:00:00. > :00:18.Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Sarah Montague.
:00:19. > :00:21.For much of her political life she has been accused
:00:22. > :00:23.of being a 'humourless feminist' but she has been effective,
:00:24. > :00:26.she is the politician behind the Equality Act,
:00:27. > :00:29.the minimum wage, the guarantee of a minimum income for pensioners,
:00:30. > :00:31.longer maternity leave, and laws on domestic violence.
:00:32. > :00:34.Even her name Harriet Harman has been changed to Harriet Harperson to
:00:35. > :00:38.mock her politics. In the House of Commons almost half
:00:39. > :00:41.of Labour seats are filled She's the only woman who has come
:00:42. > :01:31.near to leading the party. Harriet Harman, welcome to HARDtalk.
:01:32. > :01:39.Thank you. The Conservatives are on their second leader, all the other
:01:40. > :01:45.parties have had all had the mall leaders. Not the Labour Party,
:01:46. > :01:48.though, why not? Does it have a problem with women? It is
:01:49. > :01:52.embarrassing and troubling that we regard ourselves as the Labour Party
:01:53. > :01:56.being the party for women and equality and many of us as
:01:57. > :02:03.feminists, that's why we joined the party because we saw at -- saw it at
:02:04. > :02:08.as that party. So never having had a female leader or woman Prime
:02:09. > :02:11.Minister, it's very embarrassing and paradoxical that the Conservatives
:02:12. > :02:16.are not even on their first women Prime Minister, they are on their
:02:17. > :02:21.second. But I think there is a reason for that. Ironically, it is
:02:22. > :02:25.slightly easier to be a woman in the Conservative Party if you are part
:02:26. > :02:34.of sort of Jon Ralph woman who are not really challenging the status
:02:35. > :02:43.quo -- John Russell is to you are not there to change the party from
:02:44. > :02:48.top to bottom. -- genre. Our path was much harder because we resisted.
:02:49. > :02:52.You don't think it's extraordinary, you are criticising the women who
:02:53. > :02:56.have made it in the Conservative Party and you don't think that there
:02:57. > :03:00.is any party with the top of the Labour Party as far as women are
:03:01. > :03:06.concerned? No, I have said there is a problem. I have said it's
:03:07. > :03:11.embarrassing. But why? Because, when you are trying to make substantial
:03:12. > :03:16.change, there is resistance. If you go along with things, there is no
:03:17. > :03:21.ceiling. But if you want to change things and you represent a challenge
:03:22. > :03:26.but also... So the men at the top of the Labour Party have resisted the
:03:27. > :03:32.advance of women and that's why they've never had a female leader? I
:03:33. > :03:37.think institutionally, the Labour Party, like most other parties and
:03:38. > :03:44.most other organisations, is still male dominated and the change still
:03:45. > :03:49.has further to go. It is evident right at the top. Not only a male
:03:50. > :03:55.lead up to male deputy leader, a mail at Shadow Chancellor and the
:03:56. > :04:03.structures are hard to change. We have more labour women MPs but we
:04:04. > :04:08.still have cracked it at the top and that's a problem. It's a problem we
:04:09. > :04:13.will come back to bat for you, you entered Parliament way back in 1982.
:04:14. > :04:20.A time when you are pregnant and things were very, very different. I
:04:21. > :04:27.mean, now we are talking about half the Labour Party being female MPs
:04:28. > :04:35.but then it was a total of 17 or 19 MPs in a total of the house. It was
:04:36. > :04:42.97% of men in the House of Commons, 3% women. I joined as the 11th and
:04:43. > :04:50.the in a Parliamentary Cabinet of over 300. I came into change
:04:51. > :04:53.politics and say this is not representative. How can this be a
:04:54. > :04:57.representative parliament when women's voices won't hurt? We came
:04:58. > :05:01.in with a specific agenda, policy agenda, it was about childcare,
:05:02. > :05:08.maternity leave, domestic violence, quality at work, but also an agenda
:05:09. > :05:12.that women needed to share in the decision-making and not have a
:05:13. > :05:16.situation where, in the Labour Party and indeed all other parties, the
:05:17. > :05:20.decisions were made by men but affected women's lives. And you have
:05:21. > :05:24.written your memoirs about this journey of over four decades in
:05:25. > :05:29.politics. But some of the stories of what it was like Ben are phenomenal.
