We are delighted to invite you to join a discussion with LWN's Nan Sloane and Kiran Mahil and they will be joined by Alison McGovern MP, Labour MP for Wirral South, and Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions, as we mark the centenary of the election of the first three women Labour MPs, Margaret Bondfield, Susan Lawrence and Dorothy Jewson. 

For Women’s History Month, join Shadow Employment Minister Alison McGovern MP, author Nan Sloane and history teacher Kiran Mahil as we celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the election of the first ever women Labour MPs. Margaret Bondfield, Susan Lawrence and Dorothy Jewson were elected in the December 2023 General Election, with Margaret -a working class trade unionist and universal suffrage campaigner- going on to become the first ever woman Cabinet Minister and first female Privy Counsellor. Largely written out of Labour and feminist history since, the centenary of their election provides a welcome opportunity to bring them back to the consciousness of the Labour movement.

Alison McGovern is Labour MP for Wirral South, and the shadow employment minister.  She has served her hometown as their Member of Parliament since 2010.  Under Keir Starmer's leadership, she returned to the frontbench in 2020, and now leads on labour market policy, after 3 years on the Treasury Select Committee responsible for scrutiny of the UK's monetary and financial institutions. She was chair of Progress 2015-20, the organisation for Labour’s progressives, and as a pro-European, also took a leading role in the cross-party backbench liaison on Brexit. Before joining the House of Commons, she was deputy leader of the Labour group in the London Borough of Southwark.  She is a regular on broadcast and in print on political and economic topics.  Outside of politics, she is a season ticket holder at Liverpool Football Club and a contributor to the Anfield Wrap podcast. 

Nan Sloane is an author, speaker and LWN trainer. Her books include Uncontrollable Women: Radicals, Reformers and Revolutionaries, and The Women In the Room: Labour’s Forgotten History. A member of the LWN Committee since 2007, she is the architect of the LWN Political School and the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Scheme, and is elected to Labour's National Women's Committee. Outside of the UK she has delivered training in the Balkans, in Middle East and North African countries, as well as in Ghana, Botswana and South Africa. She was previously Regional Director of Yorkshire & Humber Labour, and Director of the Centre for Women & Democracy. 

Kiran Mahil was elected Secretary of LWN in 2019. Originally from the West Midlands, Kiran works as an Assistant Head Teacher in an East End secondary school. She is passionate about embedding inclusion and resilience in education.  She was previously National Women's Officer for the Labour Party, and an advisor to Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, where she worked to reveal the disproportionate impact of austerity on women, and is a graduate of the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Scheme.

Join LWN for a warm and informative night as we put the first three trailblazing women Labour MPs back on the map.

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