to chair [the Commission] in the knowledge that
he was fully in favour of ‘first past the post’.
Unfortunately [Lord Plant] turned out to be so open-minded
that, by the end of the inquiry, he had convinced himself
of the need for change. Lord Hattersley concludes: ‘I
want a system that puts a political premium on moving a moderate
distance to the left. Proportional representation - not transferable
votes, but real proportional representation - might just
have that effect.’
Roy Hattersley argues that the outcome in the PR elected
chambers was clearly better than under the present system.
Actually FPTP elections in a devolved Scotland and Wales
might have been even more old Labour, except that the referendums
would not have been won. So the point is that when policies
have to be argued across as well as inside parties and the
political spectrum is extended beyond a political duopoly
then policies are more radical and more reflective of the
electorate they serve. PR will also make the relationship
between tiers of multi-layered governance easier when opposing
parties are in power, something which has not happened so
far.
So what has Labour to fear by continuing to offer their
1990s promise ‘to let the people decide’? Letting the
people decide, or people power, is a very good definition
of democracy. It is one that politicians need to embrace
if they are going to hold on to their jobs or their role
as representative is to remain meaningful. If majorities
are unassailable then no wonder the BBC casts itself in the
role of the official opposition. If politics is to remain
what many people ‘go into it for’, a way to change
the world, electoral reform needs to be flagged up as a possibility.
Matthew Taylor, the IPPR director, has suggested that one
way Tony Blair could flag up that he trusts the people and
thereby deserve their trust, is to call a referendum on electoral
reform. This should be made from the position of strength
and no one would deny that Labour’s current majority
is that. It should not be left until Labour is forced to
hold the referendum because it has run out of its majority
or looks likely to do so in the near future. This will just
fuel cynicism.
Polly Toynbee in the Guardian on 1 August, the eve of Labour’s
longest ever time ‘in power’ argues in ‘Away
with these tribes’ that ‘strong government’ is
mistrusted. Voters trust MPs more if they speak their minds
honestly than admire them for silent party loyalty. She concludes
that ‘PR may be untidy, but it is grown-up politics
for a grown-up electorate.’ Only a complete change
in how we elect our leaders will put the trust, and excitement,
back into politics.
Labour electoral reformers are likely to recall that the
Attlee government with which we are now comparing Labour’s
puny six odd years, compared with the eleven years of Thatcher
and 18 lost Conservative years, ended when Labour in 1951
won more votes than its Conservative opposition but lost
the election. This seems unlikely to happen in the UK but
only until after the next boundary commission changes are
implemented.
75 years since women gained the vote on the same basis as
men, and 85 years since women and many working men were franchised,
it is surely time to look at the politics of the future,
move away from the adversarial tribalism that reduces political
engagement and let the people decide not only their politicians
in their constituency but the voting system by which that
choice is made.
Mary Southcott is parliamentary & political officer
of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform.
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