A PATRIOTIC WEEKEND

Maybe by accident rather than design, I feel as if I have had a patriotic and possible celebratory couple of days. The Lord Mayor’s Show yesterday and now Remembrance Sunday have made this a fairly untypical couple of days.

Of course we should remember those who gave their lives in both World Wars and all the other conflicts where men and women have been sent to fight. There is no question about this, and it is a tribute to our armed services, veterans’ organisations and everyone else involved both nationally and locally that we have the level and seriousness of remembrance we have experienced today.

Yet I always feel uncomfortable watching the spectacle at the Cenotaph, especially now when Britain is involved in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq and has troops stationed in other parts of the world. Our country is still sending young men all over the globe to be slaughtered in some foreign field.

Only this morning the Chief of Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, made the case for the war in Afghanistan on the Andrew Marr programme. It boiled down to this: since there is a vacuum is a dangerous part of the world, someone needs to make sure things do not get out of hand.

While I would not disagree with this, I would have thought Stirrups’s argument is grounds for full international co-operation. Even I, a Labour MEP with a history of anti-war activity, would concede that it is sometimes necessary to send troops to troubled parts of the world, especially when such action would help reduce terrorism and curtail the drugs trade. However, I do think the pain and suffering should be equally shared by all the countries who stand to gain.

Notwithstanding the fact that the City of London is not at all integrated into the rest of London government, the Lord Mayor’s Show is a great spectacle. I was fortunate to be invited to watch it by the Stationers and Papermakers Livery Company.

There has been a Lord Mayor of London since 1189, though it wasn't until 1215, when King John granted a Charter allowing the City's citizens to elect their own mayor, that the Lord Mayor's Show actually came into being. The Charter stipulated that the new Mayor must be presented to the Sovereign for approval and to swear fealty to the Crown, so each year the newly elected Mayor had to travel from the City to Westminster to pledge allegiance.

The Lord Mayor has been making that yearly journey for 784 years. The modern Lord Mayor's procession is a direct descendant of that first journey to Westminster.

On a weekend when war in Europe is on our minds it was interesting to reflect on the unbroken nature of British history and tradition. Never really having suffered invasion and revolution like most EU countries, events such as the Lord Mayor’s Show have survived more or less in their original form. The same applies to many of our organs of state and institutions of government. This can sometimes be a weakness rather than a strength.

While the current financial crisis is not the time to introduce constitutional reform, I would urge the Prime Minister to return to this sooner rather than later. While I would always wish to maintain the helpful parts of history and tradition, Gordon Brown would do us all good by dragging those elements in Britain which require it into the twentieth century.

GLENROTHES

What an amazing victory. There is no doubt now that the Labour Party and our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, are back in the race. Even more so as both the Tories and Lib Dems lost their deposits. Although Glenrothes was always going to be a contest between Labour and the SNP, the exceptionally poor showing by the two major opposition parties may be significant for a general election.

Gordon took a brave decision to campaign in the constituency which clearly paid off. Sarah was, as ever, a tremendous asset. It’s good to see her taking a higher profile role, and the great thing about Sarah is that she invariably makes the right judgement about what her role should be.

Congratulations to Lindsay Roy, obviously a well known and popular local head teacher and community stalwart. This by-election pressed all the right buttons. I’m even more confident now that we, the Labour Party can, and will, keep it up.

WOMAN'S HOUR POLITICAL BLOGS

This blog had a honourable mention on "Woman's Hour" yesterday during a discussion on political blogs. The item featured ace blogger, Tory Iain Dale, and Professor Jean Seaton. It arose out of Hazel Blears's widely reported comments that political blogs were nasty, brutish but not very short. (The last of those descriptions is my own - I just think many blogs are too long).

At the end of the piece, both Iain and Jean were asked to name blogs they like and Jean mentioned this very one. Thank you Jean. It's great to know you, and hopefully others, like my blog.

You can listen to the Woman's Hour discussion by clicking on the picture below.

SOMALIAN WOMAN STONED TO DEATH

A copy of this important and shocking letter addressed to Frank Dobson, MP for Holborn and St Pancras, was copied to me. The writer lives in Frank's consituency and, as you can see, speaks very much from the heart.

