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New book about early Labour women MPs

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Mary Honeyball MEP, book, Labour Women MPsThe trailblazers who laid the foundations for women in the House of Commons.

The first three Labour women MPs took their seats in 1923. They were Margaret Bondfield, Dorothy Jewson and Susan Lawrence.

And in 1929, Margaret Bondfield, MP for Northampton, became the first woman to be a British Cabinet minister.

Bondfield was Minister of Labour in Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government after a long career in the industrial wing of the Labour movement.

Mary Honeyball’s book ‘Parliamentary Pioneers: Labour Women MPs 1918-1945’ is a compelling account of the trailblazers who laid the foundations for women having an influential voice in the House of Commons.

Parliamentary Pioneers tells the story of the issues these first MPs championed, the challenges they faced and the lives they led.

Their story is told through the prism of key contemporary issues, such as working-class women’s fight for birth control in the 1920s and 30s, and with chapters on work, welfare, peace and internationalism and the Labour Party in the House of Commons, this book brings to life the little known history of the first Labour women to sit as MPs.

It was not until the Labour landslide of 1997 that over 100 Labour women were returned to the House of Commons and fair representation for women at Westminster is proving to be an ongoing slog.

Currently Labour MEP for London and an authoritative spokesperson on women’s rights and gender equality, Honeyball read Modern History at Oxford University’s Somerville College and went on to have a career in the charity sector before entering politics full time.

She has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2000 and is Labour spokesperson on the European Parliament Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee, a position she has held for over 10 years.

She also has a long record of activity in the Labour Party women’s organisation, having been chair of the London Labour Party Women’s Committee and Treasurer of Emily’s List, which aimed to get more Labour women into Parliament.

Baroness Joyce Gould of Potternewton, former Labour Party Chief Woman Officer and National Agent, said of the book: ‘At a period when women are still so underrepresented in British politics Mary couldn’t have chosen a more prescient time to publish Parliamentary Pioneers.

‘This is an important reminder not only of the early struggle following the suffragette movement, but of how these tough women worked so hard to dismantle entrenched views on gender and risked being ridiculed in the process.’

‘Parliamentary Pioneers: Labour Women MPs 1918-1945’ has so far been published in hardback and for Kindle.

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