Gender divide worries Labour
Jan 19 2009 by Adrian Pearson, The Journal
LABOUR party bosses have been accused of creating a North East gender divide as their all-women shortlist policy is set to leave only a handful of male MPs south of the River Tyne.
Currently all the party’s MPs north of the river are men, and most south of the river will be women if they retain all their seats in the next General Election.
Current Durham and Wearside MPs Chris Mullin, Fraser Kemp and Bill Etherington will stand down at the next election, and all-women shortlists have already been announced by the party’s National Executive Committee.
Male MPs such as Gateshead’s Tyne Bridge MP David Clelland and Blaydon’s Dave Anderson will still be flying the flag for the party’s male membership along the south side of the river, but with no women in the north and few men further south the party faces creating a gender split.
Privately, many Labour members are saying the all-women selection lists risk forcing talented men out of the party, but few are prepared to publicly voice their concerns.
One senior Labour party member who is also a local councillor told The Journal he was fed up seeing “talented men who have worked their whole life for the party looked over as women who have not done the same work get handed some of the safest seats in the country”.
The case of former Durham County Council leader Albert Nugent will be high in the mind of many policy opponents. Mr Nugent was suspended from the party and ultimately lost control of the council when he went against NEC rules which would have seen more women put forward for election last May’s local elections.
For now voters south of the Tyne have Roberta Blackman-Woods, Hilary Armstrong, Helen Goodman and Sharon Hodgson among their Labour MPs.
Last night a spokesman for Labour North said: “The National Executive of the Labour Party has decided that the selection of a Labour Party candidate for Houghton and Sunderland South will be from an All Women Shortlist.
“The Labour Party is committed to increasing the number of women in Parliament and for a number of years has been using all women shortlists as one way of doing this. Women are still under-represented in the region, with only one female MP out of 13 in the Tyne and Wear area.
“Since the last election, the Labour party has had four selections caused by vacancies in the region. Two have been open selections and two have been from all women shortlists.
“There have been no vacancies in the Tyneside area. The NEC makes these decisions on a constituency by constituency basis and takes a number of factors into account but they are guided by the party’s commitment to ensure a greater number of women in public life.”