Some years ago I took up the case of a Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal, who was convicted of adultery by a sharia court and sentenced to death by stoning. Thanks to pressure from around the world, including Amnesty International, she was repreieved, unlike this poor woman.

I would ask everyone who reads this to do whatever they can to stop this kind of behaviour which really should not be happening anywhere in the world in the 21st century.

"I was shocked and incredibly moved when I heard of the 13 year old Somalian rape victim, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, who was convicted of adultery and then stoned to death by 50 men, with over a thousand spectators. This is absolutely horrific and barbaric and I, personally, cannot help but feel distressed at the prospect of what she and her family must have gone through. Not only did the authorities fail to protect her and bring about justice concerning the gang-rape, but they again failed her when they did not prevent this unspeakable act of violence and cruelty from happening. I implore you to investigate this further and do everything in your power to prevent such brutality from occurring again, as well as fighting to bring these people to justice. If the matter is outof your hands, I ask for you to please forward this on to the relevant parties."

OBAMA'S LANDMARK VICTORY

The excitement surrounding Obama's victory reminds me of Tony Blair's landslide in 1997. I was there on 2 May when Whitehall was besieged by exuberant well-wishers. The mood stayed that way for some years and Tony Blair never lost an election. His government invested in the National Health Service, raised educational standards to the extent that upward social mobility is now improving and virtually eradicated unemployment.

Blair's landslide was, of course, due in large part to his belief in a better future and his personal charisma. It was also caused by the country being sick of Thatcher and Major and Tory sleaze. People desperately wanted a new dawn.

The same is very true of the Obama victory. The big themes of the Republican Party - tax cutting, outlawing abortion and supporting marriage - are no longer what Americans want. The Republicans were forced to select John McCain, a maverick with unorthodox views, because there was no electable mainstream candidate. McCain then chose Sarah Palin to appease the Republican base, and look where that got him.

America is also becoming less white. US Census Bureau figures indicate that by 2042 white Americans will be in a minority. Some cannier Republicans, notably Karl Rove, understood the electoral implications of this demographic change, which is why President G W Bush supported a liberal policy on immigration, almost certainly much against his instincts.

Even more significant is that not only is segregation dead, but an African-American had succeeded to the highest office in the land. I'm not sure whether this has really yet sunk in. It will transform politics not only in America, but across the world.

Barack Obama is an amazing individual. Bill Clinton was often referred to as an extraordinary American. Mr Obama is ahead even of Mr Clinton. I have a new feeling of optimism which has been lacking for some long time.

THE NEXT AMERICAN PRESIDENT

So Obama has won. Indeed we have won. I think we’ve known for some time what the result would be and it’s now confirmed.

Americans have at last faced up to the racism in their past and voted to draw that terrible era to a close.

Americans have also demonstrated just how fed up they were with the stupid white men who governed them for the past eight years.

I have just one word to say to Barack Obama: women. Hillary gained a great deal of support from working class women. If he is to be a true bringer of change, Obama needs to work for the female half of the population and for women across the world.

Barack – we will be watching you.

THE MISOGYNY OF ROSS AND BRAND

I am going to make one last comment on the Ross/Brand saga and then leave it behind which is where the whole messy tale deserves to be.

The following extract from an article by India Knight in the Sunday Times at the week-end (2 November) puts it very well. Congratulations to India for exposing the attitudes of both Ross and Brand to women.

"......what lies at the centre of this sorry saga is misogyny. None of it would have happened if Ross and Brand displayed - or were asked to display - even an iota of respect for women. Instead, both men have made part of their living out of treating women - wives and mothers excluded - as though they were pieces of meat. This can be very funny but it sticks in the craw.
Ross has an Achilles’ heel: he is a marvellous interviewer of men, but reduces every single female interviewee to meat status. Basically, his whole shtick boils down to “I’d do you”. Unless the woman in question is ancient or deformed, Ross crushes any spark of opinion until said woman can be squashed back into the box labelled “totty”.

