Women of Westminster: The MPs who Changed Politics

By Rachel Reeves

Foreword by Dame Winifred Mary Beard.

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This updated edition is a complete account of the first 100 years of women in Parliament.

In 1919 Nancy Astor was elected as the Member of Parliament for Plymouth Sutton, becoming the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons. Her achievement was all the more remarkable given that women (and even then only some women) had only been entitled to vote for just over a year. In the past 100 years, a total of 491 women have been elected to Parliament. Yet it was not until 2016 that the total number of women ever elected surpassed the number of male MPs in a single parliament.

The achievements of these political pioneers have been remarkable – Britain has now had two female Prime Ministers and women MPs have made significant strides in fighting for gender equality - from the earliest suffrage campaigns, to Barbara Castle's fight for equal pay, to Harriet Harman's recent legislation on the gender pay gap. Yet the stories of so many women MPs have too often been overlooked in political histories. In this book, Rachel Reeves brings forgotten MPs out of the shadows and looks at the many battles fought by the Women of Westminster, from 1919 to 2019.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Mar 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781448217878

Rachel Reeves

Rachel Reeves is a British politician and economist serving as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer since 2021. A member of the Labour Party, she has been Member of Parliament for Leeds West since 2010 and of Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet from 2013-2015. She is also the author of Alice in Westminster: The Political Life of Alice Bacon (2018).

Book preview

Women of

Westminster

‘To this day, astonishingly few books address the history of women in Westminster; luckily Rachel Reeves is not just helping to bridge that gap, but brings an insider’s perspective to bear in telling the stories of these remarkable women. Rich with detail and original research, this highly readable history emphasizes the challenges women in Parliament continue to face, and the unexpected solidarity they often forged in meeting those challenges. A heartfelt, informative, and engaging read – highly recommended.’ — Sarah Churchwell

‘From household names like Nancy Astor to lesser-known, but equally pioneering, politicians such as Florence Horsbrugh and Mavis Tate, Women of Westminster tells the story of the female MPs who shaped parliament and the country. These women broke into Parliament’s boys’ club, rewrote the membership rules, and in the process set about transforming Britain. This is a glorious compendium of the manifold achievements they chalked up – and the sacrifices they made.

Rachel Reeves is perfectly positioned to tell their story, having experienced the slings and arrows of parliamentary prejudice first-hand. As she herself puts it, she stands on the shoulders of her pioneering forbears, and from that vantage point she can see not only all they achieved but also what more needs to be done.’ — Cathy Newman

‘There have been too few books chronicling the struggles and successes of women in Parliament. This volume goes a long way to address that, charting the hard-won progress made by female MPs of all parties and political views over the last 100 years. Much has been achieved and the UK has its second female Prime Minister. However, it is incredible that there have only been 491 female MPs since 1918 when some women got the vote for the first time. There is still much to do.’ — Jo Coburn

‘Our past isn’t made up just of his stories, but her stories too. Rachel uncovers the best of them – the lives of those political women who wouldn’t be stopped, who fought to make their way, and showed us all – household names and those who deserve to be.’ — Laura Kuenssberg

Book title

Contents

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

List of firsts

Prologue to Paperback Edition

Foreword by Mary Beard

Introduction

1      Seats for women: 1919–31

2      Women at war: 1931–45

3      Let us face the future: 1945–59

4      Stilettos and springboards: 1959–70

5      Leaders and losses: 1970–79

6      Paths to power: 1979–97

7      New Labour, more women: 1997–2010

8      More in common: 2010–19

Epilogue: A century of parliamentary sisterhood

Afterword: The Right Honourable Harriet Harman MP

Appendix

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Book title

List of Illustrations

1.The first two women MPs to take their seats, Nancy Astor and Margaret Wintringham, on the terrace of the House of Commons in 1921. Courtesy of Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images.

2.The first Labour women MPs assemble on the terrace in 1929 for a photograph to mark the first election following the introduction of equal suffrage in 1928. Back row, left to right: Dr Marion Phillips, Edith Picton-Turberville, Dr Ethel Bentham, Mary Agnes Hamilton. Front row: Lady Cynthia Mosley, Susan Lawrence, Margaret Bondfield, Ellen Wilkinson, Jennie Lee. Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery.

