Labour Women's Network training

It's great to see LWN have put an event together to give women training for parliamentary selections. Full details from their recent newsletter are below.

LWN Training & Personal Development Opportunity
We are running a training weekend from the evening of Friday 10 July to the morning of Sunday 12 July. This is for women who are serious about wanting to be selected to fight a parliamentary seat and are prepared to invest time and effort in achieving it. We will be looking at a whole range of actvities, including personal planning, media skills and CV writing, and you will also be able to meet like-minded women for a great weekend of politics and personal development.

LWN is financing most of the costs of the weekend, and is therefore able to offer it to participants for only £50 - which includes 2 nights' accomodation, meals, and all materials for the course. (You will have to pay your own travel to and from the venue, which is in Leominster, and is accessible by train.) Please note that the training is only open to members of Labour Women's Network.

This is an unmissable opportunity for any woman who really wants to win, and places are limited. If you would like to apply for one, please email our Training Co-ordinator, Ann Leedham-Smith, at annleedham@hotmail.co.uk explaining why you want to do the training, whether or not you have done any previous LWN training, whether you have stood as a candidate before, and what your ambitions are. We hope you get a place and look forward to seeing you there!

Parliamentary Selections
As you will know, a number of MPs have recently announced that, for one reason or another, they will not be standing at the next General Election. Labour-held seats include Elmet & Rothwell (notional majority 6,078), Wirral South (notional maj 3,538), Barrow & Furness (notional maj 4,843), Makerfield (notional maj 17,903), Carlisle (notional maj 5,085), Luton South (notional maj 5,698) and Reading West (notional maj 4,931). There are also vacancies in marginal seats and in seats held by the Tories and Liberal Democrats - and we need good candidates in all of them!

At this stage we don't know which will be all-women shortlists and which open, but we do know that we will need good women candidates to seek selection. If you would like to sign up for our special selection alert service (currently being developed) please let us know by emailing us at lwn@lwn.org.uk. And if you know good Labour women who should be encouraged to stand, get them to join LWN, attend training, and go for it!

Finally, the earlier the information we have about selections, the better. If you know of vacancies which are coming up, please let us know so that we can let other women know. And if you get selected for a seat, let us know so that we can celebrate your success!