:05:30. > :05:42.A House of Commons was a very different place. -- was like then.
:05:43. > :05:49.Whether you are in law, politics, the private sector, nursing,
:05:50. > :05:56.journalism, where women haven't been before. It is difficult to be in our
:05:57. > :06:00.group. You had to do things together, you had to be more than
:06:01. > :06:04.just one woman, you had to be numerous women at critical mass.
:06:05. > :06:09.That's why getting more women into the House of Commons was a plot --
:06:10. > :06:15.important part of my agenda. You make the point that you are working
:06:16. > :06:22.for women. You also recount in your book what society was like at that
:06:23. > :06:32.time. You described at professor who said he would give you a 2-1 if you
:06:33. > :06:37.gave him... He came in and said you are very borderline for your degree.
:06:38. > :06:44.It is either to wine or a two but it will definitely be at two two if you
:06:45. > :06:49.do not have sex with me. I didn't have all the family hopes riding on
:06:50. > :06:56.me of getting a good degree. I was able to just get out. That was an
:06:57. > :07:02.attempt by him to use his power which he did with other women as
:07:03. > :07:09.well... With more success? Yes, there was one girl. Why didn't you
:07:10. > :07:15.call him on it? The idea that there was anyone to complain to. Who would
:07:16. > :07:18.I complain to? There was no sense that they would be anything other
:07:19. > :07:22.than blaming of the person who had made the complaint. It was
:07:23. > :07:27.inconceivable. It's quite hard to explain that at that time, that was
:07:28. > :07:31.just the sort of thing. I just put into examples in the book. I could
:07:32. > :07:38.have put in loads. You talked about a senior lawyer that she worked with
:07:39. > :07:46.who groped you. Again, it was about the abuse of power. I relied on him
:07:47. > :07:51.to sign off on things. A senior Labour politician who groped you one
:07:52. > :07:56.the dance floor. In all these you are accepting or at least, it into
:07:57. > :08:01.complain. I wasn't accepting, I was absolutely repelled by it. It was
:08:02. > :08:09.one of the things that was endemic at the time. One of the things that
:08:10. > :08:12.you felt," this is wrong". At the idea that you could have as an
:08:13. > :08:17.individual woman, a young woman where nearly all the professors were
:08:18. > :08:23.men, my complaint against him, it was inconceivable. Of what your
:08:24. > :08:30.professor did, that issue of sex Fullgrabe is was still a thing. Do
:08:31. > :08:39.you think it is still a thing? -- sex for grades. I had lots of phone
:08:40. > :08:45.calls from women saying that happen to them. Women now are still saying
:08:46. > :08:49.it's a thing. You want to change politics to be a better place the
:08:50. > :08:53.women that you found that actually, there was similar behaviour. The way
:08:54. > :09:02.you were treated in the House of Commons and I suppose all women, you
:09:03. > :09:07.describe how you were, there was sexist jeers and barracking and even
:09:08. > :09:13.when you saw it on the television, you realised it was your own site
:09:14. > :09:18.that was joining in. When I saw a Conservative MP when I was making a
:09:19. > :09:23.speech calling out that I was an stupid cow, I had a look at the
:09:24. > :09:27.speech was making at the time and it was a very thoughtful, well
:09:28. > :09:30.evidenced, carefully argued speech. It was really about the men in the
:09:31. > :09:34.House of Commons thinking that actually are was in the wrong place.
