To say I was appalled to read Austin Mitchell’s opinion piece in the Mail on Sunday this weekend would be an understatement. Disgust was mingled with disappointment that – even after so much progress increasing the representation of women in our party – there are still members (elected MPs no less) who hold such views. It should be a wake up call.

In between the outgoing member of parliament for Great Grimsby’s bitter lament about not getting any ‘parliamentary trips, interesting assignments or media appearances’ (one might say representing the British people in the greatest parliament in the world is reward enough) and plenty of ‘everyday sexism’, Mitchell makes some astonishingly misogynistic claims and assumptions about women MPs.

Accusing Miliband of ‘cramming Labour with women’ (as if having 86 of them in the 257-strong parliamentary Labour party is not enough …), Mitchell claims the ‘apparat-chicks’ currently being forced on members in ‘most’ selections (women have actually been selected in a little over half of our target and retiring seats) are ‘draining Labour’s pool of experience’.

Popping up in my Facebook feed shortly before I read his piece was something from Victoria Groulef, Labour’s candidate for Reading West with a background that includes working at the BBC, managing charity projects all over the world and helping small business start-ups. What experience does he think she lacks?

He goes on to bemoan what he fears will be Labour’s new preoccupation with ‘social, educational and family issues’ and the ‘feminisation of Labour’ by all these timid and dainty women. Perhaps he was thinking about Sophy Gardner, selected last year as Labour’s candidate for Gloucester following a distinguished career in the Royal Air Force including deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan?

These women – sometimes as many as three or four of them in a selection campaign – are apparently ‘deluging’ members with leaflets, phone calls and canvassing (it is called campaigning, Austin). Some even have the cheek to move to the area! What if an area has a ‘substantial Muslim population’ wonders Mitchell, where it might be ‘better to choose a man’. Perhaps his seat in parliament has a restricted view of where his colleagues Rushanara Ali, Shabana Mahmood and Debbie Abrahams are sat?

‘The Commons will also be more preoccupied with the local rather than the international … and small problems rather than big ideas’, says Mitchell. I read the piece while out on the campaign trail in Glenrothes with Melanie Ward, Labour’s candidate who is a former Head of Advocacy at a major international non-governmental organisation, and has spent time living and working in the Middle East. Preoccupied with small problems?

But surely having all these women MPs will ‘lead to sixth-form essays read out word for cut-and-pasted word, replacing oratory’? While I am sure his own speeches are gripping, anyone sad like me who spends time watching BBC Parliament will have seen great parliamentarians like Glenda Jackson demolishing Iain Duncan Smith and Alison McGovern’s moving tribute to the Hillsborough victims.

In addition to that pesky ‘obsessive feminism’, women MPs are ‘more amenable and leadable and less objectionable’, he states. Perhaps if all MPs were more open and amenable to debate and new ideas we would not have such a low level of political discourse in this country. However the suggestion that any of the women MPs and candidates I know are more ‘leadable’ than men is something I would love to see him say to their faces and see what happens.

Provided we get the result we all hope for next May, two fifths of the PLP will be women. While Mitchell suggests this is job done, his column demonstrates why this is actually just the beginning. Once we reach full gender parity in our parliamentary party – as I am proud to say we will in my Labour group in Manchester by next May – we still have a lot more to do to change attitudes and perceptions of those in our own party who still see equality as unnecessary and women MPs as somehow inferior to their male counterparts.

I said at the beginning that this should be a wake up call; and it is. In addition to necessary mechanisms like all-women shortlists we need better education and understanding of equality issues in the party. The NEC also needs to look seriously at all selection processes to improve transparency and remove any suggestion of ‘stitch-ups’, which are damaging to all candidates and are in part responsible for fostering bitterness and resentment.

Perhaps then, as Austin says, ‘the past will be another part’ and the Labour party of the future will actually be a more tolerant, respectful and diverse one

———————————

Kev Peel is a councillor on Manchester city council. He tweets @KevPeel

———————————

Photo: Flickr