3.Labour MP Margaret Bondfield, the first woman to enter the cabinet, c.1930, on the steps of Number Ten. Courtesy of Bentley Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images.

4.Conservative women MPs on the terrace in November 1931, celebrating shortly after a landslide that brought in a wave of Conservative women MPs. Back row, left to right: Nancy Astor, Helen Shaw, Mavis Tate, Thelma Cazalet, Sarah Ward, Ida Copeland, Florence Horsburgh. Front row: Norah Runge, Gwendolyn Countess of Iveagh, Katherine Duchess of Atholl, Irene Ward, Mary Pickford. Courtesy of Parliamentary Archives.

5.Labour MP Ellen Willkinson making a speech during her iconic leadership of the Jarrow Crusade in 1936. Courtesy of Popperfoto/Getty Images.

6.A portrait of Eleanor Rathbone, Independent MP and champion of family allowances. The portrait was originally the idea of four of Rathbone’s friends. When it was suggested to her, she said ‘I do not believe that I belong to the small class of people who justify public portraits’. Courtesy of Julian Barrow after James Gunn/National Portrait Gallery/Curator’s Office, Palace of Westminster.

7.The new intake of Labour women after the Labour landslide of 1945. Back row, left to right: Caroline Ganley, Edith Wills, Jennie Lee, Muriel Nichol, Leah Manning, Grace Colman, Lucy Noel-Buxton, Clarice Shaw, Florence Paton, Jean Mann and Lucy Middleton. Front row: Bessie Braddock, Mabel Ridealgh, Alice Bacon, Edith Summerskill, Ellen Wilkinson, Jennie Adamson, Peggy Herbison and Barbara Ayrton-Gould. Courtesy of Popperfoto/Getty Images.

8.Women MPs celebrating Megan Lloyd George’s 20th anniversary in Parliament, 31 May 1949. Back row, left to right: Edith Wills, Lucy Middleton, Bessie Braddock, Jean Mann, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, Lady Grant of Monymusk (Priscilla Buchan, Baroness Tweedsmuir), Alice Bacon, Barbara Ayrton-Gould, Viscountess Davidson, Lucy Noel-Buxton, Leah Manning, Caroline Ganley, Grace Colman. Front row, left to right: Florence Paton, Margaret Herbison, Mabel Ridealgh, Megan Lloyd George, Edith Summerskill, Margaret Wintringham, Jennie Lee. Courtesy of Gerald Pudsey/Parliamentary Archives.

9.Conservative MP Irene Ward joins Labour’s Barbara Castle and Edith Summerskill on Equal Pay Day, 8 March 1954, after presenting a petition of 80,000 signatures to the House of Commons. Courtesy of J. Wilds/Keystone/Getty Images.

10.Barbara Castle, Edith Summerskill and Alice Bacon striding along Scarborough’s seafront just before the opening of the Labour Party conference, 1954. Courtesy of Reg Burkett/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

11.Key Labour MPs joining hands to sing the Red Flag on the platform of the Labour Party conference in Scarborough, October 1967. Left to right: Tony Benn, James Callaghan, unidentified, Richard Crossman, Barbara Castle, Alice Bacon, prime minister Harold Wilson, Jennie Lee. Courtesy of Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images.

12.Labour MP and secretary of state for employment and productivity, Barbara Castle (fourth from right) having tea with the Ford machinists to negotiate an equal pay settlement in 1968, prior to the Equal Pay Act in 1970. Courtesy of Wesley/Keystone/Getty Images.

13.Barbara Castle, a few months before the 1964 general election which saw a Labour landslide under Harold Wilson and her appointment to the cabinet as minister for overseas development. Courtesy of Walter Bird/National Portrait Gallery.

14.Margaret Thatcher in 1977, two years after having been elected as the first woman leader of the Conservative Party, and two years before making history as the first woman prime minister. Courtesy of Bern Schwartz/National Portrait Gallery.