:09:35. > :09:39.That this was not a place for women, that women should be at home looking
:09:40. > :09:46.after the family and this is a place for men because in those days, the
:09:47. > :09:49.idea was that women were subordinate to men and inferior and that men
:09:50. > :09:53.made the decisions and therefore there was resentment that I had come
:09:54. > :09:57.into the House of Commons, not only myself but with the argument that
:09:58. > :10:01.the whole House of Commons should change and it was old-fashioned. And
:10:02. > :10:09.this was your own site as well treated you this way? Yes. It was
:10:10. > :10:16.felt by the male MPs as a criticise -- criticism -- many of them. When I
:10:17. > :10:21.said that the House of Commons needed equal numbers of women and
:10:22. > :10:28.men, they felt I was criticising them and they fought back. I was a
:10:29. > :10:34.tiny minority but there was a real clash about what I was saying and it
:10:35. > :10:37.was only when we managed to foster the recognition that Labour would
:10:38. > :10:41.never get elected unless we got women's vote and we would never get
:10:42. > :10:47.women's votes if all our spokespeople, the entire shadow
:10:48. > :10:52.cabinet except for one, were men. -- backlash. They accepted the
:10:53. > :10:56.argument, not as a matter of principle but as a matter of
:10:57. > :11:00.expediency. They needed to change to get women's vote and that is what
:11:01. > :11:06.happened and why we got in in 1997 because we... That even after 1997
:11:07. > :11:10.when there were, what, more than 100 female MPs, the description of the
:11:11. > :11:15.way you were treated by both Tony Blair and Auden Brown, there was a
:11:16. > :11:25.remarkable lack of respect, it seems. -- Gordon Brown. You often
:11:26. > :11:32.ignored. I wouldn't talk about it being" treated" by them. I can see
:11:33. > :11:39.that I made mistakes. I think they sometimes do things wrong. I can see
:11:40. > :11:43.how sometimes I did things wrong. So, you know, difficult things like
:11:44. > :11:49.getting sacked from the Cabinet after only 15 months of being in
:11:50. > :11:54.government. By Tony Blair. Yes, when I had fought for years to get in and
:11:55. > :11:58.be a key part of that. I thought that was wrong for him to sack me
:11:59. > :12:04.that I can see my part in it. I actually think it was wrong for
:12:05. > :12:08.Gordon Brown for after me being elected as deputy leader, not to
:12:09. > :12:12.automatically make me Deputy Prime Minister. John Prescott had been
:12:13. > :12:16.Deputy Prime Minister because he was typically leader. You say in your
:12:17. > :12:22.book that you should have challenged Gordon about it but why didn't you?
:12:23. > :12:27.There is case after case that you feel slighted for whatever reason
:12:28. > :12:32.and you don't seem to do anything? It is not about being slighted. The
:12:33. > :12:35.Labour Party has never had a woman Prime Minister that we have the
:12:36. > :12:39.opportunity to have a female Deputy Prime Minister so that was
:12:40. > :12:44.important. So why didn't you challenge it? He announced that
:12:45. > :12:48.there wasn't going to be a Deputy Prime Minister when he knew that I
:12:49. > :12:53.would be elected. Before we knew because his lenient told because we
:12:54. > :12:58.-- before we at the candidates were. Getting him to do a U-turn when he
:12:59. > :13:03.was absolutely at the outset of his prime ministership but I should have
:13:04. > :13:07.returned to it and gone back and said, Gordon, this is not OK and
:13:08. > :13:13.actually it is a major opportunity for the Labour Party to have women
:13:14. > :13:19.as an Deputy Prime Minister. And when one of his ministers Caroline
:13:20. > :13:23.Flint resigned accusing him of only using women as windowdressing and he
:13:24. > :13:27.asked you to go out and defend him and you'd read, do you think that
:13:28. > :13:32.was a mistake because she said as a result she felt lonely and isolated.
