What we need is Feminist Labour…

By Grace Fletcher-Hackwood / @msgracefh

On Saturday afternoon I came out of a meeting feeling angry.

This happens to me reasonably often – more so, you won’t be surprised to hear, since I was elected as a councillor. Sometimes I’m angry because I’m wondering when I became invisible; more often, it’s because the meeting has involved someone reeling off a list of things the council can’t afford to do any more. Either way, it’s that formless, energy-sapping sort of anger that prompts me to kick small objects and probably go for a pint.

Saturday was different. Saturday was the AGM of the Manchester Labour Women’s Forum. And girl, was it an angry meeting. We just kept thinking of more things that have been getting on our respective wicks and sharing them, and then those things would remind us of other things that are making us angry, and then everyone else would get angry about those things too. We were like the Rage Committee.

Some women were angry about the government systematically disadvantaging women through changes to the welfare system. Some women were angry about marriage incentives. We were all angry about the NHS. We’re always angry about the NHS. Some women were angry about BPAS being taken off the Sexual Health Forum. Some women were angry about internal politics. (It’s selection season in Manchester. Enough said.) Some women were angry about being the only woman at their branch meetings month after month. Some women were angry about the government proposal to charge single parents to use the CSA. (OK, that was me. I’m really angry about that. Is there a better single example of this government’s utter failure to comprehend what real life is like?) Some women were angry because they don’t feel able to engage with Labour’s policy review. Some women were angry that the government might quietly drop the Dorries/Field abortion amendment into legislation without debate. Some women were just angry about Frank Field. Some women were really angry about Blue Labour, which was slightly more unexpected. (I’ll be honest. I don’t know what Blue Labour is. We had elections on in Manchester while all that was going on.) Some of the women who were angry thirty years ago were both angered and encouraged by things like Slutwalk: encouraged that young women still want to get out there and protest the things that make us angry, and angry that we still have to.

That’s why I felt something different from the lonely sullenness that makes me boot pebbles down Lloyd Street some evenings. Being in a room with dozens of brilliant, energetic women from every age group and a lot of different backgrounds, and knowing that they were all angry about the same things as me, made me feel like we could do anything. Like we might.

There is something huge going on at grassroots level. On another Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks back, I rocked up at Manchester’s lovely Friends Meeting House for a Greater Manchester Women’s Officers’ forum and networking meeting – and more than fifty other women were there. More than fifty! That’s massive for an absurdly sunny Saturday afternoon.

The government’s war on women is not going unnoticed – women are looking for opportunities to fight back. And if Labour really want to find a new approach to help us back into power, we could do worse than find a way to channel that fight. Every issue that makes someone angry is an issue that will bring them to Labour, if we can help them and if we are fighting their corner.

What we need is Feminist Labour. I know how that word makes some people nervous, but we do. Maybe if we called it Purple, White & Green Labour everyone would feel more comfortable.

We need to work on the things in our own party that are making women angry, sure. At both of these meetings the usual issues came up: the timings of meetings; the occasional male comrade who genuinely doesn’t see why it’s important that women are represented at any level; the restrictive structures of the Labour Party rule book. One of Manchester’s scarier councillors, Cllr Watson, said at last year’s forum AGM that “the rules can’t cope with us”, which has become one of my favourite phrases ever said about anything. We need to kick some socialist-misogynist ass; hold enough of a variety of events that no-one feels left out; spring-punch the glass ceiling that says even if women get on the council, they’ll be lucky to get any further than that. (Shortly after being elected I had the honour of being appointed to the Greater Manchester Fire Authority. Here is a picture of the Greater Manchester Fire Authority. I think it speaks for itself.)

But there’s no point doing all that if we’re not also coming up with the policies that bring all the women to the yard in the first place. On Saturday Kate Green MP said that we need to develop some totemic, ambitious policies that mark Labour as the party on the side of women. She’s not sure what those policies should be yet. That’s good. The Feminist Labour manifesto isn’t going to be drafted in Manchester Town Hall, or on LabourList. We need to get out there and ask women what they want – and not just the quick chats we get on the doorsteps or at advice surgeries. We need, as Cllr Murphy said on Saturday, to pay more attention to single mums than to Maurice Glasman.

Every Labour MP has been sent a campaign pack to use this summer. It contains everything they need to hold a ‘Listening Panel’ on how women’s lives are changing under the coalition. Is your MP holding one? Drop them an email and ask. If not, ask why not. If you don’t have a Labour MP, write to your nearest one and ask if you can twin up with their CLP. Or just hold the event anyway. Get your councillors to host it, or your CLP Women’s Officer, or do it yourself. Get on Twitter and ask for help. Get out there and talk to some women, and listen. And then come to Labour’s Women’s Conference. It’s the 24th-25th of September in Liverpool, as part of Annual Conference, but you can get a ticket for just a tenner if you hurry. Book your ticket here, and I’ll see you there. Let’s get together and get angry again.