15.Shirley Williams at a press conference in March 1981 to launch the Social Democratic Party (SDP) after having left the Labour Party with the ‘Gang of Four’, Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers. Courtesy of Jacob SUTTON/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images.

16.Labour’s Harriet Harman found herself fighting the Peckham by-election campaign in 1982. She was heavily pregnant at the time. Courtesy of PA/PA Archive/PA Images.

17.Women MPs from various parties in 1988, including Margaret Thatcher, Diane Abbott, Betty Boothroyd, Joan Ruddock, Margaret Beckett, Edwina Currie, Clare Short, Mo Mowlam and Jo Richardson. Courtesy of Universal History Archive/Getty Images.

18.Labour MP Diane Abbott, the first black woman to be elected as an MP, in 1987. Courtesy of Peter Jordan/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images.

19.Labour MP Margaret Beckett in 1997. She later became the first woman foreign secretary. Courtesy of Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

20.Labour’s Betty Boothroyd, in 1994, two years after having been elected as the first woman Speaker of the House of Commons. She held the position for eight years. Courtesy of Anne-Katrin Purkiss/National Portrait Gallery

21.The infamous ‘Blair’s Babes’ photo, taken shortly after the 1997 Labour landslide at which a record of 101 Labour women were elected. Courtesy of JOHNNY EGGITT/AFP/Getty Images.

22.Labour MPs Caroline Flint and Hazel Blears among others in their dance group, ‘The Division Belles’. Courtesy of Hazel Blears.

23.Labour MP Tessa Jowell in 1998. Jowell oversaw the implementation of SureStart and the London Olympics in 2012. She tragically passed away in 2018 from brain cancer. Courtesy of Victoria Carew Hunt/National Portrait Gallery.

24.Conservative MP Gillian Shephard in 1998. Shephard was a junior minister under Thatcher who was promoted to secretary of state for employment under John Major’s government. Courtesy of Victoria Carew Hunt/Curator’s Office, Palace of Westminster.

25.Mo Mowlam, the first woman secretary of state for Northern Ireland, played a vital role in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 (the year in which this photograph was taken), but has been written out of parliamentary history. Courtesy of Victoria Carew Hunt/Curator’s Office, Palace of Westminster.

26.Labour MP Clare Short in 2008. Short led the ‘No Page 3’ campaign in the 1980s. She resigned from Tony Blair’s government in 2003 over the Iraq War. Courtesy of Amit Lennon/Curator’s Office, Palace of Westminster.

27.New Labour women MPs in the Downing Street White Room in July 2007. Back row, from left to right: Caroline Flint, Harriet Harman, Jacqui Smith, Ruth Kelly. Front row: Yvette Cooper, Tessa Jowell, Hazel Blears. Courtesy of Zoe Norfolk.

28.A photograph taken in 2010 to celebrate the record number of sitting Labour women MPs who had held the position of secretary of state. From left to right: Ruth Kelly (secretary of state for transport), Clare Short (secretary of state for international development), Tessa Jowel (secretary of state for culture, media and sport), Jacqui Smith (home secretary), Hazel Blears (secretary of state for communities and local government), Margaret Beckett (secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs), Yvette Cooper (secretary of state for work and pensions), Patricia Hewitt (secretary of state for health) and Harriet Harman (secretary of state for social security and minister for women). Courtesy of John Ferguson/Curator’s Office, Palace of Westminster.

29.Labour women Harriet Harman, Gloria De Piero and Yvette Cooper with the pink bus, which they toured around the country to reach out to women voters in the 2015 general election campaign. Courtesy of JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images.

30.Theresa May on the day she took office as the second woman prime minister in 2016, after Britain’s decision to vote to leave the European Union. Courtesy of OLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images.

31.Labour MP Jo Cox at a Macmillan Cancer fundraising event in 2016. Later that year, she was murdered by a neo-Nazi activist after a constituency surgery. Cox taught me, as she did so many people, that we have more in common than that which divides us. Courtesy of Lindsay Parnaby/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.

