Charlotte Kelly In 1937, Stella Browne, an active member of the Fabian Society, told a Commons Committee that she had previously chosen an abortion. In doing so, she was confessing to the criminal act of procuring a miscarriage under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, a crime carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. No legal action was taken against her. As a founder of the Abortion Law Reform Association, she described the ban on abortion as “a sexual taboo [

Catherine Deakin Catherine Deakin is a charity director and Chair of Governors at a primary school. She is a former local councillor and Labour parliamentary candidate. As we’re in the full swing of the school holidays, now is the perfect time to think about taking on a new public leadership role before September. Every day, thousands of school governors help shape the education of millions of children and make decisions about strategy, safeguarding and spending. It’s one o

Anya Sizer is a member of the Fabian Women Network's executive committee Perhaps because the parallels with my own situation (having recently lost my truly loved job in politics due to the elections) or perhaps because so much of my social media seemed to have been picking up on one woman’s story, it was no surprise that the formidable Stacey Duguid’ recent posts hit me in the way they did. When I spoke to her, Stacey describes being “dumbfounded” at the response to her post

There are days in politics that remind you why you got into it in the first place, and days that make you wonder why you bother. At Sir Keir Starmer's final Prime Minister's Questions, the House of Commons gave us the first kind of day. As a Labour councillor, an immigrant woman of colour sitting in opposition on my own council, I want to tell you why it mattered. Watching PMQs is rarely a lesson in grace. It is usually a lesson in performance: point-scoring dressed up as scr