Blair opposed to quotas for women

TONY BLAIR, leader of the Labour Party, will not fight to retain the quota system designed to increase the number of women in parliamentary constituencies, it emerged last night.

The new system, which will award women half the seats in Labour-held and marginal constituencies, has caused a wave of protest from local parties. Most of the 16 motions and amendments tabled for the Labour conference next month are deeply critical of the system.

Mr Blair, like Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, is personally against the quota system, approved at last year's party conference, and is understood to be sceptical about the chances that constituencies which oppose it would accept interference in their choice of candidates.

According to senior party sources, Mr Blair is anxious to listen to arguments from local parties. But the hopes of supporters of the quotas that he will declare his backing are expected to be in vain.

The rule change required to enact the new system was overshadowed at last year's Brighton conference by the much bigger row over one member, one vote. A complication is that some union delegates were persuaded to accept the change in party democracy on the grounds that if it fell, so would the proposal for women's quotas.

Although some unions are also unhappy about the move, the Transport and General Workers' Union, the party's biggest affiliate, supports it.

But strong opposition by many constituency parties, who jealously guard their right to choose their own candidates for general elections, has emerged since last year.

Mr Kinnock told a private Labour Party meeting after last year's conference that although his own constituency of Islwyn, in Gwent, was progressive in wanting more participation of women in Parliament and in the party, he could not see it accepting the imposition of a female candidate.

In another constituency, Brighton, where there was an individual membership ballot on the issue, there was a two-to-one majority against the imposition of female candidates.