32.Me with Jo Cox’s sister Kim Leadbeater and Conservative MP Seema Kennedy. After Jo’s death, her family and Kennedy asked me to carry forward her work which became the Jo Cox Loneliness Commission. Courtesy of Julianne Marriott.

Book title

Acknowledgements

In 2016 I published my biography of Alice Bacon, Yorkshire’s first woman MP. Alice’s story inspired me to learn more about the pioneers who stood for Parliament in those early years after women gained the right to stand. So, my first thanks must go to Alice who got me started.

For the immense research help, I thank Mary Reader, recommended to me by my old friend Zosia Stemplowska, and Emma Lundin, who I found via Mari Takayanagi, curator at the House of Commons. We also benefitted from the help of Lisa Berry-Waite who is working on her PhD at Exeter university. This book couldn’t have been completed without their forensic analysis, archive hunting and enthusiasm – I have enjoyed working with them and all that we have shared these past two and a half years.

From my office, hours of interviews have been transcribed by Stephanie Darlington, Beth Tye, Abby Bloomfeld, Joe dePaulo, Josh Molloy and Isabelle Agerback. I hope they enjoyed the stories of some amazing women past and present as much as I did.

For the historians’ perspective, Jacqui Turner on Astor, Laura Beers on Wilkinson, Susan Pederson on Rathbone, Patricia Hollis on Jennie Lee, Alice Perkins on Castle and Julie Gottlieb on 1930s women in Parliament – you have all inspired and educated me.

For the stories from the floor of the House of Commons, the selection conferences and the political battles, my interviews with MPs from all parties, stretching back to the 1960s have, I hope, brought the book to life. Thank you to Shirley Williams, Shirley Summerskill, Betty Boothroyd, Gillian Shephard, Edwina Currie and all the former MPs for sharing your stories of the last fifty years. And to those serving today a special thanks to Harriet Harman who spent two and a half hours on a hot summer’s day talking to me in her garden, to Diane Abbott, who I didn’t know as well as I should, Jo Swinson, Jess Phillips and Amber Rudd who all tell of how their feminism inspired their political activism. And a huge thank you to Theresa May for finding time to talk to me about getting elected in 1997 and then her rise to the chairmanship of her party, cabinet and of course being Britain’s second female prime minister.

Thank you to Seema Kennedy for helping to set up that interview and to Jo Cox, my friend and colleague who brought Seema and I together to take forward her work. The last chapter of this book is inspired by Jo Cox.

Thank you to my editor, Jo Godfrey and the team at Bloomsbury-IBTauris including Magdalene Abraha and Tia Ali. And to my agent Caroline Michel – you all believed in me and helped me meet a few deadlines. I am also grateful to the Leeds Literary and Philosophical Society, who provided a grant that helped make this book possible.

The book gets started with a marvellous foreword by Mary Beard whose own book Women and Power is a brilliant call to arms for women wanting to make the world a better place and to Harriet Harman for the epilogue – women transforming politics is still work in progress.

To the 494 women elected in the last 100 years, each of you have fought your own battles and overcome the odds. We don’t agree on everything, but I hope this book tells the story of our collective history and the difference having women in Parliament has made.

On a personal level, thank you to my husband Nick. And, to my children, Anna and Harry, I hope by the time you are old enough to vote we will have equal representation of women and men in Parliament. I hope too that you will be champions of equality and call out injustices. And I hope you will understand why I spent many weekends and holidays reading and writing this history.

For my children, Anna and Harry

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world – Mary Wolstonecraft

Book title

List of notable political ‘firsts’ for women in the House of Commons

Book title

Prologue to the

Paperback Edition

The centenary of the first woman to take her seat in Parliament was reached in November 2019. In the last 100 years, more than 500 women have been elected. Each generation sees a rise in numbers, and new challenges.

In the most recent election, Boris Johnson has been returned as Prime Minister on his promise to ‘get Brexit done’. Theresa May sits on the back benches. Record numbers of women stood down from Parliament. Jo Swinson lost her seat in Scotland and hence the leadership of her party.

