#Labourtoo
Inside the party’s sex abuse scandal
She was a young Labour Party worker; he was an older Labour MP. When he offered to take her out for lunch she was keen, as she was an admirer of his. “After lunch he tried to kiss me,” wrote the woman. She awkwardly laughed it off: “He was at least 30 years older than me – it never crossed my mind that that was his intention.”
The two ended up working in next-door offices, which seemingly gave the MP the chance to step up his advances and regularly make lewd comments about what he wanted her to do to him, she says. “He’d do it with humour, which made it hard to know what to do. People shrugged it off and said he was just like that.”
This is just one of 43 stories, claims of harassment, abuse and even rape by members of the Labour Party contained in a dossier submitted to leader Jeremy Corbyn. The alleged victims, who reported their experiences anonymously to the campaign group Labourtoo, come from all levels of the party; likewise their alleged assailants.
“Ever since Wednesday [when news of the dossier broke], we’ve had more Labour women contacting us saying ‘the same thing happened to me’,” says one of the six co-founders of Labourtoo, set up to “build a compendium of the types of abuse women face which all too often are ignored or swept under the carpet”.
Such incidents are not, of course, restricted to Labour. Since last autumn, when the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, similarly sordid allegations have surfaced across Hollywood, Westminster and, most recently, a number of charities. What each scandal has in common is the abuse of power that lies at its heart. Most of the time, though not always, those abusing that power are male, their victims female. It is hard to ignore one particular thread within these latest allegations: that of ostensibly liberal men hiding in plain sight behind the moral purpose of their work.
Lest we forget, Weinstein himself was once a champion of women’s rights. Last January, he joined in the women’s march at Park City in Utah; last June he and the Weinstein Family Foundation donated $100,000 (£72,500) to Rutgers University, New Jersey, to help establish a post named in honour of America’s most prominent feminist – the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies.
Concealing bad behaviour behind a good facade has precedent. This week, a revealing anecdote about Bill Clinton was recounted in the press: at the Labour Party conference in 2002, organisers were at a loss as to which woman they should sit the former US president with at the fundraising dinner. “Can’t be young. Or attractive. Because of… well, you know,” an unnamed minister told a journalist at the time. In other words, presumably, he (still) could not be trusted to behave around women. Challenging him was made harder by the fact that, as Monica Lewinsky put it in a 2014 Vanity Fair article: “Bill Clinton had been a president ‘friendly’ to women’s causes.”
It is the disconnect between the public face of these men and their unsavoury actions that makes them so hard to tackle. Many refuse to acknowledge it when systematic abuse occurs within organisations such as the Labour Party or Oxfam, which have a declared moral purpose, because no one wants to take down a “goody”. The values that underpin a brand like Oxfam – one of the charities implicated in a sexual abuse and exploitation scandal – are a key part of its identity. When women do tell their stories, those to whom they report them are often more interested in preserving
‘I was told not to pursue my complaint if I wanted a future in the party’
the party’s reputation than in acting on the principles they’ve espoused. One senior Labour source tells me: “When you work in an organisation you’re committed to it in a values sense, you can have people saying ‘think about the reputation of the organisation,’ [when a misdemeanour is reported]. The Left has prided itself on being on the side of women and equality and sought to brand itself [thus], so you’d hope men within the Labour Party would behave better.”
And yet, demonstrably, they often don’t. Jess Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley and chair of the Labour Women’s Parliamentary Party, alleged last August that “well-meaning, left-leaning” men were worse than those labelled by another as “the out and out sexists of the right”. Some have already made headlines: Brendan Cox, the husband of murdered MP Jo Cox, recently quit two charities he set up in her memory after allegations of sexual assault were made public.
While Mr Cox denied assaulting a woman in her thirties at Harvard University in 2015, he admitted to “inappropriate” behaviour while working for Save the Children. Kelvin Hopkins, the Labour MP for Luton North, was suspended from the party in November while an investigation was carried out into allegations of sexual misconduct against him, which he denied. Jared O’mara, the Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam, was suspended in October after the emergence of sexist comments he’d made on social media 10 years earlier, and further claims of sexist language (which he denied). He resumed his duties 12 weeks later.
In 2013, the Socialist Workers’ Party was almost torn apart when a series of rape allegations were reportedly dismissed and not passed on to police, prompting a string of members to quit. Ayesha Hazarika, a former Labour spin doctor, wrote in October: “Most of my female colleagues have experienced some kind of harassment, and
I have too.”
The Labourtoo accusations are more specific. “It came from every level of the party and every age group,” says the 30-year-old co-founder I spoke to. “Part of the reason we’re so keen to see change is that we believe in Labour values and equality and should be leading on certain things.”
One woman who did not submit her story to the project tells me: “I was assaulted by a Labour member who was influential in the party. It took more than one incident to be reported before any action was taken. Those who had protected him remain in post. I expected support, but instead found myself repeating my story multiple times (and every time to a man) who suggested
I might not want to pursue my complaint if I wanted a future in the Party.”
Change is slowly coming: in the wake of the Metoo and Time’s Up movements, increasing numbers of women are no longer agreeing to being silenced to protect a greater cause. As Lewinsky wrote in a more recent Vanity Fair article: “One of the most inspiring aspects of this newly energised movement is the sheer number of women who have spoken up in support of one another. And the volume in numbers has translated into volume of public voice.”