I was invited by Nancy Platts to meet with Har­riet Har­man this morn­ing and dis­cuss women’s issues and equal­ity. Nancy is Labour Can­di­date for Brighton Pavil­lion and hosted this women only event in Brighton. I should prob­a­bly  say at this point that I’m not a staunch Labour sup­porter, I’ve not actu­ally decided which way I’ll vote in May so was gen­uinely excited by the oppor­tu­nity to talk direct. I also had some spe­cific ques­tions around teenage preg­nancy and keep­ing young peo­ple in edu­ca­tion and employ­ment because of my work with Teens and Tod­dlers.

I was a lit­tle late. And a lit­tle muddy (big bound­ing whop­per of a dog decided to make friends as I crossed Pre­ston Park on route. Did explain to him that was meet­ing the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party but he didn’t seem fussed). It took place in the unfussy sur­rounds of the Uni­son build­ing and I joined a room of bub­bly ani­mated women, teapots and Vic­to­ria sponge.  And a Chan­nel 4 news crew.

As a media type I accept that I will always be a lit­tle more ‘aware’ (cyn­i­cal?) of these type of events being about gain­ing expo­sure and secur­ing votes but I also hoped it would be a gen­uine desire of an MP to lis­ten to the peo­ple they rep­re­sent.  I also couldn’t help the odd ‘In the Thick of It’ moment (those famil­iar with the show will be impressed I resisted say­ing ‘f**kitybye’ upon leaving).

There were a range of women, pre­dom­i­nantly work­ing in var­i­ous vital roles  to sup­port com­mu­ni­ties within our city. I had the great plea­sure of meet­ing Mar­ian who deliv­ers some amaz­ing work with Surestart out of the Moulsec­ombe Children’s Cen­tre, and also spend more time with Nina Ross from The Young Par­ents Project, sup­port­ing teenage mums through knowl­edge and skills devel­op­ment in nutrition.

So, Har­riet Har­man. It was an infor­mal set up and she came round and chat­ted to us in groups. Myself, Nina & Mar­ian told her about the kind of work we’re doing and the issues that con­cerned us, and she, well, didn’t really say any­thing. I’ve often heard politi­cians inter­viewed where they seem to have mas­tered the art of speak­ing with­out actu­ally say­ing any­thing but never before seen it face to face. Slightly bizarely she did say she’ll fol­low me on Twit­ter which struck me as a fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of the power of social media for politi­cians to engage and lis­ten; she didn’t appear to be lis­ten­ing to me when she was just a few feet away.  Don’t get me wrong, she was per­fectly pleas­ant but I came away none the wiser.

Nancy was dif­fer­ent.  She was happy to dis­cuss the issues, hon­est when it was an area where she wasn’t famil­iar with all the facts and showed a gen­uine energy and pas­sion. I declined a Vote Labour poster but I did like her and wish her luck. I just hope if she does get in West­min­ster doesn’t spoil her.

Tags: Brighton, GE2010, Harriet Harman, Labour, Nancy Platts, social media

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 2:31 pm