Harriet Harman, Former Labour Minister HARDtalk

Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Sarah Montague.

For much of her political life she has been accused

of being a 'humourless feminist' but she has been effective,

she is the politician behind the Equality Act,

the minimum wage, the guarantee of a minimum income for pensioners,

longer maternity leave, and laws on domestic violence.

Even her name Harriet Harman has been changed to Harriet Harperson to

mock her politics. In the House of Commons almost half

of Labour seats are filled She's the only woman who has come

near to leading the party. Harriet Harman, welcome to HARDtalk.

Thank you. The Conservatives are on their second leader, all the other

parties have had all had the mall leaders. Not the Labour Party,

though, why not? Does it have a problem with women? It is

embarrassing and troubling that we regard ourselves as the Labour Party

being the party for women and equality and many of us as

feminists, that's why we joined the party because we saw at -- saw it at

as that party. So never having had a female leader or woman Prime

Minister, it's very embarrassing and paradoxical that the Conservatives

are not even on their first women Prime Minister, they are on their

second. But I think there is a reason for that. Ironically, it is

slightly easier to be a woman in the Conservative Party if you are part

of sort of Jon Ralph woman who are not really challenging the status

quo -- John Russell is to you are not there to change the party from

top to bottom. -- genre. Our path was much harder because we resisted.

You don't think it's extraordinary, you are criticising the women who

have made it in the Conservative Party and you don't think that there

is any party with the top of the Labour Party as far as women are

concerned? No, I have said there is a problem. I have said it's

embarrassing. But why? Because, when you are trying to make substantial

change, there is resistance. If you go along with things, there is no

ceiling. But if you want to change things and you represent a challenge

but also... So the men at the top of the Labour Party have resisted the

advance of women and that's why they've never had a female leader? I

think institutionally, the Labour Party, like most other parties and

most other organisations, is still male dominated and the change still

has further to go. It is evident right at the top. Not only a male

lead up to male deputy leader, a mail at Shadow Chancellor and the

structures are hard to change. We have more labour women MPs but we

still have cracked it at the top and that's a problem. It's a problem we

will come back to bat for you, you entered Parliament way back in 1982.

A time when you are pregnant and things were very, very different. I

mean, now we are talking about half the Labour Party being female MPs

but then it was a total of 17 or 19 MPs in a total of the house. It was

97% of men in the House of Commons, 3% women. I joined as the 11th and

the in a Parliamentary Cabinet of over 300. I came into change

politics and say this is not representative. How can this be a

representative parliament when women's voices won't hurt? We came

in with a specific agenda, policy agenda, it was about childcare,

maternity leave, domestic violence, quality at work, but also an agenda

that women needed to share in the decision-making and not have a

situation where, in the Labour Party and indeed all other parties, the

decisions were made by men but affected women's lives. And you have

written your memoirs about this journey of over four decades in

politics. But some of the stories of what it was like Ben are phenomenal.

A House of Commons was a very different place. -- was like then.

Whether you are in law, politics, the private sector, nursing,

journalism, where women haven't been before. It is difficult to be in our

group. You had to do things together, you had to be more than

just one woman, you had to be numerous women at critical mass.

That's why getting more women into the House of Commons was a plot --

important part of my agenda. You make the point that you are working

for women. You also recount in your book what society was like at that

time. You described at professor who said he would give you a 2-1 if you

gave him... He came in and said you are very borderline for your degree.

It is either to wine or a two but it will definitely be at two two if you

do not have sex with me. I didn't have all the family hopes riding on

me of getting a good degree. I was able to just get out. That was an

attempt by him to use his power which he did with other women as

well... With more success? Yes, there was one girl. Why didn't you

call him on it? The idea that there was anyone to complain to. Who would

I complain to? There was no sense that they would be anything other

than blaming of the person who had made the complaint. It was

inconceivable. It's quite hard to explain that at that time, that was

just the sort of thing. I just put into examples in the book. I could

have put in loads. You talked about a senior lawyer that she worked with

who groped you. Again, it was about the abuse of power. I relied on him

to sign off on things. A senior Labour politician who groped you one

the dance floor. In all these you are accepting or at least, it into

complain. I wasn't accepting, I was absolutely repelled by it. It was

one of the things that was endemic at the time. One of the things that

you felt," this is wrong". At the idea that you could have as an

individual woman, a young woman where nearly all the professors were

men, my complaint against him, it was inconceivable. Of what your

professor did, that issue of sex Fullgrabe is was still a thing. Do

you think it is still a thing? -- sex for grades. I had lots of phone

calls from women saying that happen to them. Women now are still saying

it's a thing. You want to change politics to be a better place the

women that you found that actually, there was similar behaviour. The way

you were treated in the House of Commons and I suppose all women, you

describe how you were, there was sexist jeers and barracking and even

when you saw it on the television, you realised it was your own site

that was joining in. When I saw a Conservative MP when I was making a

speech calling out that I was an stupid cow, I had a look at the

speech was making at the time and it was a very thoughtful, well

evidenced, carefully argued speech. It was really about the men in the

House of Commons thinking that actually are was in the wrong place.

