Labour Training

Highly engaging @UKLabour @labour_history webenair this evening, with @davidtorrance and @NanSloane looking back on the politics of 1924. In the origins of the Party, the move from an affiliate only model (made up of founding trade unions and @thefabians) to an individual membership model meant the original party membership was majority women. This is in part because many men already felt linked in through their unions, while many women rushed to join and find their political home and voice for the first time. Women might not have been equal in power, but they were more than equal in number. At several points in our subsequent history women have outnumbered men in membership terms. Many Labour women objected to suffrage models which favoured middle class women only. The conflation of Labour's feminist history with the largely non-Labour suffragette movement continues erroneously to this day. We look forward to today's @UKLabour women leading the centenary celebrations of universal suffrage in 2028!

Thanks to @UKLabour and the tireless work of Labour Women's Network, there are now a record number of women in @HouseofCommons. LWN training, support and selection system campaigning helped elect 190 Labour women MPs. History has been made!