‘We’re not just for middle class white women’: new head of Women’s Equality party

Mandu Reid on the challenge of being Britain’s first black party political leader

Mandu Reid wasn’t always a feminist. In fact, for a long time she was “embarrassed” to identify with a movement which is now central to her being. “I was a late developer in that respect,” she says. Growing up in southern Africa during the apartheid era, she says, “racial lines were much more front and centre in my mind, and it wasn’t until I was 26 that I changed tack. It took me that long to realise how much work was needed to bring gender equality. I was so naive – I feel quite stupid about my younger self.”

Yet Reid is now the new leader of the Women’s Equality party (WEP) and one of the brightest hopes in British feminism. She moved to London aged 18 and has lived and worked there since, first for the Treasury and then for the London mayor’s office. She is the first black leader of a political party in the UK, a historic moment that she feels comes with contradictory emotions.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2J5yu26

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