Helen Harrison is Deputy Chairman (Political) of Wellingborough Conservatives. She was a co-founder of Grassroots Out, and Conservative parliamentary candidate at the 2015 and 2017 general elections and Wellingborough by-election.
The Wellingborough by-election is over. After a high profile, six-week campaign, surely we know everything there is to know about the Conservative candidate – ‘Bone’s girlfriend’ – don’t we? Well, we know her – my – name: Helen Harrison.
Given the high level of interest in my candidacy, it was unsurprising that the press put considerable effort into trying to unearth information to discredit me. They will have trawled through my social media and looked into my past to find dirt on me. They found none because there is none.
That didn’t matter. Being ‘Bone’s girlfriend’ was enough, surely? That description, used repeatedly, was deliberately reductive and degrading.
The term ‘girlfriend’ was consciously chosen because it would suggest to readers, listeners, and viewers that my candidacy was illegitimate and that I had been selected simply because of my relationship or to stop him running. Worse, it made me sound inexperienced, and under Bone’s control. With no other information about me being shared, how could any other view be formed? It was also designed to cause outrage.
I have spent my life believing that I live in a world where women have the same opportunities as men. Of course, I have put up with my share of sexist comments, but nothing that would prevent me from making progress in life.
This campaign has shocked me. I have been deliberately belittled by being only described in terms of my relationship to a man in an overtly sexist fashion. Depressingly, it has come from left and right, men and women. The latter is especially painful.
I’m a 51 year-old woman in a committed and settled relationship. Bone and I have been living together for over 5 years. We are partners. I am nobody’s bloody girlfriend!
Why did I stand to be the Member of Parliament for Wellingborough? And why do I intend to contest the seat again, if given the chance, at upcoming election?
Born in Kettering General Hospital, I grew up in a tiny North Northamptonshire hamlet. I was the middle child in a family of seven. It was an idyllic Catholic Distributist upbringing. We were poor and I grew up without material possessions. But I have always seen my childhood as a privilege.
I was a shy child and struggled through school, especially after making the transition from the village school to the Catholic school in Corby. I was bullied because I was different. We didn’t own a TV, so I had no popular culture references over which to bond with my classmates, unable to discuss the latest episode of Eastenders or Top of the Pops.
I went on to the University of Liverpool and gained my Physiotherapy degree. I worked in the NHS in the Peterborough hospitals and GP practices before setting up and running my own successful physiotherapy business. I got married at 23, and had two children at 24 and 25. My husband and I worked hard to make ends meet.
By the time our children were in their early teens, we had paid off our mortgage and our family businesses were doing well. For the first time in my life, I was able lift my head up and away from the immediate concerns of raising a family and providing for them, and to look outwards.
I became drawn into politics. The financial crisis, the Coalition, Euroscepticism. I stood up for my principles and joined the Conservative Party. I didn’t know anyone else who was a political party member. It felt almost subversive. I became involved with the local Conservative Association. Louise Mensch was our MP until she suddenly resigned in 2012.
I plucked up the courage to phone the candidates department at CCHQ to tell them that I lived in the constituency and, although I wasn’t on the candidates list, I would like to be considered as a candidate for the by-election. I was asked a few questions, sent an application form to fill in, called to London for a Parliamentary Assessment Board, told I had been accepted onto the list, and then put forward as one of three candidates for the selection by Association members. I was the runner-up to Christine Emmett.
I went on to fight seats in the 2015 and 2017 general elections. In 2015 I went up against the brilliant Gloria De Piero in Ashfield and in 2017 I fought Dennis Skinner is Bolsover. I increased the Tory vote share by 16 per cent, the second-best Conservative result in the country.
I have served my community as an elected Councillor since 2015. I was elected first to East Northants District Council and then, in 2021, to the new North Northants (Unitary) Council. Until I stepped down from the role to fight the Wellingborough by-election, I was the Executive Member for Adults, Health and Wellbeing in charge of Adult Social Care, Public Health, Integrated Care, and other wellbeing services with a budget of well over £100 million per year.
Organisationally, I have been a key player in the local Conservative Party. I have served as the Chairman of Corby and East Northants Conservatives, Deputy Chairman of Northamptonshire Area Conservatives, and currently as Deputy Chairman of Wellingborough and Rushden Conservatives. In both Corby and Wellingborough Associations, I have been responsible for running campaigning.
My close association with the Wellingborough and Corby MPs and our shared belief that we would be better off out of the EU led to us co-founding Grassroots Out (GO) at the end of 2015. Grassroots Out became the second largest Leave campaign and came close to becoming the official campaign. I spoke at rallies of two to three thousand people, took part in debates up and down the country, and fired up the activists in the ground campaign.
Most of these achievements predate my relationship with Bone. The allegations that have been made against him date back to before we had even met.
I believe that I have proved myself both professionally and politically. I believe that I am a highly credible candidate in my own right. I believe that I have been the subject of a humiliating sexist campaign designed to discredit my candidacy. If f people had been given the facts about me, not just about who I was in a relationship with, my candidacy would have been perceived differently.
My only regret was that, in the tumult of the campaign, I was unable take part in interviews with the national press. That left a huge vacuum into which this sexist narrative became set.
I know it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the election. We were, I now know, always going to lose. Time and again when I knocked on doors, previously Conservative voters told me that it was not personal, but they couldn’t vote Conservative this time. They were fed up with issues like sky-high immigration. However, many said they would vote for me at the next election. It’s all to play for and I will be back!
