In Lesbian Visibility Week it’s important to remind ourselves of how far we’ve come.
Of the 265 female MPs that sit in the House of Commons today, twenty women are living openly as lesbian or bisexual – 7.5%. Which probably isn’t far off the percentage of women openly gay or queer in the general population. There’s no doubt we’ve come a long way from the very first woman known to be a lesbian while sitting as a MP in the UK.
Maureen Colquhoun was elected MP for Northampton North for the Labour party in 1974. A graduate of the London School of Economics, and an ex-senior Civil Servant, she was married to Keith, a Sunday Times journalist, and had three children. She had stood as a candidate for Labour in Tonbridge a couple of years before, and was described as “a respected voice” in the party in her campaign leaflet for this election, which she lost.
She was an ardent feminist, and during her tenure as an MP supported action to raise the status of women across the boundaries of class and of educational achievements. In 1975 she introduced the Balance of Sexes Bill which sought to set in law a requirement for Ministerial appointments and members of public bodies to be equally distributed between men and women. It won’t surprise you to hear that this never became law.
Whilst the Bill was being drafted Maureen worked closely with Barbara (Babs) Todd, publisher of the famed lesbian magazine Sappho. They fell in love, and Maureen left her husband to set up home with Babs, taking her teenage children with her. They lived openly as a gay couple, however, the relationship was never publicly announced.
A Daily Mail journalist, Nigel Dempster, contrived to be invited to the couple’s housewarming party and wrote about their relationship in his column, effectively outing Maureen to the whole of the country without her consent. As a result, their Hackney residence and their offices were besieged by journalists vying for photos. Colquhoun’s family, including her children, ex-husband, and 78 year-old mother, were harangued by the press.
The constituency party attempted to deselect her claiming that “she was elected as a wife and mother” and because she “wasted time on trivialities such as women’s rights” – the misogynistic patriarchy firmly in charge here! They were unsuccessful in their attempt to unseat her, following an intervention by the Labour party Central Office, but Maureen lost the seat in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government swept to power.
Maureen and Babs eventually married, living for many years in the Lake District. Maureen remained active in local politics. She succumbed to COVID in March 2021, now living on the south coast of England, with Babs passing just a couple of years later. The couple are survived by their children.
Maureen Colquhoun was the trailblazer for the lesbian and queer female MPs representing us all in Parliament today. She paved the way for Justine Greening, who, in 2011, was appointed Secretary of State for Transport and was the first openly gay women to sit in the Cabinet. At that time, there were just three gay / queer women in Parliament. She went on to become Secretary of State for Education in 2016 – where I was lucky enough to work with her for a short time. She is a principled woman who stood up to Boris Johnson about the implementation of Brexit, and I admired her.
In 1976, when Maureen Colquhoun was vilified by the press for her sexuality, I was 14 years old, and living in her Northampton North constituency. I now know I had a deeply supressed attraction to girls and women even then. It didn’t even occur to me that I could be anything but heterosexual, and I have no doubt that stories like Maureen’s would have influenced my wholly unconscious decision to bury the best part of me deep, deep down inside, and to not allow it to surface fully for more than 40 years.
Someone said you can’t be what you can’t see. I am grateful to Maureen, to Justine, and to the 20 lesbian and queer women in Parliament today for being seen so that others, like me, can just ‘be’.
Sheila Edwards, Business Development Manager
Justine Greening, By DFID – UK Department for International Development
Labour Party election leaflet, 1970 (Tonbridge)