:13:33. > :13:37.Yeah. It was very difficult because the government was in a difficult
:13:38. > :13:41.time. My constituents and for me, the most important thing, above
:13:42. > :13:44.everything, is to have a Labour government and not to have a
:13:45. > :13:49.Conservative government because that is why I'm meant the Labour Party,
:13:50. > :13:59.believing in social justice. Rola was he guilty of windowdressing?
:14:00. > :14:02.Came out and said, what I said was... I'm not interested in what
:14:03. > :14:07.she said then, I'm interested in what you think now. When you look
:14:08. > :14:14.back, do you think he was guilty of windowdressing? Ultimately, he had
:14:15. > :14:19.funded all the childcare when he was Chancellor. He had funded the
:14:20. > :14:23.doubling of maternity pay, he had backed the equality act which
:14:24. > :14:28.allowed us to finally get it through against the opposition of a number
:14:29. > :14:32.of... He didn't make you Deputy Prime Minister. When US Secretary of
:14:33. > :14:39.State, he changed a speech. He didn't -- you didn't realise until
:14:40. > :14:46.you are on the platform and he changed a speech. I was waiting to
:14:47. > :14:51.make a speech, it was on the autocue. Why is that acceptable, why
:14:52. > :14:56.doesn't he trust you? It's not acceptable but what it describes is
:14:57. > :15:00.a relationship between us whereby he thought that actually he was doing
:15:01. > :15:04.me a favour by changing my speech to make it better and he thought that I
:15:05. > :15:08.would find it acceptable because we'd worked so closely together and
:15:09. > :15:13.I was his deputy. In fact it was not acceptable, at that point I was not
:15:14. > :15:17.his deputy, I was a Shadow Secretary of state and it was quite wrong. It
:15:18. > :15:21.wasn't just treatment by your party, it was treatment by the press, you
:15:22. > :15:24.are very critical of the way you were treated by the press and even
:15:25. > :15:29.the press acknowledged, the Telegraph said you endured more in
:15:30. > :15:33.abuse than any modern Labour politician bar Tony Blair. Do you
:15:34. > :15:37.put that down to misogynist or do you put it down to another argument,
:15:38. > :15:41.that you weren't up to the job? I put it down to the fact that
:15:42. > :15:46.actually... I don't know what the female equivalent analogy is but
:15:47. > :15:49.they were playing the man not the ball. So instead of taking on my
:15:50. > :15:53.arguments about how things should change and the policies that I
:15:54. > :15:58.wanted, they just criticised me. But that is what happens. If you put
:15:59. > :16:02.forward change, arguments for change, people don't throw open the
:16:03. > :16:06.doors and said, great, you say what you want and we'll change the way
:16:07. > :16:10.we've been doing things for years. Come on in, bring other women in,
:16:11. > :16:15.yes, we'll move aside to share power, it's a fight, a struggle. The
:16:16. > :16:19.effect on you, you said, we should be clear the scale of it, even the
:16:20. > :16:25.Independent described you as an arrogant ICF head and that was in
:16:26. > :16:29.2002. The reason they say I'm arrogant and I see is I'm not
:16:30. > :16:33.hanging out in the bars late at night because I had young children
:16:34. > :16:38.to go back to and I wasn't bantering in sexist jokes because I didn't
:16:39. > :16:43.think it was funny. I was never an airhead but it's the easy thing to
:16:44. > :16:48.say about a woman, that stupid. The effect of it, you say that when it
:16:49. > :16:53.came to a point you could have stood as leader win you had been acting
:16:54. > :16:56.leader effectively twice after Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband had
:16:57. > :16:59.both gone, you said the decades of denigration at the hands of the
:17:00. > :17:03.press had taken their toll, it's hardly be exposed to such criticism
:17:04. > :17:07.and not be affected by it, I didn't think I was up to being party
:17:08. > :17:11.leader. I think basically if you're a man who arrives in the House of
:17:12. > :17:14.Commons and you've managed to get yourself into a suit and made a half
:17:15. > :17:20.decent speech, everyone goes leadership potential. In all the
:17:21. > :17:25.years I was in the front bench, nobody ever said she could really be
:17:26. > :17:29.a good leader. Was there any point you thought you could have been
:17:30. > :17:32.leader, and perhaps since as a result of what's happened in the
:17:33. > :17:37.last few years, thought I should have been leader? In 2010 when I
:17:38. > :17:42.took over from Gordon Brown because as soon as he lost the election he
:17:43. > :17:45.handed over the leadership, and this was a great surprise to everybody,
:17:46. > :17:49.everybody thought that he would carry on and handover to the next
:17:50. > :17:52.leader and there'd be an election, and I was doing Prime Minister's
:17:53. > :17:55.Questions every week, I was responding to the budget debate, I
:17:56. > :17:59.was responding to the Queen's speech, I was going all round the
:18:00. > :18:04.country speaking at conferences and the party members, particularly the
:18:05. > :18:08.women, they were saying why are you not in this contest? And the answer?