Helen Harrison is Deputy Chairman (Political) of Wellingborough Conservatives. She was a co-founder of Grassroots Out, and Conservative parliamentary candidate at the 2015 and 2017 general elections and Wellingborough by-election.
The Wellingborough by-election is over. After a high profile, six-week campaign, surely we know everything there is to know about the Conservative candidate – ‘Bone’s girlfriend’ – don’t we? Well, we know her – my – name: Helen Harrison.
Given the high level of interest in my candidacy, it was unsurprising that the press put considerable effort into trying to unearth information to discredit me. They will have trawled through my social media and looked into my past to find dirt on me. They found none because there is none.
That didn’t matter. Being ‘Bone’s girlfriend’ was enough, surely? That description, used repeatedly, was deliberately reductive and degrading.
The term ‘girlfriend’ was consciously chosen because it would suggest to readers, listeners, and viewers that my candidacy was illegitimate and that I had been selected simply because of my relationship or to stop him running. Worse, it made me sound inexperienced, and under Bone’s control. With no other information about me being shared, how could any other view be formed? It was also designed to cause outrage.
I have spent my life believing that I live in a world where women have the same opportunities as men. Of course, I have put up with my share of sexist comments, but nothing that would prevent me from making progress in life.
This campaign has shocked me. I have been deliberately belittled by being only described in terms of my relationship to a man in an overtly sexist fashion. Depressingly, it has come from left and right, men and women. The latter is especially painful.
I’m a 51 year-old woman in a committed and settled relationship. Bone and I have been living together for over 5 years. We are partners. I am nobody’s bloody girlfriend!
Why did I stand to be the Member of Parliament for Wellingborough? And why do I intend to contest the seat again, if given the chance, at upcoming election?
Born in Kettering General Hospital, I grew up in a tiny North Northamptonshire hamlet. I was the middle child in a family of seven. It was an idyllic Catholic Distributist upbringing. We were poor and I grew up without material possessions. But I have always seen my childhood as a privilege.
I was a shy child and struggled through school, especially after making the transition from the village school to the Catholic school in Corby. I was bullied because I was different. We didn’t own a TV, so I had no popular culture references over which to bond with my classmates, unable to discuss the latest episode of Eastenders or Top of the Pops.
I went on to the University of Liverpool and gained my Physiotherapy degree. I worked in the NHS in the Peterborough hospitals and GP practices before setting up and running my own successful physiotherapy business. I got married at 23, and had two children at 24 and 25. My husband and I worked hard to make ends meet.
By the time our children were in their early teens, we had paid off our mortgage and our family businesses were doing well. For the first time in my life, I was able lift my head up and away from the immediate concerns of raising a family and providing for them, and to look outwards.
I became drawn into politics. The financial crisis, the Coalition, Euroscepticism. I stood up for my principles and joined the Conservative Party. I didn’t know anyone else who was a political party member. It felt almost subversive. I became involved with the local Conservative Association. Louise Mensch was our MP until she suddenly resigned in 2012.
I plucked up the courage to phone the candidates department at CCHQ to tell them that I lived in the constituency and, although I wasn’t on the candidates list, I would like to be considered as a candidate for the by-election. I was asked a few questions, sent an application form to fill in, called to London for a Parliamentary Assessment Board, told I had been accepted onto the list, and then put forward as one of three candidates for the selection by Association members. I was the runner-up to Christine Emmett.
I went on to fight seats in the 2015 and 2017 general elections. In 2015 I went up against the brilliant Gloria De Piero in Ashfield and in 2017 I fought Dennis Skinner is Bolsover. I increased the Tory vote share by 16 per cent, the second-best Conservative result in the country.
I have served my community as an elected Councillor since 2015. I was elected first to East Northants District Council and then, in 2021, to the new North Northants (Unitary) Council. Until I stepped down from the role to fight the Wellingborough by-election, I was the Executive Member for Adults, Health and Wellbeing in charge of Adult Social Care, Public Health, Integrated Care, and other wellbeing services with a budget of well over £100 million per year.
Organisationally, I have been a key player in the local Conservative Party. I have served as the Chairman of Corby and East Northants Conservatives, Deputy Chairman of Northamptonshire Area Conservatives, and currently as Deputy Chairman of Wellingborough and Rushden Conservatives. In both Corby and Wellingborough Associations, I have been responsible for running campaigning.
My close association with the Wellingborough and Corby MPs and our shared belief that we would be better off out of the EU led to us co-founding Grassroots Out (GO) at the end of 2015. Grassroots Out became the second largest Leave campaign and came close to becoming the official campaign. I spoke at rallies of two to three thousand people, took part in debates up and down the country, and fired up the activists in the ground campaign.
Most of these achievements predate my relationship with Bone. The allegations that have been made against him date back to before we had even met.
I believe that I have proved myself both professionally and politically. I believe that I am a highly credible candidate in my own right. I believe that I have been the subject of a humiliating sexist campaign designed to discredit my candidacy. If f people had been given the facts about me, not just about who I was in a relationship with, my candidacy would have been perceived differently.
My only regret was that, in the tumult of the campaign, I was unable take part in interviews with the national press. That left a huge vacuum into which this sexist narrative became set.
I know it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the election. We were, I now know, always going to lose. Time and again when I knocked on doors, previously Conservative voters told me that it was not personal, but they couldn’t vote Conservative this time. They were fed up with issues like sky-high immigration. However, many said they would vote for me at the next election. It’s all to play for and I will be back!