Me, Jack and Harriet Harman
Down Shep!
It’s 1977 and me, Jack Dromey and Harriet Harman are on the picket line at Grunwicks. Harriet is the legal advisor to the strikers’ committee and Jack… well Jack is Jack. He is a bluff, charming man with a quick mind, a loud voice and strong, well argued opinions. I am this skinny, long-haired teenager with acne, a smelly Afghan coat, and for most of my time on the picket line, a large lump on my forehead – testimony to the firmness of SPG standard issue truncheons in those days. It’s no wonder Harriet noticed the loquacious Jack rather than me.
Wind forward five years and Jack marries Harriet and they now have two children, both boys, both bearing the surname “Harman”. Given a choice of that or Dromey, they’ve probably both regretted not picking a partner called Smith or Booth or whatever…
To tell the truth, she wasn’t a raving beauty or anything, in fact she looked like a Blue Peter presenter without the sex, but that’s not what turned my head in those days. Instead, I favoured cerebral, left-leaning older women, with strong opinions and attitude. I still do, but I can do without the attitude and the older bit. Anyway, Harriet was something of a fantasy girl for the young UKHamlet in the seventies – I’m sure she’ll be delighted to hear it – but it wasn’t in a prurient way. Well, not often anyway.
No, I put Ms Harman on a mental pedestal. This is because I worked hard at not regarding women as sex objects in those days, and it would have been a betrayal of my principles to actually fancy getting jiggy with Harriet.
Jack... what has she done to you?
She was something special then; you could see there was this long, steady, unbroken ladder in her future. She was a woman of destiny and I suspect that destiny lies in Number 10 Downing Street one day. If that happens then every man will know that the battle of the sexes has been lost, because redressing the balance of history will become a mantra we men will all suffer. In my view, she has moved from a position of being pro-women (a good thing) to anti-men (a not so good thing).
In March 2009 Harman was criticised for anti-male bias over the issue of the impact of the recession. After a government report suggested that women were twice as likely to lose their jobs as men and feared losing their jobs more than men, Harman stated “we will not allow women to become the victims of this recession”. However, some statistics contradicted her position, including the Office for National Statistics report on the issue which stated “the economic downturn in 2008 has impacted less on women in employment than men”.
According to the ONS men were losing their jobs at twice the rate of women. The Government Equalities Office insisted the ONS figures did not render pointless its efforts to help women. Philip Davies was particularly critical of Harman, stating that she “seems to see everything in terms of gender. The obvious implication is that more should be done for women than for men”.
In June 2009 Sir Michael Scholar, head of the UK Statistics Authority wrote to Harman giving her an official warning for inappropriate use of statistics on gender salary gaps. Harman chose to use a 23% figure which was almost doubled the real divide as it failed to take account of the fact that women were far more likely to work in part time jobs which generally have significantly lower rates of pay.
Harman was even warned beforehand that the figure she chose could be misleading and that the more accurate figure was 12.8%. Scholar stated “The Statistics Authority is concerned this may undermine public trust in official statistics”. The Equalities Office rejected his criticism, saying: ‘With women representing over three-quarters of the part-time workforce, we believe this figure gives the fullest picture of the country’s gender pay gap.’
Resistance is futile
More recently, she has proclaimed that “Men cannot be trusted to run things on their own”, a statement so laced in invective that I have difficulty believing a serious, intelligent and educated person could have uttered it, let alone a government minister and moreover, someone who was a standard bearer for left wing women. This implication that somehow men are untrustworthy and less than women is gaining currency amongst feminists and they don’t seem to see that all they are doing is inviting a back lash: one that will result in a win / lose situation – the worst possible outcome of the gender debate.
Whatever happened to win / win?
We are about to enter into a period of conservative government, combined with austerity and an unravelling of the few human and worker rights gained from a decade of right-wing Labour. Things are going to be tough. It’s likely that Gordon Brown’s Labour Party will be decimated at the next election and the only option for Labour strategists is to fight a rearguard action and limit the damage DaveCam will wreak on their numbers. Putting the fear of God into men who are already being steadily emasculated and have generally lost their position in society and way through life is not likely to enhance Labour’s chances.
Neither will it increase the likelihood of women voting for Labour. Those to whom this kind of nonsense appeals are probably default Labour voters anyway, so no gain there. Other women will find it stupid and misplaced in a world where we should be seeking harmony not division.
So what is Harman’s strategy? The probability is that this sits on two stools. One is a need for her to fit things to her world view. She is, in essence, a third wave feminist and takes a post-structuralist view of gender and sexuality, inasmuch as she seems to emphasise inherent differences between the sexes, rather than ascribe role definition to social conditioning. Although her adherence to social engineering as a palliative to what she sees as the undervalued role of women in society would indicate that she’s flexible on this – a politician’s response to philosophical questions, I guess.
The other stool is her manoeuvring for the leadership of the Labour Party and ultimately the Premiership of Britain. This is where she will score big time, and in two significant ways: this is firstly and foremost a direct appeal to the feminists in the party – and there are lots of them. Almost by definition, a female member of the Labour Party will be a feminist, those that aren’t generally are of the older generation and likely to have little enough time or energy to attempt to derail a Harman first strike. They will lap this up. The second is establishing in the minds of the Labour membership the idea that male leadership has screwed up, and that crucially this is a peculiarly male problem. Her “Lehmann Sisters” sound bite will reinforce this in a way any amount of logical argument would have difficulty matching. It will become part of the folklore that the current and all previous economic problems have arisen because the blokes have had the keys to the shop.
Oddly enough I think the current economic crisis is directly and unequivocally attributable to the low tax, I want it all and I want it now themes of the Thatcher experiment. The failure of governments in the eighties and nineties to invest in industry and infrastructure has left Britain overly dependent on service industries (especially the banks) and foreign investment. The cuts in the social wage have resulted in a need to redress the balance of depredation; something for which New Labour can be rightfully lauded. Investment in hospitals and infrastructure is at an all time high – just right for the Tories to come along and rape in the name of efficiency. And forgive me, but I guess it might be fair to say that Maggie is a woman, albeit one with an anti-social agenda.
It’s only one example, but it underlines the complete falsehood of Harman’s position on men’s contribution to the problems of the world. It’s true to say that men have been largely instrumental in a historical context, but it isn’t necessarily a masculine problem, it’s one of ideology, of adherence to worn out concepts of market economics and dominance of capital over labour. Just because it’s men doing the oppressing, doesn’t mean to say that they blanch at oppressing both sexes. Equally, I can envisage women being just as enthusiastic as oppressors – something Harriet underscores with her anti-male pronouncements.
In the long run this may establish Harriet as a serious contender for the leadership of the Labour Party – but at 59 she’s probably too old to be in the running for the leadership of the country, unless Gordon pulls one out of the bag and then gets the rug tugged two years into another series of screw-ups. The best she can probably hope for is leader of Her Maj’s Loyal Opposition, which will, in turn, lead to a ten year stint for DaveCam. This is what I see as Lose / Lose.
The Stop Harriet campaign starts here.
