In August this year a Conservative Party association chairman was forced to
apologise after saying that he would select female MPs only if they were
blessed with a certain loveliness. Asked on television whether he was happy
to support David Cameron’s call to put more women in Parliament, Alan Scard
said: “If they are attractive, yeah, I would go for it.”
Scard, 63, who is in charge of the Gosport Conservative Association in
Hampshire, said afterwards that his comments were made in jest.
A joke gone wrong, or a case of old Tory prejudice rearing its familiar head?
What is not in question though is that the Elizabeth Truss affair — the word
is applicable — has raised the issue of sexism in a way that Cameron and his
modernising Tories had hoped was over. And it could yet spark a grassroots
revolt against the Conservative high command.
The controversy over Truss — she failed to reveal a relationship with a
married Conservative MP that took place five years ago, and now faces
possible deselection when the South West Norfolk Association meets today to
vote on the issue — may have spilt over into larger resentments. Now the
local members are objecting to A-list candidates, the prospect of all-women
shortlists and what one Conservative association chairman calls “the bully
boys from Tory HQ”.
It remains the case, however, that it was their candidate’s lack of candour
about her marital indiscretion that ignited this local revolt.
In the Shires, those traditional Conservative strongholds, anecdotal evidence
of sexism in the associations abounds. A woman candidate was told after
failing the final selection: “Bad luck. Anyway, have you encouraged your
husband to stand instead?” At one selection meeting, a Tory hopeful’s
husband had been asked what he was going to do for sex while his wife was
working at Westminster. Yet another woman candidate was told to get her hair
cut as it was too “girly” and people “wouldn’t take her seriously”. The
Conservatives do have form. We saw, in January 2005, the high-profile
deselection of Sue Catling as a would-be Conservative MP for Calder Valley,
West Yorkshire, the third time a woman candidate was forced out of a
Northern constituency in as many months.
Catling, a former actress, believes that she was the victim of a concerted
campaign by unreconstructed elements within her local association.
Similar claims were made by Amanda Harland when she resigned from a
neighbouring West Yorkshire seat with accusations of persistent bullying
from veteran members. It was also announced that a man had been chosen to
replace Rachael Lake, who was ousted by Cleethorpes Conservatives in
December 2004.
As Catling says: “I certainly feel in Calder Valley there was a huge amount of
sexism. They didn’t like my style. They can cope with assertiveness in a man
but call it arrogance in a woman. They want women to run the coffee club and
make the buns but they still want the men to be the spokesmen. They can’t
get out of that mindset.”
She cites the case of one “middle-aged gentleman” in the party who, after
learning that she had been an actress, said to her: “Do tell us if you did
any porn movies.”
It appears that Catling was forced to stand down by the association over her
affair with the local party chairman. She was replaced then by the now
beleaguered Liz Truss, who is facing deselection in Norfolk because she
failed to declare a fling with fellow Tory Mark Field.
Amanda Harland, a PR consultant and former Oxford councillor, says that she
felt the threat of deselection constantly hanging over her before her
resignation in the Colne Valley. She claims that she suffered taunts from
members about her lack of wealth and was criticised over her appearance,
being told that she should wear a miniskirt and “redo her highlights” to win
votes.
In the wake of the Truss case, Dorothy Luckhurst, who is on the Tory
candidates A-list and used to sit on the Scottish Conservatives candidates’
board, wrote last week: “Early in my career a constituency association
deselected me because I had the effrontery to become pregnant, within
marriage, but without consulting them first.” She added that local
associations would often ask women “whether they have children, how they
intend to look after them if they are elected and whether their husband will
accompany them to the adoption meeting”.
Tim Montgomerie, editor of conservativehome.com, the forum for Tory activists,
defends the grassroots.
“The average Conservative member is decent and public-spirited but South West
Norfolk Tories are stretching patience to breaking point,” he says. “A few
disgruntled grassroots members are unhappy at Liz Truss’s past private life,
but there is no evidence that they are a significant number. Some people who
want to disenfranchise the Tory grassroots are exaggerating the level of
discontent.”
He has now written an open letter on the website to the South West Norfolk
Association saying that Truss’s deselection would be “harmful to the party’s
national reputation”. He warns: “The antiTory press will have a field day.
However unfairly, they’ll accuse the party of sexism and candidates far
beyond Norfolk will be affected.”
Katie Perrior, a Tory councillor who is also spokeswoman for Women2win, the
organisation leading the campaign to elect more Conservative women to
Parliament, coaches women candidates on how to present themselves for the
selection process. She warns women not to take refuge in accusations of
sexism. “Politics is not a fair business. Sometimes it is a case of on that
day, for that association, you just didn’t make the grade.”
The Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe would agree with that. Asked in an
interview with Total Politics magazine recently what was the worst
sexism she’d been through in politics, she replied: “I don’t think I’ve
experienced much. I don’t think I’ve been looking for it, of course. I find
that women do go looking for it. About six months after the Blair Babes came
in, one of them came up to me in a corridor and said, ‘Ann, isn’t it
horrible how the men are so rude to us?’ I said, ‘Yes and isn’t it so
horrible how they’re rude to each other?’
“She’d never thought of that. She’d been roughed up in the chamber; she
assumed it was because she was a woman. It was actually because she was
useless. I’ve been roughed up in the chamber before and I’ve roughed others
up. That is the cut and thrust of politics. You don’t take it personally.
I’ve never gone looking for [sexism] and therefore I’ve never found much.”
The Conservative Campaign HQ does not deny sexism can be a problem, however. A
senior Tory source says: “Every time somebody says something stupid and
sexist there is a sharp intake of breath at CCHQ. People do wonder what the
next sexist remark will be. You hold your head in your hands sometimes.
“Liz Truss is an excellent candidate. It is frustrating that she has run up
against this trouble. We at CCHQ continue to have full confidence in her and
hope that she will win the battle to persuade local party members she is the
best person to represent them.”
He points out that more than 90 women have been selected to fight the general
election — 28 per cent of the total selected. “If we won the election by one
seat we could reasonably expect to have 65 female MPs, a good advance on the
17 now.”
CCHQ is leading by example. Half the staff is female and key members of
Cameron’s team are women, such as Gaby Bertin, his private secretary, and
Kate Fall, his deputy chief of staff.
But the Tory leader acknowledges that his party has a problem with sexism.
During the Speaker’s Conference last month — an inquiry by MPs looking at
how to increase the representation of women, ethnic minorities, homosexuals
and disabled people in the Commons — he admitted the Conservatives face huge
difficulties in getting women MPs because of prejudice in local parties.
In answer to a question on how to stop politics being dominated by white
middle-aged men, he said: “It’s a real problem for Parliament
and an even greater problem for my party.”
A measure of how serious Cameron views the Liz Truss problem in Norfolk, is
that he directly appealed to Sir Jeremy Bagge, the former High Sheriff of
Norfolk, who is to propose that Truss be dropped at the showdown meeting of
members today.
Sir Jeremy revealed last week that he had a telephone conversation with
Cameron during which the Tory leader spelt out why he and his lieutenants
were fighting so hard to save Truss. “He said if we really stirred things up
in South West Norfolk it could have a ripple effect across the country.”
Today’s vote could turn out to be one of the most important yet for Cameron
and a reflection on whether the Conservatives still remains the “nasty
party” that he has tried hard to change.
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