While the new intake of women MPs includes plenty of ‘rising stars’ we have lost women from the House of Commons including Nicky Morgan, Luciana Berger, Heidi Allen, Caroline Flint and Seema Kennedy who all expected their parliamentary careers to have lasted longer. Many women have cited abuse for the reason they quit. We will never know what they could have gone on to achieve.

So you might think that women in Westminster were in a worse state than they were a year ago.

Yet I feel confident about the future. The two people who have caused the biggest problems for Boris Johnson since he became prime minister are Lady Brenda Hale, President of the Supreme Court, who forced Johnson back to Parliament after finding that the Prorogation was null, void and unlawful, and Gina Miller, who took the Government to court to argue that point.

In Parliament, a record number of women stood and were elected at the recent general election taking the number of women MPs to 220, just over a third of the total. More than half of Labour’s depleted band of MPs are women. In the House of Commons chamber, Theresa May watches down on her successor from three rows behind the front-bench, occasionally giving withering looks from above, with the knowledge and experience of office.

In this parliament we should keep an eye on women MPs including Conservatives’ Priti Patel and Victoria Atkins, Labour’s Angela Raynor and Rosie Duffield, the Liberal Democrats’ Leyla Moran and the SNP’s Hannah Bardell – all rising stars in their parties.

Some people have asked whether Theresa May’s failure to deliver on her own key promise will ‘set back women in politics’. What an absurd proposition. Boris Johnson is hardly covering himself in glory in office, but would anyone seriously ask whether he might ‘set back men in politics’? A salutary reminder that women have to jump a higher bar than men to succeed.

The last parliament was a fractious one, and we don’t know what twists and turns we have ahead of us. Certainly in 2019 many women left their political homes to sit as independents or to join other parties – including the former home secretary Amber Rudd who quit the Tory party over Brexit and Luciana Berger who left Labour over anti-Semitism. Their absence from Parliament is a loss to our politics but shows that the women of Westminster cannot be taken for granted.

Following the election of Jo Swinson as leader of the Liberal Democrats – albeit only for a brief five months - Labour is now the only party in Westminster never to have been led by a woman. But at the time of writing, MPs Rebecca Long Bailey, Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips and Emily Thornberry are all being tipped for the Labour leadership now that Jeremy Corbyn has stood down after a catastrophic defeat. There is no getting away from the fact that Labour needs to catch up. As Angela Rayner has said, having a woman lead Labour will be good for the party and good for the country. I agree.

One step forward has been on ‘baby leave’. Proxy voting for MPs who have a baby or adopt is coming towards the end of its twelve month trial. It has helped MPs who are new parents better balance work and family life while ensuring our constituents are represented in Parliamentary votes. It didn’t exist when I became a mother in 2013 and when I had my second child in 2015. I am pleased that this is now changing. I hope baby leave continues beyond the trial period and that some form of further maternity cover can be agreed on.

While Brexit continues to dominate our public debate and time in Parliament, hours in the chamber are long, uncertain and subject to change at short notice. When asked by my six and four year old children recently if I would be home for bedtime stories that night, I apologised and said that I wouldn’t. ‘Is it because of Brexit?’ my daughter asked. It was.

It is not clear if and when politics and Parliament will ‘get back to normal’ (whatever that is) but I do hope that the divisions that have been so palpable can be mended and that mutual respect, tolerance and a desire to seek the common good can be re-kindled. It needs to be.

Hatred and anger have infected our politics inside and outside Westminster. Just down the road from my constituency office in Leeds, someone daubed the words Hang traitor MPs on the side of a building. The same slogan was painted on a wall by a bus stop. On Facebook, I have repeatedly been called a traitor and one person posted a message saying they ‘couldn’t wait’ to ‘run into me.’

A friend who isn’t particularly political recently asked me how I cope with the attacks. It made me think. A few years ago I would have been horrified by the kind of abuse that is so regularly directed at me and many other MPs, particularly female politicians. But the reality is that this behaviour is now part of everyday life and we have had to become inured to it if we wish to continue as public servants. If I wasn’t, I probably would have stood down at the last election. Although I want to stay, I understand why others have walked away.

