Rag, New Statesman last week.

When the “Pestminster” scandal hit British politics last October, a group of Labour women set up their own campaign, called LabourToo. The aim was to collect Labour women’s experiences of sexual harassment and abuse in the hope of alerting the party leadership to a problem that had been ignored for too long.

At least four MPs are accused of misconduct – including inappropriate touching, propositioning, trying to take advantage of a drunk teenager, and ignoring a rape complaint.
The report, entitled “#LabourToo: Women’s experiences of sexual harassment, abuse and discrimination in the Labour Party”, tells 43 anonymised stories by party staffers, activists, politicians and candidates at both a national and local level, including reports of rape, groping, lewd comments and sexist attitudes.
One story recounts a rape during the party’s annual conference. “I was raped at [party conference], a man was harassing me and wouldn’t leave me alone,” reads the testimony. “I am no longer a member of the party and this at least in part played a role. I told my region and an MP I trusted. No-one cared.”


Another similar account from a party conference describes being molested in a hotel room by a drunk senior party official. “He pushed me down onto the bed and started to kiss and grope me,” the writer recalls. “I told him no and to stop but he ignored it.”
There are also reports on a local level, with one woman being groped by a “councillor who was very well-known to senior figures in the local Labour Party for being a serial groper of women” while out canvassing: “He would come up behind me and put a hand on my hips or round my waist when feeding back the data, and would always want to put ‘vote Labour’ stickers on women in a way that meant he could touch their breasts.”
Although more than 43 accounts were submitted to the group, some had to be left out for naming perpetrators or for fear of identifying the writer – LabourToo, including its organisers, are anonymous. Its main aim is not to shame the party, but to achieve structural change.