women and men working in partnership

Press passes for women's magazines

by Lesley Abdela
for Charter 88 http://www.charter88.org.uk
4th Dec. 2000

Violations of Rights in Britain Series 2 No.15

This year is the 75th anniversary of the first women journalists officially being allowed into the House of Commons. On 1 December 1919, two female journalists were allowed to sit in the press gallery to cover one of the most momentous events in British democracy this century; Nancy Astor arriving to take her seat in the House of Commons as the first woman MP. It was the result of a long, hard and often dangerous struggle by thousands upon thousands of brave women and men. Since the Great Reform Act of 1832 formally outlawed women's right to vote at general elections, women have been excluded as second class subjects. Today, the efforts to gain equal treatment for women is a battle far from won. For at the heart of our political system is the House of Commons and it remains locked in the nineteenth century.

Last April I was appointed the first Political Editor of a major women's magazine.

For fifteen years I have been working hard to widen democracy in the UK and other countries to include women and men equally. In particular I helped start the all-party 300 Group for women in politics and public life. This group was formed in 1980 with the express aim of campaigning to get equal numbers of male and female Members of Parliament.

The 300 Group devised such activities as debates in committee rooms of the House of Commons - on defence, international affairs, women and the budget, and so on - weekends at Oxford on the Third World, and annual three-day training/conference-cruises, as well as innumerable extra gatherings in committee rooms of the Palace of Westminster to hear relevant politicians from home and overseas.

I wrote a paperback with a Daily Mail sub-editor's tongue in cheek title Women With X Appeal on the experiences and thoughts of 30 women in contemporary British politics, from the parish pump to Westminster and Brussels. I have written features on politics and politically related issues for most of Britain's broadsheets and regional press. I have interviewed literally hundreds of politicians, male and female - including the then Chancellor John Major for the Sunday Times - as well as the current speaker Betty Boothroyd and her immediate predecessor Jack (now Lord) Weatherill.

Last year, to examine where Parliament stood on legislation the UK's 29 million women still require, I developed the idea of the House of Commons 'Week on Women', now picked up as an annual event by the Fawcett Society.

I recount all this to show that I am not a naive, inexperienced outsider to Westminister. Indeed, I worked my political apprenticeship in the late 1970s as a Parliamentary researcher in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. I prepared briefings and Parliamentary Questions for MPs and Peers on a wide variety of topics, especially on the environment, nuclear power, alternative energy sources, small business, fisheries and Third World development - all issues of the greatest pertinence still.

When the week long event in parliament had been completed, Marcelle D'Argy Smith, Editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, asked if I would become its political editor and write regularly on politics for its two and half million readers.

My brief is to write about politics in a way that will engage women readers and encourage them to take an active interest in democracy, especially the two million or so readers in the 16 - 35 year old group. This was music to my ears. The Cosmo 'audience' is one which politicians urgently need to get through to - and don't.

Last April, therefore, I applied, on Cosmopolitan headed paper, to the Serjeant at Arms' office for a 'photo identity pass' that would allow me journalistic access to the Palace of Westminster, to the press gallery and the lobbies.

I was promptly refused a pass.

I did not expect a "no".

Now, as so often happens to all of us, something which started as an individual matter - helping me to do the job I'm paid to do for Cosmopolitan's readership - has become a larger matter, going even deeper, like Alice in Wonderland, into just how arcane, obsolete, secretive - and unaccountable - is the Palace of Westminster.

I spoke about this to Mark Fisher MP, promoter of the Right to Know Bill and a great proponent of freedom of information. He said he felt it was an issue of extending democracy; that I had an important audience, who have a right to know about parliament and its work. He suggested I find out if I could appeal, which I did.

But first, the point about the right to know is an important one. We should all admire tremendously Britain's women's magazines - magazines like Cosmopolitan, She, Good Housekeeping, Elle, Woman, Woman's Own, Marie Claire, Options and the rest. Pick one up at a dentist's if need be. They do sterling work, writing on matters too often overlooked by a parliament 90% male. Economic and social issues crucial to women, as well as human rights and some world affairs.

Women's magazines have stunningly large readerships - millions upon millions every month. Only mysognists could dismiss then as unimportant.

I asked the Serjeant at Arms how I could appeal against his decision to refuse me a press pass. He said that I could try appealing to the Administration Committee of the House of Commons. The Administration Committee consists of seven members - chaired by Labour MP Michael Martin, member for Glasgow Springburn, four Conservatives (one woman - Marion Roe), an Ulster Unionist; no Liberal Democrats, no Plaid Cmyru or Scots Nats. The Committee Clerk is Mr K.J.Brown.

