Regretful: Joanne Cash says the Fawcett Society's furious reaction to MoS revelations reinforces her view that the feminist organisation has to change

Despite a long history of fighting to improve the lot of women in British life, The Fawcett Society, Britain’s oldest feminist organisation, has never been ‘water cooler’ conversation.

Until, that is, the events of the last two weeks, when T-shirts bearing the words ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ attracted exactly the wrong sort of attention.

Faced with the facts – revealed by The Mail on Sunday– that the shirts had been cheaply produced by exploiting female workers in Mauritius, The Fawcett Society then damaged its reputation still further with a self-righteous yet evasive response, suggesting that the workers’ pay (62 pence an hour) was reasonable and that the T-shirts somehow remained ethical.

When any organisation publicly abandons its core values, it is time for a rethink – the more so when, in the case of The Fawcett Society, it has been fatally undermined by an aggressive and immature culture of political point-scoring.

I take a personal interest in The Fawcett Society and, as a former vice chair, I felt a lot of sympathy when the story first broke.

Yet their persistent refusal to acknowledge the facts as they emerged has left me dismayed.

The society takes its name from one of our greatest feminists, Millicent Fawcett – one of my heroes. Not only did she campaign tirelessly for the vote for women, she dedicated her life to increasing female access to education and justice and the abolition of sexual abuse.

Sadly, by the time I was offered the role of vice chair in the spring of 2013, The Fawcett Society had already been displaced as the most significant feminist voice in the UK.

New campaigns with fresh approaches were leading the way – campaigns for better representation on company boards, for example, or attempts to highlight the daily abuse of women.

The tone and content feels different, modern.

In comparison, The Fawcett Society appears narrow in its focus – and reliant on union funding.

While the public is increasingly disenchanted by party politics, The Fawcett Society continues to be combative.

Rather than appearing to speak for everywoman, it has become pigeon-holed as Left-wing, as a mouthpiece for the unions.

The issues it stands for – equal pay, women in poverty – are as vital as ever, but Fawcett makes them sound tired.

Yet, with such a strong and intellectual history, I believed that it could evolve.

When I, as an active Conservative, was appointed to the board, it gave me confidence that change was possible.

What I found instead was an office full of ideological but naive young women driving a Left-wing agenda, even while the charity was on its knees.

Why do you need Ed Miliband (right) to wear the T-shirt when you have Benedict Cumberbatch (left)?

It became apparent that some members of the staff had no idea how to run the charity, let alone grow it.

Bright women with a good eye for statistics, I am unconvinced to this day that they have any vision for the future of the charity beyond more of the same narrow focus, the same reactive, outspoken press performances.

When David Cameron reshuffled his Cabinet and increased the number of female full Cabinet Ministers from three to five, promoting a range of talented women to senior positions, I thought that surely The Fawcett Society would reach out across party lines and congratulate these women on their achievements.

But no, they couldn’t resist the old game: ‘The substance didn’t live up to the hype’, they said. Cameron had ‘failed’ to meet his promise to make a third of his Cabinet women by the time of the Election.

(A complete falsehood: One third of the Conservative members of the Coalition Cabinet were, in fact, women. But not even the Prime Minister can conjure up female Lib Dems.)

So with huge regret, I decided that I could not continue as vice chair as I no longer believed that the change needed could take place within the existing culture. And I stepped down.

I wasn’t at all surprised to see that Left-wing politicians were being used to promote the T-shirt, but I was dismayed.

If your potential supporters hate mainstream politicians, why identify yourself with them? Why do you need Ed Miliband when you’ve got Benedict Cumberbatch? Using the T-shirt to raise money and profile was a terrific idea but yet again the point-scoring had derailed a smart source of funding.

When David Cameron (pictured) reshuffled his Cabinet and increased the number of female full Cabinet Ministers from three to five, I thought that surely The Fawcett Society would congratulate these women

Fawcett’s response to this story has reinforced my view that it has still to change.

In an indignant fury, the charity – along with high street retailer Whistles, with whom it has aligned itself – defended the abuse of some of the world’s most vulnerable women.

This is still the stated position on the website at the time of writing.

So where does the charity go from here? There is a place for a serious feminist voice in the UK. The Fawcett Society could be that voice if it returned to the values of its founder and learned how to build coalitions and consensus. It needs to be representative of all women.

I have no doubt that Millicent Fawcett would be making the case for the protection of the girls of Rotherham. She would also by now have helped us re-engage with men. Some of her greatest feminist allies were men, including her husband Henry Fawcett and the philosopher John Stuart Mill.

Many of the changes now needed to progress real equality for women require society to release men from stereotypes and conventions too.

How can we share family obligations when men face stigma for taking time off work?

That is just one example of the many changes we should fight for. There is more momentum behind the equality movement now than there has been for a long time.

After the T-shirt story broke, someone on Fawcett’s staff wrote a sarcastic tweet in response to the T-shirt story: ‘We’ll just have to get along without the 11 million Mail readers. Aw, shucks.’

Possibly they can do that but equality cannot to be so narrowly selective. The Fawcett Society needs to decide what it is about.

Flustered Harman in a sweat over 'slave labour'

Harriet Harman (pictured) wore the T-shirt at Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons

Harriet Harman last week continued to back the controversial Whistles feminist T-shirt, despite MoS revelations that it was produced by women in Mauritius paid just 62p an hour.

The Labour deputy leader, who wore the T-shirt at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, wrongly claimed that The Fawcett Society had conducted an ‘investigation’ into the T-shirts ‘after that accusation was made about slave labour’.

In fact, The Fawcett Society has admitted it has yet to investigate the £45 T-shirts and the Mail on Sunday report mentioned nothing about ‘slave labour’, instead reporting a union leader’s view that the migrant workers’ low pay and cramped living conditions constituted a ‘sweatshop’.

Whistles said they intend to send someone to Mauritius to investigate our report.

Ms Harman seemed flustered on London’s LBC radio when presenter Iain Dale asked: ‘The people were paid 62p an hour – what would you call that, if it wasn’t slave labour?’

She replied: ‘Well, I, you know, I wasn’t involved in actually… I’m totally against slave labour… erm, but actually, if an organisation which is a charity promoting women’s rights give me a T-shirt to wear, I don’t, you know, look into all the background of how it was made, you know, I take it on trust.’