Security around MPs has been tightened dramatically since the death of my friend and colleague Jo Cox who was murdered in 2016 as she carried out her work as an MP. Police now check in with my office every week. They will often come to events or maintain a presence nearby. Offensive graffiti is quickly painted over and abusive comments on social media reported. But they leave a mark and an impression of division and anger. In the aftermath of Jo’s murder there was a determination to do things differently – to change the way we do politics. That resolve seems to have faltered. This toxic climate, fuelled by people’s ability to easily cloak their identity online, is entirely different to 2010 when I left my job as an economist to become an MP.

With a new Parliament elected and with the Brexit issue seemingly settled, at least for now, I hope that our politics might become more civilised, less angry. All of us who care about the future of our democracy should hope for the same – because parliamentary democracy depends on good people being willing to serve and speak out.

Jo Cox’s successor in Batley and Spen, Tracy Brabin, also worries about the political temperature. She told me that in terms of ‘all that right-wing hate, misogyny, the way that she [Jo] died... Here we are again’. Jo’s sister, Kim Leadbeater, even said that ‘I think politics has, if I’m perfectly honest, become more toxic even than it was in the run-up to the referendum, and leading up to Jo’s murder’. That must change.

As I hope you will discover in the chapters of this book, the history of women in Parliament is so often of working together across the political divide. All of us in Parliament can build on those endeavours as we try to work our way through what sometimes seem like enormous, insurmountable challenges – to both find policy solutions and bring the country back together. Perhaps it is too ambitious in today’s climate. But I would say it is essential.

Rachel Reeves, December 2019.

Book title

Foreword

Mary Beard

In 2010 the speaker, John Bercow, closed Bellamy’s Bar in the Palace of Westminster and installed a nursery in its place. It is hard to understand how in the twenty-first century there could be any serious objection to the principle of on-site childcare for the benefit of Members of Parliament and staff. But it proved a controversial decision. In the press Bellamy’s Bar was given the plaintiff adjective ‘much missed’ (as if there were not other bars in Westminster); and there was no end of blustering in the usual places about ‘a waste of tax payers’ money’. Nor was it just those on the right who raised objections. Some on the left also joined in, on the grounds that it was providing a perk for those who worked in Parliament that was not available to local residents. That may have been fair enough in a way, but I doubt if there had ever been much clamour to share the bar with Westminster’s neighbours. The point is that nurseries tend to be seen as a perk for women, and as such more a privilege or a luxury than a basic essential. To listen to the complaints, you would think that men had nothing to do with the creation and care of children.

The architecture of institutions and their use of space (nursery or bar?) are often revealing guides to social hierarchy and exclusion. I remember vividly when the ladies’ lavatories in most Cambridge colleges were located as inconveniently as possible, across several courtyards and down in some drab basement. The message was clear: this was not a place where women really belonged. As Rachel Reeves reminds us, even worse was true for the early women MPs. As soon as there was a prospect of female members in the House of Commons, there was the question of what facilities should be made available to them. When Nancy Astor became the first woman to take a seat in Parliament in 1919, she also became the sole denizen of the ‘Lady Members’ Room’, uninspiring quarters located – predictably enough – in the basement: in fact so uninspiring that it was known as ‘the dungeon’. When, over the next decade or so, a few more female colleagues joined Astor, the dungeon – with its seven desks and two couches – had far too little space to accommodate them all. It was standing room only, and (to judge from most descriptions) a terrible mess.

For someone of my age (I’m writing this aged 63), the experience of these early women MPs feels instantly recognizable. There were still ‘male spaces’ (by convention rather than rule) in the university in London where I had my first job. I can instantly feel the triumph of Ellen Wilkinson (Labour MP from 1924) when she walked into the House of Commons’ smoking room. She said to the policeman who tried to stop her, with the ‘sorry, not for ladies’ line: ‘I am not a lady – I am a Member of Parliament’. And all those bottom pinches that Shirley Williams and others reported in the division lobby are familiar to many of us in other contexts, from photo-copier to library or dance-floor. I like the story of the female MPs in the 1960s responding to this unwanted attention by stabbing their stilettos into the foot of the often unseen pincher, and looking out for who was limping later.