That this was not a place for women, that women should be at home looking

after the family and this is a place for men because in those days, the

idea was that women were subordinate to men and inferior and that men

made the decisions and therefore there was resentment that I had come

into the House of Commons, not only myself but with the argument that

the whole House of Commons should change and it was old-fashioned. And

this was your own site as well treated you this way? Yes. It was

felt by the male MPs as a criticise -- criticism -- many of them. When I

said that the House of Commons needed equal numbers of women and

men, they felt I was criticising them and they fought back. I was a

tiny minority but there was a real clash about what I was saying and it

was only when we managed to foster the recognition that Labour would

never get elected unless we got women's vote and we would never get

women's votes if all our spokespeople, the entire shadow

cabinet except for one, were men. -- backlash. They accepted the

argument, not as a matter of principle but as a matter of

expediency. They needed to change to get women's vote and that is what

happened and why we got in in 1997 because we... That even after 1997

when there were, what, more than 100 female MPs, the description of the

way you were treated by both Tony Blair and Auden Brown, there was a

remarkable lack of respect, it seems. -- Gordon Brown. You often

ignored. I wouldn't talk about it being" treated" by them. I can see

that I made mistakes. I think they sometimes do things wrong. I can see

how sometimes I did things wrong. So, you know, difficult things like

getting sacked from the Cabinet after only 15 months of being in

government. By Tony Blair. Yes, when I had fought for years to get in and

be a key part of that. I thought that was wrong for him to sack me

that I can see my part in it. I actually think it was wrong for

Gordon Brown for after me being elected as deputy leader, not to

automatically make me Deputy Prime Minister. John Prescott had been

Deputy Prime Minister because he was typically leader. You say in your

book that you should have challenged Gordon about it but why didn't you?

There is case after case that you feel slighted for whatever reason

and you don't seem to do anything? It is not about being slighted. The

Labour Party has never had a woman Prime Minister that we have the

opportunity to have a female Deputy Prime Minister so that was

important. So why didn't you challenge it? He announced that

there wasn't going to be a Deputy Prime Minister when he knew that I

would be elected. Before we knew because his lenient told because we

-- before we at the candidates were. Getting him to do a U-turn when he

was absolutely at the outset of his prime ministership but I should have

returned to it and gone back and said, Gordon, this is not OK and

actually it is a major opportunity for the Labour Party to have women

as an Deputy Prime Minister. And when one of his ministers Caroline

Flint resigned accusing him of only using women as windowdressing and he

asked you to go out and defend him and you'd read, do you think that

was a mistake because she said as a result she felt lonely and isolated.

Yeah. It was very difficult because the government was in a difficult

time. My constituents and for me, the most important thing, above

everything, is to have a Labour government and not to have a

Conservative government because that is why I'm meant the Labour Party,

believing in social justice. Rola was he guilty of windowdressing?

Came out and said, what I said was... I'm not interested in what

she said then, I'm interested in what you think now. When you look

back, do you think he was guilty of windowdressing? Ultimately, he had

funded all the childcare when he was Chancellor. He had funded the

doubling of maternity pay, he had backed the equality act which

allowed us to finally get it through against the opposition of a number

of... He didn't make you Deputy Prime Minister. When US Secretary of

State, he changed a speech. He didn't -- you didn't realise until

you are on the platform and he changed a speech. I was waiting to

make a speech, it was on the autocue. Why is that acceptable, why

doesn't he trust you? It's not acceptable but what it describes is

a relationship between us whereby he thought that actually he was doing

me a favour by changing my speech to make it better and he thought that I

would find it acceptable because we'd worked so closely together and

I was his deputy. In fact it was not acceptable, at that point I was not

his deputy, I was a Shadow Secretary of state and it was quite wrong. It

wasn't just treatment by your party, it was treatment by the press, you

are very critical of the way you were treated by the press and even

the press acknowledged, the Telegraph said you endured more in

abuse than any modern Labour politician bar Tony Blair. Do you

put that down to misogynist or do you put it down to another argument,

that you weren't up to the job? I put it down to the fact that

actually... I don't know what the female equivalent analogy is but

they were playing the man not the ball. So instead of taking on my

arguments about how things should change and the policies that I

wanted, they just criticised me. But that is what happens. If you put

forward change, arguments for change, people don't throw open the

doors and said, great, you say what you want and we'll change the way

we've been doing things for years. Come on in, bring other women in,

yes, we'll move aside to share power, it's a fight, a struggle. The

effect on you, you said, we should be clear the scale of it, even the

Independent described you as an arrogant ICF head and that was in

2002. The reason they say I'm arrogant and I see is I'm not

hanging out in the bars late at night because I had young children

to go back to and I wasn't bantering in sexist jokes because I didn't

think it was funny. I was never an airhead but it's the easy thing to

say about a woman, that stupid. The effect of it, you say that when it

came to a point you could have stood as leader win you had been acting

leader effectively twice after Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband had

