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Politicians: a dereliction of duty - our statement on #WPUK attempts to meet with political representatives and make sure women's voices were heard. womansplaceuk.org/2019/09/27/pol…
'Since our inception in September 2017, we have sought, and taken, every opportunity we could to meet with politicians and policy makers. Often this has only been possible on the condition of privacy.'
We met several senior Labour party figures including John McDonnell and Dawn Butler. John McDonnell announced that he had met us during a Mumsnet interview.
The group meeting we had with Dawn Butler was meant to be private but a list of those attending was leaked to P*nk News who published some of the names. Dawn Butler’s office denied the leak came from them.
We met with the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party group.
We met with senior figures in Green Party. We worked hard to agree a joint statement about this but, just as we were about to publish, they asked us to withhold it while a complaint we had made about a GP Officer was investigated. This took so long the statement was never made.
We have asked for meetings with several senior figures in Conservative party but have never successfully met with any. When asked a parliamentary question about how many meetings she/her dept had held with LGBT/women’s groups, Victoria Atkins said they'd met with WPUK five times.
This is not true. We met with representatives of Government Equality Office (GEO) twice & senior officers at Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) once. All three of these meetings included representatives from other organisations. womansplaceuk.org/wpuk-meetings-…
We met a number of other political representatives across the spectrum and we know of many supporters who have also had similar meetings. Despite most of the politicians we have met saying they understand our concerns...
...they have failed to say this publicly or support a space for women to meet free from intimidation and fear. A ComRes survey in October 2018 found many of them share these concerns. blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/even-o…
We have respected the wishes of those who asked us not to make public statements and we have hoped that they would do the quiet work that they promised to do.
We have grown impatient & increasingly irritated at politicians staying quiet in face of lies/smears about women raising reasonable concerns when we have had reasonable & useful discussions with so many of them. It really is now time they spoke up publicly for women & democracy.