Things are a lot better now, though not quite as ‘better’ as we might hope. Most of the more than 200 women who are currently Members of Parliament have the same old stories to tell: being asked to get out of a lift that is for ‘Members Only’, or being assumed to be the MP’s wife, not the MP. It is not unlike when I answer the telephone in my university faculty office and am regularly assumed to be a secretary: an insult both to our secretaries and to me! And, even if the women are no longer consigned to the Westminster dungeon, or kept out of the smoking room (which has ceased to exist anyway), the dispute over the nursery shows that the division of space is still an issue.

Some unexpected consequences, however, did come from putting the ladies in the dungeon in those early years. I am not for a moment suggesting that it is a good idea to give women worse accommodation than men (in fact I could make a pretty good case for systematically giving them the better). But it does seem that being thrown together in that way, under the often disapproving eyes of their male counterparts, helped them to create a rather different style of politics: much more collaborative, across the lines of party and class. It is wonderful to picture the extraordinary trio of the extremely posh Duchess of Atholl (MP between 1923 and 1938, sometimes as a Conservative, sometimes as an Independent), Ellen Wilkinson, the working class hero of the smoking room triumph, and Eleanor Rathbone (Independent MP from 1929 to 1946 for ‘the Combined English Universities’, which then had their own parliamentary seat). They were all three strong supporters of the Republicans in Spain, went out there to see what was going on in 1937, and together were vociferous in their opposition to appeasement throughout the 1930s – a view that cost Atholl her parliamentary seat.

Of course, these early women parliamentarians did not always agree, even on ‘women’s issues’. Rathbone was a campaigner against what we would call female genital mutilation, a subject that did not cross the minds of most of them. Atholl meanwhile did not even think that suffrage should be extended to women on the same terms as men (the 1918 solution, which effectively restricted voting in general elections to propertied women aged over 30, was quite enough for her). But between them they introduced some of the most important reforms that we now take absolutely for granted as part of our social bedrock, from family allowances (which we now know as child benefit – the brainchild of Rathbone) to widows’ pensions and the establishment of the fundamental principle that mothers and fathers had equal rights to the guardianship of their children (before 1924 women who separated or divorced had no rights to their children at all). In taking the lead in all this (including the dream of equal pay from the 1930s), they paved the way for the better-known names of the later twentieth century, from Barbara Castle to Margaret Thatcher, Shirley Williams to Diane Abbott.

I have lived through much of the revolution that Rachel Reeves charts in this book. My mother was born before any women had the right to vote in general elections and she lived to see a female prime minister (albeit one that she did not have much time for). When I was growing up in the 1960s only around 4 per cent of MPs were women; as a child I got the strong, and in some ways correct, impression that the country was governed by white men in suits. Currently just over 30 per cent of MPs are women. This is a big cause for celebration, not just because it is a victory for fairness, but it means that the country as a whole is no longer missing out on the political talents of half the population. And yet there is still a long way to go.

That is partly to do with the positions we entrust to women. Admittedly there have now been two women premiers, but not yet chancellor of the exchequer; we are still much more likely to find women in the ‘caring’ jobs. But it is even more to do with deeply embedded assumptions about the nature (and gender) of power. In our heads, I am afraid, politics is still often thought of as a man’s world. Why else do female politicians, like Margaret Thatcher, get taught to lower their voices? And what do even I see when I shut my eyes and try to imagine a prime minister? Answer: a white man in a suit. The same thing happens, I confess, when I try to imagine a professor. Even though I am a female professor, it’s a slightly batty-looking bloke in a lab coat that I see.

There could be no clearer glimpse of this than a tweet put out only last week by a prominent (Labour) politician in which he listed, from one to ten, his selection of the ‘best politicians’ of the last century. From Churchill at number one, via Aneurin Bevan and John Major and other assorted worthies, to Edward VII at Number Ten, every single one of them was a man. No Castle, no Thatcher – though Theresa May did scrape in at number ten of the parallel list of the ‘most irresponsible & dangerous politicians’ of the last century. This is the kind of mistake that it is, believe me, easy to make on Twitter. But it is revealing none the less. Even after two female premiers, the model of political power we offer ourselves remains resolutely male.