both gone, you said the decades of denigration at the hands of the

press had taken their toll, it's hardly be exposed to such criticism

and not be affected by it, I didn't think I was up to being party

leader. I think basically if you're a man who arrives in the House of

Commons and you've managed to get yourself into a suit and made a half

decent speech, everyone goes leadership potential. In all the

years I was in the front bench, nobody ever said she could really be

a good leader. Was there any point you thought you could have been

leader, and perhaps since as a result of what's happened in the

last few years, thought I should have been leader? In 2010 when I

took over from Gordon Brown because as soon as he lost the election he

handed over the leadership, and this was a great surprise to everybody,

everybody thought that he would carry on and handover to the next

leader and there'd be an election, and I was doing Prime Minister's

Questions every week, I was responding to the budget debate, I

was responding to the Queen's speech, I was going all round the

country speaking at conferences and the party members, particularly the

women, they were saying why are you not in this contest? And the answer?

Was it that you didn't think you could do it? Because was a big shock

to find myself as leader of the party at all, because although I was

deputy I wasn't expecting to be acting leader. The answer to the

question? I'm trying to explain what was going on in my head at the time.

All my effort had gone into the issue of doing a good job for a

party that was traumatised by having been rejected from government and

therefore... Having been a frontbencher for years, at some

point you must have either ruled it in or out? You're an ambitious

woman, you're clearly an ambitious woman. I was ambitious to do the job

properly that I was in. I was never looking up and thinking I would like

to go to the next age up. Did you think you were up to it? In

retrospect I could see I did a good job in 2010. Should you have stood?

I probably should have done. I certainly think if I had have done I

would have won because the party had not taken to David Miliband. And

when you look now at what's happened to the Labour Party, where it's just

lost a by-election in Copeland under Jeremy Corbyn, a seat that is being

held by Labour for more than 80 years and they've lost it to the

government -- is being held. Do you think it's a mistake that you didn't

stand if you could have won? It was only a mistake not to stand in 2010

if I assume I would have done a much better job than Ed Miliband, and who

knows, because I didn't stand. And in 2015? I think things have moved

on by that point. But I think that there are very painful echoes today,

and you mentioned Copeland, of what happened in the 1980s, where people

said the whole party was finished. And, you know, I believe that was

wrong then and it's wrong now, it's not finished. So a senior finger

like you should do what? -- figure. I think we should support those

taking the party forward in a positive direction. One of the

things when Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister and Edward Heath

was on the backbenches, every day he criticised the new leader, which was

Margaret Thatcher. Would you say there are echoes of the 80s when the

party was effectively finished? We are now under the leadership of

Jeremy Corbyn and you are not going to criticise him, you've never

criticised him, again you stick to your loyalty, but you talk about the

threat to the party as though it's finished. It's not just about

loyalty, it's basically about recognising that nobody really wants

to hear the previously that every morning getting up and of pining

about what the current leader is doing. Secondly, leading the Labour

Party is much harder than it looks. It is so easy to criticise, it is

much harder to do it. Also I never believed in the 80s that the party

was finished even we were only two points ahead of the Lib Dems because

we were determined that it shouldn't be. It's about not predicting, it's

about actually deciding that you won't let it. And in terms of what

you do for that to make sure it isn't finished, do you sit and wait

for the female leader of the country, Theresa May, the Prime

Minister, to call an election and hope she goes early? Well, no, I

think what I'm doing is supporting all those good party members all

round the country, all those councillors, my colleagues, to

actually do the things we need to do to make us electorate again. At the

moment we are very far away from getting the public support we need

even to be an effective opposition, let alone a credible alternative

government. And I think the first thing we need to do is that we need

to recognise that the public are not listening to us partly because they

think we're not listening to them and it doesn't matter how brilliant

our policies are, if people don't want to hear from us... Are the

policies brilliant you're hearing from Jeremy Corbyn? Some are good

and some are not so good but I'm not going to go through the list. It

doesn't matter how good they are, if people aren't listening to you

because they think although you understand their problems you will

make them worse. The reason, the subject we have been talking about

throughout this and you have campaigned on throughout your

political life, that of the position of women, has the party regressed on

that? Your former special adviser said the culture of the party has

changed, talking since the election of Jeremy Corbyn, and referring to

the misogyny online from party members, as well as more broadly. I

think we made massive advances between the 1980s and now. But you

should never take any of those for granted, whether in policy terms...

Is the party regressing on sex equality? You always have to be

careful not to slip back. Is the party slipping back? In some

respects, yes, we have an all-male leadership team, a male leader and a

male deputy. But we have more women in the House of Commons. But this

thing about misogyny online is very important and I don't think it's

good enough for Jeremy Corbyn to say I don't do it and I don't approve of

it. He's got to leave the action against it for two reasons. Firstly,

because no woman MP should have to put up with threats and intimidation

by members of our own party. Do you get that too? I don't particularly.

But actually also we've got to be showing the lead for other

organisations because there are women all around the country, young

women who are getting rape threats, death threats, who are being bullied

online, and have got to put forward the policy solutions of this new

problem of misogyny and abuse online. So we got to put our own

house in order but we've also got to formulate the policies to protect

other women and people being bullied online. Harriet Harman, thank you

for coming on HARDtalk.