Political girl power

ETHNIC MINORITY WOMEN ARE NOW CLAIMING THEIR VOICE IN PARLIAMENT

LAST week’s Lewisham East by-election appeared a fairly routine political event. Labour defended the London seat with a reduced majority.

The effort of UKIP and the new anti-Islam party ‘For Britain’ to turn protests about the imprisonment of former EDL leader Tommy Robinson into votes was an abject failure, with both winning one per cent of the vote. There is a gulf between the shoutiest people on the internet and how most voters think.

Yet the election of new MP Janet Daby, the black British child of Windrush generation migrants from Guyana and Jamaica, marks a historic breakthrough. There are now more ethnic minority women than men in the Commons for the first time, with 27 fe­male MPs and 26 men among the 53 black, Asian and mixed-race MPs, also an all-time high.

It is fitting that this breakthrough coincides with the centenary of women first getting the vote. Not many people realise that the role of ethnic minority women in British politics stretches back a century too. The remarkable story of Princess Sophia Du­leep Singh, the daughter of a Maharajah who be­came a radical suffragette, has been marked by a Royal Mail centenary stamp.

But it took many decades for black and Asian women to take their place in the House of Commons. Diane Abbott, now shadow home secretary, was the sole woman in the quartet of black and Asian MPs who entered the Commons in 1987. A very slow rate of progress over the next two decades made Abbott largely the exception that proved the rule.

The New Labour class of 1997 saw a dramatic breakthrough for women in politics: 101 Labour women were among the 116 female MPs elected – yet the number of ethnic minority women rose from just one to two. By 2007, there were still only two women alongside 13 men from ethnic minority backgrounds in the Commons, before a dramatic acceleration of progress in the last decade.

Why has change sped up so quickly? The new MPs elected in 2010, 2015 and 2017 reflect an im­portant generational shift in voice and power with­in ethnic minority communities. The parliamentar­ians are often the children of the 1970s and 1980s, mostly born to parents who were first generation migrants from the Commonwealth.

It is a generation of women who expect an equal chance to be leaders in our public life – but aspiration is never enough without the opportunity to realise it. So the mindset of political parties had to change. They talked a good game before 2010: more diverse ap­pointments to the House of Lords showed good inten­tions, enabling former prime minister David Cameron to bring Baroness Sayeeda Warsi into his Cabinet too.

But a nagging doubt remained when it came to cracking the elected House too. Were the voters really ready? Could selecting candidates who didn’t fit the existing mould be taking a risk that could lose the seat?

The 2010 election, when British Asian women were elected as MPs for the first time, was a tipping point, proving that fear groundless. That Rushanara Ali, Priti Patel, Yasmin Qureshi, Shabana Mahmood and Valerie Vaz won seats around the country showed how ethnic diversity could become the new normal across parties and across genders. It gave local parties more confidence to select candi­dates on merit in 2015 and 2017.

How far will this new generation of ethnic mi­nority women change our political culture? Re­search has shown that Diane Abbott receives as much social media abuse as the rest of parliament put together. The case for cultural change in West­minster was illustrated by the furious response to Christopher Chope MP objecting to a bill outlawing ‘upskirt’ photographs – though the presence of women ministers and MPs was a factor in the speed of the government’s commitment to pass that bill.

MPs will have different views about what chang­es they pursue. Indeed, the breadth of the group may be the most important message. Ethnic minor­ity women in parliament are Labour, Conservative and LibDem; and from the left, right and centre of their parties. They are Remainers and Brexiteers; believers and atheists from a range of Christian, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu family backgrounds. Some represent inner-city seats; others suburban and shire seats of low ethnic diversity.

“At every election, parliament is looking more like the country it represents and legislates for,” Nus Ghani MP, the Conservative MP for Wealden told me. “Getting elected as an MP, especially as an Asian, an immigrant and a Muslim, is a sign that one’s gender, heritage and faith doesn’t need explaining.”

As the first woman in her family to get a formal education, she is one good example of how black and Asian women bring in experiences that West­minster was missing – and the urgent, shared com­mitment to ensuring that the still greater expecta­tions of the next generation are met.