Politician tells Hay festival it is not enough for Labour leader to say he does not condone abuse of female MPs by members

Harriet Harman has called on Jeremy Corbyn to take a tougher stance on Labour members who abuse and troll the party’s MPs.



The Labour candidate was speaking at the Hay festival about her political career and the many battles against sexism she has had to fight.

She said there was a big issue around the abuse female MPs get from party members and Corbyn, as Labour leader, needed to do more. “It should be one strike and you’re out.

“It’s not good enough for Jeremy to say, ‘I don’t do it, I don’t agree with it, I don’t condone it.’ As a leader you have to say, ‘This is what I’m going to do to stop it.’”

Harman is the UK’s longest continuously serving female MP, elected in 1982 when 97% of the Commons were men.

She talked about the difficulty juggling of family and career, an issue which came into focus at Hay when the baby of interviewer Laura Bates started crying in the first row.

Harriet Harman: ‘I believe in not breaking your word to children. Even if it costs you your job’ Read more

Harman called on Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism project, to bring her baby to the stage and start feeding her, which she did with huge audience encouragement.

Harman described some of the dilemmas she has faced over when and when not to fight. “It is quite difficult to know when to kick up a fuss and when to let something go,” she said. “I was almost permanently having rows with my colleagues and the other side and was regarded as unfriendly and prickly … all women who were fighting battles were cast as that.”

One example was when, as deputy leader to Gordon Brown, Harman was not invited to a G20 dinner held at Downing Street. She was invited to the wives’ dinner.

“What was the appropriate response? Sarah Brown had obviously extended the invite. I didn’t want to be unsisterly because I’m not a wife in this context.”

It was a ridiculous invite, Harman said, but she did not want to snub it so she went along and sat next to the Canadian prime minister’s wife. “We talked all night about diets.”

Another occasion was the first cabinet meeting after being elected deputy leader. She discovered that she had been moved from a prominent seat opposite the prime minister to one at the end of the table. She went in and found Jack Straw’s name on what should have been her seat.

Harman let it go, there were more pressing issues to be raised than seating plans, but it was an important moment. “Those things of who talks over who, who sits where, all of those things in meetings are symbolically important and affect your ability to get things done.”

She said Brown’s decision not to make her deputy prime minister after she was elected deputy Labour leader was wrong, but she did not go public. “There had been so many rows between Tony and Gordon I didn’t want to add to them. I wanted the government to succeed.”

There were many occasions when she did kick up a fuss and Harman said she and her generation had brought about real change for women.

Asked whether more could have been done, she said: “Oh my god, honestly, there is not more we could have done. We did so much and it was not easy. I think there are so many people blaming us for everything, we should not blame ourselves.”

The fight for equality continues, but Harman said she did not want to be seen as a mentor or role model. “It is not for us to tell the next generation what to do, but support them in doing it their way, they are still pioneers. They have got to tread a new path in new snow.”