When the old guard told us we were brave to start a political party, hardly anyone meant that as a compliment. Perhaps it is naive to believe in the possibility of a better future, but inequality was yawning ever wider, with women and girls at the sharp end. Frankly, setting up the Women’s Equality party (WE) wasn’t so much brave as a no-brainer.
Why not simply join a mainstream party or use our media platforms to campaign? Well, we saw old parties adopting the rhetoric of populism to woo voters, while editors platformed toxic views in the name of balance, and clickbait-hungry broadcasters turned dangerous buffoons into reality stars.
For almost a decade, WE thrived, offering transformative solutions and making a real difference, not because of our own efforts but thanks to the thousands of brilliant people who picked up the idea and ran with it. Just this May, Stacy Hart won a seat on Basingstoke borough council, trouncing the Tory incumbent and securing 59% of the vote. She joined a growing band of WE councillors including our first elected representative, Kay Wesley in Congleton, already re-elected for a second term.
Each of these women models how much political upstarts can achieve. Despite this, we have come to the reluctant conclusion that this beloved organisation, part movement, part community, passionate and extraordinary, has run its course. At November’s special conference, we will back a motion proposing its closure.
We reached this decision after much soul-searching and against the pleadings of our own hearts. WE’s executive and steering committees have been examining options, and we both initially gravitated towards ideas that would preserve the party, keenly aware of the implications for staff, volunteers, members, supporters, elected representatives and voters.
Whatever conference decides, our immediate concern is to ensure that not a single activist takes this discussion as a deterrent to ambition. WE’s history carries exactly the opposite message, a prompt to action on as grand a scale as possible. If one small, but mighty party can do so much, what could not be achieved with more resources?
Money has always been a problem, with most of the party’s income coming from members who were already cash-strapped before the one-two punch of the pandemic and cost of living crisis. Unlike other parties, we have never received large donations from corporates or super-rich individuals. In fact, in the early days of the party we turned down a gamechanging sum after the potential donor explained the strings attached: we would have to change the name of the party. Yep, ditch “Women”. Thanks, but no thanks.
If funding were the only issue, we would almost certainly advocate for keeping going. But business as usual is not an option. The world has changed and so we are calling for an end as a new beginning.
Let us explain.
Our founding idea was simple: if we could show there were votes in feminism, the old parties would attempt to neutralise us by mimicking us, just as we had seen them do with Ukip and its successors.
The ploy worked. WE racked up a whacking number of votes in our very first election, triggering the anticipated response. From then on, WE delivered each of our successive manifestos to other parties with a label reading “please steal us”, and they did. They put up women against us, too, and echoed our positions on vital subjects they had previously ignored. As a result, wherever WE ran, WE won.
Winning seats is, of course, the main change mechanism for traditional political parties. Despite direct victories, we never expected to make much of a dent that way. First-past-the-post elections most sharply disadvantage exactly those people whose voices are lacking in politics, marginalised women and minorities. At the 2019 general election, WE showcased a different route to winning, fielding survivors of violence to stand against five MPs facing unresolved allegations of abuse and harassment. Not one of those MPs returned to parliament. Which other parties do you know that can boast an electoral clean sweep?
This proud record sits alongside WE’s substantial contribution to grassroots campaigning on reproductive rights, tackling misogyny and racism in the police and other institutions, and spotlighting discrimination in its many forms including sexual harassment and the gender pay gap. WE held a members’ assembly to try to shed light and diminish heat in the fight between trans inclusive and gender critical feminism that is weakening the women’s movement to the delight of regressive populists. This list represents just a tiny fraction of the party’s positive impacts and legacy.
Perhaps WE’s greatest contribution – and most enduring change mechanism – has been to bring exceptionally talented people into politics. Within a few short years of the wonderful Mandu Reid attending her first meeting, she became the first woman of colour ever to helm a UK political party. As Zoe Williams recently observed in the Guardian: “in a world with rational priorities, she would be a much bigger household name.”
Other parties have been quick to notice, recruiting former WE candidates with promises of safer seats. As a result, our candidates can find themselves contesting seats alongside sisters-in-arms who wear the colours of another party but were or are WE members.
UK politics operates as a club. WE have always aimed to open doors, rather than pull up drawbridges. That is why WE are the only party to extend membership to members of other parties, and sometimes endorse their candidates in return for them embracing our policies. WE have worked particularly closely with the Green party, helping to draft a cross-party bill, and exploring a range of collaborative models from joint candidacies up to a permanent alliance. Climate change is gendered in its causes and its outcomes. At the general election earlier this year, WE endorsed the Green’s Siân Berry, and unveiled a joint policy platform, A New Deal for Care. She in turn won a seat in parliament promising to champion our flagship universal free childcare policy.
It even used to be possible to work with those Conservatives who regarded gender inequality and climate change as urgent issues rather than fodder for culture wars. As recently as Theresa May’s premiership, one of her chief advisers called us to Downing Street to discuss which WE policies the government might incorporate in its legislative programme. Now we operate in a political landscape where the Tories’ attempts to contain the electoral threat from the hard right has instead seen them fully captured by it.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s Labour has also veered to the right, fixated on discipline, both fiscal and within its own ranks. The leadership barely listens to its MPs and wider membership, so it is hardly likely to pay heed to us. Nor would they be tempted by our policies. WE view care as an investment; they see it as an expense that can be cut.
All of this means that merely tweaking our approach cannot be enough, and this isn’t just about WE. The last Westminster election might have looked like a return to safer ground, just as the 2020 US presidential contest did, but such results are misleading. In many countries, populism and tech-driven polarisation are winning, to the benefit of the far right and other extremists, dictators and repressive regimes around the globe.
We must do more, not less, to confront the storm. Far from giving up the fight for equality, the two of us, like many other activists, are hard at work on ways to gear it up, to regroup, renew, and return, roaring. And if the conference decides that the Women’s Equality party is no longer the most effective vehicle for change, we know that its energy, inspiration, knowledge and, above all, its people are more than capable of leading a new charge.
• Catherine Mayer and Sandi Toksvig are co-founders of the Women’s Equality party