:18:09. > :18:14.Was it that you didn't think you could do it? Because was a big shock
:18:15. > :18:18.to find myself as leader of the party at all, because although I was
:18:19. > :18:21.deputy I wasn't expecting to be acting leader. The answer to the
:18:22. > :18:25.question? I'm trying to explain what was going on in my head at the time.
:18:26. > :18:29.All my effort had gone into the issue of doing a good job for a
:18:30. > :18:34.party that was traumatised by having been rejected from government and
:18:35. > :18:37.therefore... Having been a frontbencher for years, at some
:18:38. > :18:41.point you must have either ruled it in or out? You're an ambitious
:18:42. > :18:47.woman, you're clearly an ambitious woman. I was ambitious to do the job
:18:48. > :18:51.properly that I was in. I was never looking up and thinking I would like
:18:52. > :18:55.to go to the next age up. Did you think you were up to it? In
:18:56. > :19:01.retrospect I could see I did a good job in 2010. Should you have stood?
:19:02. > :19:07.I probably should have done. I certainly think if I had have done I
:19:08. > :19:10.would have won because the party had not taken to David Miliband. And
:19:11. > :19:15.when you look now at what's happened to the Labour Party, where it's just
:19:16. > :19:20.lost a by-election in Copeland under Jeremy Corbyn, a seat that is being
:19:21. > :19:24.held by Labour for more than 80 years and they've lost it to the
:19:25. > :19:28.government -- is being held. Do you think it's a mistake that you didn't
:19:29. > :19:33.stand if you could have won? It was only a mistake not to stand in 2010
:19:34. > :19:37.if I assume I would have done a much better job than Ed Miliband, and who
:19:38. > :19:44.knows, because I didn't stand. And in 2015? I think things have moved
:19:45. > :19:50.on by that point. But I think that there are very painful echoes today,
:19:51. > :19:56.and you mentioned Copeland, of what happened in the 1980s, where people
:19:57. > :20:00.said the whole party was finished. And, you know, I believe that was
:20:01. > :20:07.wrong then and it's wrong now, it's not finished. So a senior finger
:20:08. > :20:11.like you should do what? -- figure. I think we should support those
:20:12. > :20:15.taking the party forward in a positive direction. One of the
:20:16. > :20:20.things when Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister and Edward Heath
:20:21. > :20:24.was on the backbenches, every day he criticised the new leader, which was
:20:25. > :20:29.Margaret Thatcher. Would you say there are echoes of the 80s when the
:20:30. > :20:33.party was effectively finished? We are now under the leadership of
:20:34. > :20:36.Jeremy Corbyn and you are not going to criticise him, you've never
:20:37. > :20:40.criticised him, again you stick to your loyalty, but you talk about the
:20:41. > :20:43.threat to the party as though it's finished. It's not just about
:20:44. > :20:47.loyalty, it's basically about recognising that nobody really wants
:20:48. > :20:51.to hear the previously that every morning getting up and of pining
:20:52. > :20:55.about what the current leader is doing. Secondly, leading the Labour
:20:56. > :21:00.Party is much harder than it looks. It is so easy to criticise, it is
:21:01. > :21:04.much harder to do it. Also I never believed in the 80s that the party
:21:05. > :21:07.was finished even we were only two points ahead of the Lib Dems because
:21:08. > :21:12.we were determined that it shouldn't be. It's about not predicting, it's
