The Labour Women’s Network Political Day was testament to the growing support and recognition there is for the LWN. Many of the speakers on the day were LWN training graduates, but, as Kirsty McNeill pointed out, another equally encouraging sign for LWN was how many new faces there were in a brilliantly well-attended event. This despite a hectic week of campaigning for most in the room and the Fabian AGM also taking place on the same day. Though there was some inevitable focus on issues affecting women, there was plenty of hard politics discussed and valuable examples of best practice in thinking and action, on subjects as wide-ranging as access to higher education for young people, predistribution, and the importance of campaigning for the living wage.

To focus, briefly, on Women in the Public Square, Laura Bates from Everyday Sexism and Lucy Holmes, heading up the No More Page 3 campaign, provided some excellent food for thought ahead of Kira Cochrane’s inevitably depressing assessment of the scarcity of women in public life. Her argument for more (and more meaningful) representation of women in the media is crystallised in her campaign for more women speakers on the news. Encouragingly, Sky and Channel 4 have signed up to a 30 per cent representation from women appearing on air as expert contributors and, disappointingly, the Today programme has not, claiming that they do not receive sufficient complaints on the subject to warrant a change of policy – a call to arms if ever there was one!

Practical advice on campaigning, selections and communicating were woven throughout the content of the day, with Councillor Catherine West’s contribution a stand-out example of how much Islington council is doing even in today’s dire political and economic climate. Opening the first new Citizens’ Advice Bureau in London for 20 years, pressing ahead with building 2,000 affordable homes, and providing student bursaries of £300 to help ameliorate the incredibly damaging withdrawal of EMA by the Tories, demonstrated a real will in Islington to keep fairness at the top of the agenda. This will have to be at the heart of Labour’s offer to the electorate ahead of 2015, not only because it is right and at the core of our Labour values, but because we know that the economic situation is not getting any better under George Osborne’s chronic mismanagement of the Treasury – fairness cannot be a casualty under a Labour government. Read more about Islington here when Catherine wrote for Progress last week.

And what better way to end the day than with a great panel talking about Tales from the Trail and the challenges and lessons of selection. Suzy Stride’s gallop through the lessons from her selection in Harlow ranging from the super tactical-practical to the inspirationally strategic, emphatically demonstrated why ‘it’s so important to be yourself’. I felt like every ounce of Suzy’s personality was pouring out of her as she spoke, which was testament to why she won, even, as she generously acknowledged, from a strong all-women shortlist. For all those at the event (thanks to Unite for sponsoring) who were new to LWN or have not attended many events (quite a lot of you – the LWN AGM is never that popular!), this must surely have counted among one of their more stimulating, supportive experiences of political events.  No longer an organisation in the wings, recommended by word of mouth from those of us lucky enough to have happened across the LWN by accident, the Political Day proved that LWN is now contributing centrally to the debate about the way forward for Labour as we look to the future.

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Sophy Gardner is a businesswoman and Labour activist, working in media and communications with military related charities and campaigning for Labour.  She was formerly an RAF operations officer.  She tweets @sophygardner