If I look back at my journey to the House of Commons, actually it began long before I took any formal steps on the political road.
I was never able to keep my mouth shut or refrain from interfering when I saw or heard something going on that I thought was wrong, or unfair or cruel. If I saw a big child bullying a small child – up I would pop to tell the bully to stop – whatever their size!
When I was in any gathering of people and someone would say something derogatory about others who were gay or black or Jewish – I would always confront them – never letting casual collusion hold sway.
And I was always trying to help people – whether they wanted help or not. As a young teenager I visited old people in their homes. I progressed to volunteering once a week with a hospital radio station – sometimes doing programmes from the wards and then later I worked as a volunteer in a big London hospital taking menus around the wards and sitting as company with those patients who were terribly and often terminally ill – but who had no family.
Now put all that together with my student days at Oxford Brookes (it used to be OxPoly) – where to be anything other than revolutionary ruined your social life. It was there that I marched against Maggie Thatcher (in those days Education Minister trying to take power away from student unions) and threw flour-bags at her effigy.
It was also there that I led my first campaign. It wasn’t political per se – but the powers that be wanted to turn it into a university and have all degree courses instead of (in my view) continuing the phenomenal Shirley Williams’ vision of polytechnics where all skills – whether academic or trades – are together. My own course – an art and design course – was one of those under threat. So the ‘Save Art’ campaign was my first. It was magnificent. We did delay the termination – but as with all student days – they come to an end and as you can see – after my era there it did eventually become a university.
Anyway – that campaign politicised me – and I looked at the three options then. Back then in around 1974 the Tories had brought the country to ruin with the three-day week. When they fell and Wilson and the Labour government came in – they were equally dreadful. And in those days there were only six Liberal MPs and the Liberals were not really an option for me.
So I went away for twenty years and lived my life, had a career (designer), marriage, two children and divorced! When my children were about two and seven, Maggie Thatcher was Prime Minister and I thought she was creating a terrible, selfish, me first world. It was then that I decided to throw my hat in the political ring and fight for the sort of world I wanted to bring my children up in. All the volunteering I had done had been personally rewarding – but it didn’t change the big picture of what was wrong. Only the political process could really deliver that sort of change – so politics it would be.
Back then, I had a hard time choosing between Labour and Liberal Democrats (what was the old Liberal Party had grown up, joined with the Social Democrats and become a properly rounded political philosophy). In the end I chose the Lib Dems because of their values and beliefs about equality and justice, fairness, the individual and community, their commitment to the environment and their internationalist perspective. And I couldn’t stomach the authoritarianism and centralist controlling structures of the Labour Party.
So – the rest is mostly have mouth will travel! I joined the Liberal Democrats – and politics and I found each other. From when I first stood to be MP for Hornsey & Wood Green in 1997 – finishing 26,000 votes behind Labour – to winning in May 2005 took eight years (and three general elections in total). I also spent eight years as a councillor on Haringey where we went 0 to 25 councillors and are now hoping to take the Council next time – and on route I spent five years on the London Assembly.
So – it was never about ‘becoming’ an MP. It was always about driving forward a political agenda about all the things I hold important. Just as now I am here in the Commons – it’s not about ‘being’ an MP – it’s about what you can do whilst you are here!
This piece first appeared in Politick! – a cross-party political magazine for young people aged 16-35.
(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008
Lynne Featherstone 