:21:13. > :21:16.about actually deciding that you won't let it. And in terms of what
:21:17. > :21:21.you do for that to make sure it isn't finished, do you sit and wait
:21:22. > :21:25.for the female leader of the country, Theresa May, the Prime
:21:26. > :21:30.Minister, to call an election and hope she goes early? Well, no, I
:21:31. > :21:34.think what I'm doing is supporting all those good party members all
:21:35. > :21:38.round the country, all those councillors, my colleagues, to
:21:39. > :21:42.actually do the things we need to do to make us electorate again. At the
:21:43. > :21:46.moment we are very far away from getting the public support we need
:21:47. > :21:50.even to be an effective opposition, let alone a credible alternative
:21:51. > :21:55.government. And I think the first thing we need to do is that we need
:21:56. > :21:59.to recognise that the public are not listening to us partly because they
:22:00. > :22:03.think we're not listening to them and it doesn't matter how brilliant
:22:04. > :22:07.our policies are, if people don't want to hear from us... Are the
:22:08. > :22:11.policies brilliant you're hearing from Jeremy Corbyn? Some are good
:22:12. > :22:14.and some are not so good but I'm not going to go through the list. It
:22:15. > :22:18.doesn't matter how good they are, if people aren't listening to you
:22:19. > :22:22.because they think although you understand their problems you will
:22:23. > :22:26.make them worse. The reason, the subject we have been talking about
:22:27. > :22:29.throughout this and you have campaigned on throughout your
:22:30. > :22:34.political life, that of the position of women, has the party regressed on
:22:35. > :22:37.that? Your former special adviser said the culture of the party has
:22:38. > :22:43.changed, talking since the election of Jeremy Corbyn, and referring to
:22:44. > :22:49.the misogyny online from party members, as well as more broadly. I
:22:50. > :22:55.think we made massive advances between the 1980s and now. But you
:22:56. > :22:59.should never take any of those for granted, whether in policy terms...
:23:00. > :23:04.Is the party regressing on sex equality? You always have to be
:23:05. > :23:08.careful not to slip back. Is the party slipping back? In some
:23:09. > :23:13.respects, yes, we have an all-male leadership team, a male leader and a
:23:14. > :23:17.male deputy. But we have more women in the House of Commons. But this
:23:18. > :23:21.thing about misogyny online is very important and I don't think it's
:23:22. > :23:25.good enough for Jeremy Corbyn to say I don't do it and I don't approve of
:23:26. > :23:31.it. He's got to leave the action against it for two reasons. Firstly,
:23:32. > :23:36.because no woman MP should have to put up with threats and intimidation
:23:37. > :23:42.by members of our own party. Do you get that too? I don't particularly.
:23:43. > :23:44.But actually also we've got to be showing the lead for other
:23:45. > :23:48.organisations because there are women all around the country, young
:23:49. > :23:53.women who are getting rape threats, death threats, who are being bullied
:23:54. > :23:57.online, and have got to put forward the policy solutions of this new
:23:58. > :24:02.problem of misogyny and abuse online. So we got to put our own
:24:03. > :24:06.house in order but we've also got to formulate the policies to protect
:24:07. > :24:07.other women and people being bullied online. Harriet Harman, thank you
:24:08. > :24:10.for coming on HARDtalk.