Women demanded the vote as much in the interests of men as of women. They wanted it for the good of the whole community, so said my great-aunt, Eleanor Rathbone, who was the ninth woman elected to the UK Parliament. She firmly believed that it was entirely necessary to take the whole community with her, which is why she spoke at hundreds of public meetings across north Wales, Liverpool, Cheshire and Lancashire. Because we have to remember that people in those days, ordinary people, couldn't afford to buy a newspaper, and they certainly couldn't afford to buy a radio, so how else were they going to get information about the importance of the fight for the suffrage of all women and all men, because most men were also excluded at that point? We have to remember that in 1918, only 17 women managed to become candidates in the general election, and only one of them was elected, Countess Markievicz—and because she was a Sinn Feiner, she never took her seat. So, it took an awful lot more struggle to ensure that women really became part of the political fabric.

Indeed, Eleanor's view, having spent 40 years campaigning for family allowances, based on her observation of how women and children were treated during the first world war—when their men all went off to war, they were all left destitute. She spent the rest of the war dishing out welfare to all these families as the only woman on Liverpool City Council. That really did focus her mind on the importance of the role of the family as the producer and reproducer of the future labour force. She firmly believed that family allowances had to be society's contribution to all children, because whether we have children or not, it is everybody's duty to support the well-being of children. The family allowance became child benefit under Barbara Castle, but now it is being seen as withering on the vine. Child benefit has reduced in value since 2010—by 20 per cent since the Conservative Government came in. As well as that, we've got in-work benefits also being reduced at less than the rate of inflation, and children are suffering the brunt of this austerity campaign. We need to remind ourselves that it is children and their well-being that have to be at the forefront of our minds in ensuring the well-being of our whole community. So, we won a battle, but we certainly haven't won the war.