Brand, whose issues with sex addiction are well documented, has a similar problem. I interviewed him last summer. He was, shall we say, attentive, rather distractingly so as I sat trying to take notes and keep the conversation on track. My interview appeared in due course.
Three weeks ago I got an e-mail from a friend suggesting that I listen to that week’s radio show podcast. Now, I didn’t go to Brand’s house batting my eyelashes or bandying killer chat-up lines (“My grandpa was Coco the Clown”, maybe); I went to do my job. I was therefore taken aback to find myself named on air as a prelude to Brand discussing my bosoms with, surreally, Noel Gallagher from Oasis, who insistently asked: “Did you sleep with her?”, a question that caused Brand to speculate in some detail about what sleeping with me might have been like. None of this was mean or cruel, but it was out of order and reductive: woman, ergo piece of meat, fair game, punchline, nonperson.

In Ross’s and Brand’s world, it is assumed that all women are gagging for a bit of the old trouser goodness. I don’t necessarily blame them for this: many male celebrities do indeed find it to be so and this assumption happens to be shared by most men - it's just that most men are more discreet about airing their misogyny, because they have normal lives and engage with normal women in normal places, such as offices. Ross, Brand and others operate from ivory towers, no matter how populist their appeal.

The BBC’s failure was in not identifying the alarming propensity of its two presenters for galloping, off-the-scale sexism and in making no attempt to rein it in".

KILLER HEELS AGAIN

I am returning to this subject as I read a very good piece in the Guardian G2 today by Hadley Freeman, the generally sensible fashion editor. Come to think of it a Guardian fashion editor who was anything other than sensible would be a contradiction in terms.

Hadley likens five inch heels to Victorian corsets, the kind which shrank women's waists to half the circumference of their hips and broke ribs into the bargain. Thankfully such barbarity died out after the First World War when a wave of women's emancipation flooded across Europe. The corset faded away, though vestiges of the idea reappeared in the 1950s when constricting underwear made a fairly brief appearance. Nowadays, while some underwear claims to improve the silhouette, it's very rare for it to hurt or cause harm.

So why the killer heels, which actually do hurt and cause damage to the feet and back? Why are these terrible things being promoted and why are serious newspapers, with the honourable exception of the Guardian, running articles taking the view that women should actually indulge in this form of self-torture?

Hadley thinks women in killer heels look like "small children make believing at being grown up". I think it's more to do with incapacitating women. "Sexy" is all too often construed as pliant, malleable and ultimately weak. After all there is not much power in being skinny, ie underfed, and dressed in such a way that it's impossible to move freely. In this sense five and six inch heels are the modern corset. I also believe the pressure to diet and be thin can be seen in the same way.

The 64,000 dollar question is, of course, why do so many women go along with what others, society if you prefer that terminology, want for them even when it is manifestly not in their own interests? Women obviously feel pressured to conform to a certain image and behave in certain ways. Some of this image and some of these behaviours are positively detrimental. It would, I believe, be better for all of us if women, and men as well, felt less need to look and act in certain ways and felt freer to pursue their own destinies, as long as they did not harm others in the process.

SCANDAL OF MOTHERS HELD IN PRISON

I had the following letter printed in the Independent on Saturday 1 November.
The letter deals with a very important topic. I therefore thank the Independent for being bold enough to publish it, including my direct criticism of Tory MEPs.

Scandal of mothers held in prison

Your report on the devastatingly high numbers of mothers imprisoned in the UK for non-violent offences (front page, 27 October) raises an important issue for those of us in front-line politics. In Brussels this year, my colleagues and I made recommendations to EU governments stating that pregnant women and mothers of young children should be jailed only as a last resort.
The report's recommendations, to alleviate the mental and physical dangers posed to mothers and children by a prison environment, were voted through by most MEPs across all countries and parties. But, embarrassingly for the UK, our Conservative MEPs abstained from voting. The Tory MEP Chris Heaton-Harris said the findings of the report "are more coherent with somebody who watched too much Prisoner: Cell Block H as a child than the actual situation of women in prisons".
I hope that your reporting of the realities of numbers of mothers in prison will wake politicians who deny what life is like for a mother raising her child behind bars and spur immediate action to redress this rising birth rate in jails.

Mary Honeyball MEP
Labour Spokesperson in the European Parliament, Women's Rights Committee, London W9