Mrs Holden found herself caring for both her husband and daughter at

Mrs Holden found herself caring for both her husband and daughter at home or rushing between hospitals 40 miles apart.
Out of that double tragedy, Mrs Holden, now 50, has, however, created an extraordinarily fruitful legacy Joanne died first, at home. In the following months, her husband, unaware that he too was dying from cancer, suggested they try for another child. And in the middle of her daughter’s illness, her husband, Glyn, went into hospital with a prostate problem. “It turned out that he was riddled with cancer,” Mrs Holden says, recalling events that occurred almost 20 years ago. It is not difficult to see why Hilary Holden is founding a children’s hospice. When her local hospital decided there was nothing more that could be done for her daughter, Joanne, she was sent home to die. No hospice existed and the hospital needed the bed for the curable.

Joanne was four years old and suffering from acute myeloid leukaemia, having spent more than a year in and out of hospital receiving treatment Mrs Holden nursed her at home for the final few months

But it wasn’t easy Mrs Holden had no relatives to help. Instead, there should be anger that the talking isn’t long gone, and the strategy isn’t already being put into place – properly subsidised, good- quality childcare available to all.Joan Ruddock was one of the leading lights of CND. In the different mood of Blair’s Labour Party, she learned to curb her opinions. Let’s hope she recovers her bolshy strain, becomes a thoroughly bad girl, abandons GFSM and does her new job so well that she is speedily given the sack in a healthy blaze of publicity which might then initiate real change. The small consolation, of course, is that she won’t miss the money.Yvonne Roberts.

GFSM means that when we hear that Harriet Harman, social security secretary and Joan Ruddock’s boss, is “consulting” on a national childcare strategy, we express appreciation. Such a good idea – such a resounding silence so far on the issue. But GFSM tells us that to expect a select committee too is more than greedy, it’s not the way nice girls behave.Still, some are heard to cry, shouldn’t we be grateful for small mercies? Isn’t this so much better than what went before? Well, yes and no. Grateful for small mercies is all too useful for a government with no genuine commitment to radically altering priorities so that women, half the population, are truly considered alongside men GFSM paralyses the voice of opposition. GFSM makes the muscle of protest go lax.New Labour, after all, has had 18 years in opposition It’s had plenty of time to devise concrete policies. It makes a number of valuable suggestions, among them the setting up of a House of Commons select committee to scrutinise the impact on women of all policies. She might do some homework, since she has been away from what is incorrectly termed “women’s issues” for so long.

(“Women’s issues” are human issues, family issues, everybody’s issues.) She might read, Governing for Equality. It’s a document drawn up by Labour in opposition, when it was desperate for the female vote.It pledges itself to putting women at the heart of government (presumably, it forgot to add, “part-time”). See what a fuss the boys make then.GFSM also has Ms Ruddock in its thrall. She’s grateful to have been given a government job, grateful that women even have a reference.

Blair has spoken much of the new style of government, so why adopt the old style of attitude to women’s labour?GFSM means that we won’t demand – as we should – that in the very first government reshuffle, the next junior minister (inevitably male) who is appointed should forfeit his salary to Ms Ruddock. The acronym, GFSM – as in Grateful for Small Mercies – encapsulates precisely what amounts to Labour’s policy on women. And, sadly, the midwives at the birth have been female politicians old enough and experienced enough to demand far better terms.
GFSM means that when Joan Ruddock is appointed and scandalously accepts to forego the pounds 20,000 pay rise to which she is entitled, we murmur, “let’s wait and see, don’t kick up a fuss yet.” Instead, we should be asking why this government was so ill-prepared that it allowed the Treasury coffers to empty before provision was made.If aides in Blair’s office can be paid almost pounds 90,000 a year there is no excuse for a minister for women who works for free It sends out the wrong message: New Labour – Old Lads It’s all in the presentation. The announcement that Joan Ruddock, Labour MP for Lewisham Deptford, is to become the junior minister for women for no extra salary on top of her MP’s pay, only adds the icing to the christening cake. Who is being christened? Why, the big, bouncy new acronym to which the Labour Government has given birth in only its first few weeks in power. Leave them in the car and the lights and horn go on instantly.