Harriet Harman has spoken about how she is set to live alone for the first time in her life – after being unexpectedly widowed last year.
The former Labour leader, and MP for Camberwell and Peckham, 73, spoke about the issue during an interview with the Sunday Times.
Her husband Jack Dromey, Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington, died suddenly of a heart attack in his Birmingham flat in January last year at the age of 73.
Before his career in politics, he was a trade unionist who held several roles in the Transport and General Workers Union which later became Unite. He was appointed Deputy General Secretary of the union in 2004.
The couple, who married in 1982 – the same year Harriet became an MP at the age of 32 – shared liberal social views and he was known to sometimes introduce himself as ‘Jack Harman’.
Jack Dromey (pictured, left) died last January, leaving his wife Harriet Harman (pictured, right) as a widow, which she said was a huge shock to her
The couple, who married in 1982, had three children together. They shared liberal social views and he was known to sometimes introduce himself as ‘Jack Harman’ (pictured in 1994)
They had three children together – two sons and one daughter.
Harriet told the Times that after Jack died, she initially moved in with her daughter, before then moving in with her sister.
She had immediately sold the home she’d shared with Jack, saying she realised she couldn’t be there on her own anymore, and that it was no longer her place, as it had been their shared space.
And so, she upped and immediately left.
Harriet is now set to move into her own flat next door to her sister. Addressing the upcoming move, she said: ‘You’ll have to ask me next week whether or not I’ve gone completely bonkers on my own.’
Discussing her husband’s sudden death, Harriet said she was with her grandchildren in the park when she received a phone call from his office, who said they had been unable to contact him.
Harriet said she instantly felt that something was ‘really badly wrong’.
The police needed her authorisation to break into Jack’s flat, which she gave, where they found his body.
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Harriet Harman (pictured attending the coronation of King Charles at Westminster Abbey in May this year) said nothing could have prepared her for the shock of becoming a widow
During the interview, Harriet admitted that nothing could have prepared her for the shock at becoming widowed – despite the fact that the majority of married women will become widows.
‘And yet to all of us it comes as a shock,’ she said. ‘I felt, why did nobody ever tell me I was going to be a widow?’
The former Labour deputy leader added that many widows spend decades of their lives not in a partnership, and that her mother had lived for three decades after the death of her father.
So she described as it ‘very odd’ that it is still shocking to become widowed, and suggested that someone (though not her) should write a widows’ handbook.
Moving in alone is not the only major change Harriet is facing: at the end of 2021, she announced she will be quitting the Commons at the next election after 40 years as an MP.
As the longest-serving female MP, the 73-year-old is currently ‘Mother of the House’.
She entered the Commons in 1982 as MP for Peckham and was one of the first women to be promoted to Tony Blair’s Cabinet in 1997 as social security secretary as one of ‘Blair’s babes’.
At the end of 2021, Harriet Harman declared she will ‘step back’ from her role as MP for Camberwell and Peckham when the country next goes to the polls
Harriet Harman was first elected to her south London seat in 1982 (pictured during the campaign)
But her rise was brought to an abrupt halt only a year later when she was sacked over a series of public rows with her deputy Frank Field.
In 2001 she made a surprise return to the front bench as solicitor general.
This was followed by becoming minister for constitutional affairs when Labour secured its third poll victory in 2005. She went on to become a justice minister before being promoted to deputy leader in 2007. She continued in the role until the election of Jeremy Corbyn in 2015.
Her career has not been without controversy. In opposition she sent one of her sons to a grant-maintained school and later chose a selective grammar school for another, shunning the comprehensive nearest her South London home.
When announcing she would be stepping down from politics, Harriet insisted her ‘feminism’ and enthusiasm for politics is still ‘undimmed’.