Starting in Spring of last year I left telephone messages asking if Michael Martin would be kind enough to call me back to explain the procedures for appealing to his Committee for a press pass. I wrote to him, including samples of features I had written for The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and women's magazines, including Cosmo. I offered to visit him at the House of Commons to prove I was a bona fide journalist and answer any questions they might want to put to me.

The weeks and months ticked past and I didn't hear from him. I left further messages.

In my eighteen years being in close touch with Parliament, Michael Martin was the first MP who had not bothered either to call me back or answer my letters or at the very least to get a secretary or researcher to acknowledge my calls. Not once.

Finally in February this year (1994) I received two short letters. The first dated 1 February was headed "The Administration Committee".

Dear Lesley Abdela,
Thank you for your letter of 10th January in which you seek a meeting to discuss the possibility of a press gallery Press Pass being issued to you as the representative of Cosmopolitan Magazine.
I would prefer to seek the advice of the House authorities and my colleagues on your submission and will be in touch again in due course.

Yours sincerely
Michael Martin
Chairman

The second letter dated 17 February came from Peter Jennings, Deputy Serjeant at Arms.

Dear Lesley Abdela,
I have been asked to write to you because your request for a Palace of Westminster photo-identity pass in your capacity as Political Editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine was considered by members of the Administration Commitee at their meeting held on 15th February. I very much regret to have to let you know that your request, after careful consideration, was not agreed to.

With Kind Regards
Peter Jennings
Deputy Serjeant at Arms

I had not been given any opportunity to appear before the Administration Committee. I was given no reasons for the refusal. The responses from the Administration Committee and the Serjeant at Arms office when I asked for reasons for their refusal have simply implied that they are not accountable to anyone. Who do the functionaries in the House of Commons think they are, if they think they can just stop the representatives of millions of readers following their proceedings?

In 1992, I was invited by former Cabinet Minister Shirley Williams (now Baroness Williams of Crosby) to be part-time consultant and trainer on 'women and democracy' for Harvard University's Project Liberty. Project Liberty is working to help build democracies in the post-totalitarian nations of East and Central Europe. We have already devised and run workshops with other organisations such as the Prague Centre of Independent Journalism, the British Council and locally based groups in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. Should I tell them in Eastern Europe about how the House of Commons treats women magazine editors?

After the Jennings letter I wrote again to Michael Martin and each of the Administration Committee MPs.

On 2 March 1994 the Clerk of the Administration Committee wrote to me as follows;

Dear Ms Abdela,
The Chairman of the Committee, Mr Michael Martin has asked me to thank you for your latest letter to him dated 18 February and has asked me to reply on behalf of himself and other members of the commitee to whom I understand you have also written.
I can confirm that your latest representation to the Members of the Committee was considered at their last meeting. However, I regret to inform you that the Committee saw no reason to change its original decision. It is not usual practice for the Committee to explain its decisions on these matters. However, I am sure that your previous experience of the House will enable you to understand the measures and constraints affecting decisions of this nature.

KJ Brown.

Even re-reading this letter I seethe with anger at its breathtaking arrogance. I have spent most of my past fifteen years fighting for and promoting democracy and a more open society. Yet parliament is still allowed to be run in outrageously undemocratic and secretive ways. What 'measures and constraints'? As for my 'previous experience' this tells me that the House of Commons has a long way to go.

Do I understand? Hell no! It gets worse. I contacted the Public Information Office, a first class service for whom I always have the highest praise (I hope this encomium doesn't sink them) to ask what rights I might have in seeking a press pass as Political Editor of a major magazine. The PIO told me that as a member of the public I have no rights.

It seems a strange old Mother of Parliaments where people working for tabloid newspapers which publish intimate details of the sex lives of politicians have photo-identity passes to come and go freely, but someone working for a great women's magazine is excluded from the very forum which has a crucial if irresponsible say in women's lives.

"Good Lordie - if you let one damned woman's magazine in, those others'll want the same privilege!" I've heard. But this is surely what we do want, and this is what we have been fighting for.

Put my case aside, or better still generalise it. Access to Parliament for the great women's magazines will extend our democracy. We want all the women's magazines to come and hear the House in action as of right. This is one small way in which we begin to change the culture of the House of Commons and begin to demystify what goes on (to quote a cliché) in the corridors of power.

The House of Commons cannot continue to be run as a club for members only. Are they afraid that if they let in people like me in we might start asking questions about its working hours, its archaic procedures and its unintelligible proceedings? Of course they are - and they're right.

Who owns Parliament anyway? We the people or a tiny cabal of self-important and unaccountable public servants at Westminster? There do seem to be murky and important implications hidden behind this refusal to give a press pass to a daring women's magazine.

lesley.abdela@shevolution.com

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