So how shall we know that the revolution has really worked? When we shut our eyes, think of a prime minister and see a wonderfully tough, eloquent and resplendent – woman.

Book title

Introduction

On 6 February 2018, I stood in the Central Lobby of Parliament with prime minister Theresa May, Harriet Harman and most of the other 208 women MPs in Parliament today. It was the 100th anniversary of the act of Parliament that finally gave some, but not all, women the vote. We were there to celebrate, reflect and mark that event in history. A couple of months later, a statue for Millicent Fawcett, suffrage campaigner and pioneer, was unveiled in Parliament Square – quite staggeringly the first statue of a woman in a square where people come to protest, see Parliament and witness political history.

That struggle for a voice was being celebrated. I took a rosette – in the purple, green and white tricolour of the suffrage campaign – home to my five-year-old daughter and tried to explain what it meant. It’s harder than I thought it would be. How can a five-year-old understand that a century ago her dad would have had a vote but not her mum? Her granddads but not her grandmas? Her brother would have grown up to have rights – and opportunities – that she wouldn’t have. So many inequalities that my daughter doesn’t understand have been broken down. That is a wonderful thing.

The progress made by women and for women in the last one hundred years is remarkable. The opportunities available to girls and women today are infinitely greater than those available to my great-grandmother, born in 1900 in Swansea, South Wales, who I knew when I was a young girl. She would have voted for the first time in 1928 when men and women could vote on the same basis – aged twenty-one and with no property requirements. Women having the vote, but crucially, women in Parliament, helped make that progress possible.

One third of the MPs in Parliament today are women. When I was born, forty years ago, that proportion was just 3 per cent. I want my daughter – and my son – to grow up in a world where #MeToo is unthinkable, where women are paid the same as men, where women are not absent from the board room, where the number of women’s refuges falls not because of cuts but because men don’t batter their wives, where there is more than just one woman on our bank notes, where the United States of America has a woman as president, where the Labour Party elects a woman leader. Where Parliament looks like the country it is supposed to serve. Why not? We are more than half the population, and have the same proportion of the talent, the ideas, the energy, the passion.

This book tells the story of the women who have shaped our political history by being Members of the Mother of all Parliaments, the British Parliament, the House of Commons. It is a story of women across the political spectrum. It is a biography of Parliament told by the women elected to it. It is the story of the women who have advanced the rights of women – to equal pay, to the guardianship of children, to reproductive rights, to access to childcare, child benefits and maternity leave. Having women in Parliament has advanced the cause of women and has got onto the statute book crucial legislation that has transformed the lives and opportunities of women. Women in Westminster have changed the culture of politics and shown, through their leadership and example, that women can excel at the top and under pressure, so far including two female prime ministers. But apart from a few big names, these women who have shaped all our lives are largely unknown. These are stories that need telling and these are stories that all of us should know. This book is an alternative history of Britain in the last one hundred years, told through the stories of political women.

So, what was it like for those early women MPs? Whose shadow do I walk in as a woman in Westminster today? What difference have the 556 women elected to Parliament so far, made? And how was that difference achieved – collectively, or individually, or both? Did the role and status of women in Parliament change as the numbers increased? Are women MPs more likely to advance women’s rights than men? Does it even make sense to describe a category of ‘women MPs’ today?

Over the last one hundred years there has been a vast quantity of legislation spearheaded by women which has hugely improved the lives of women outside Parliament. Through the chapters of this book we see that the vast majority of legislation that has directly and consciously benefitted women was fought for and legislated by women MPs – things that affect all of us, such as equal pay and childcare. The chapters that follow tell the story of how battles were fought and won – some quickly, some over decades – by women who weren’t prepared to back down.

The change began in 1918 when Sinn Féin’s Constance Markiewicz became the first woman to be