Women in Westminster: In Conversation With Caitlin Prowle
Caitlin Prowle has an unshakeable belief that real change starts in communities. As part of our Women in Westminster series, we sat down with the Co-operative Party’s Head of Political Affairs to discuss impatience, ownership, and why sharing power matters as much as sharing wealth
“We always turn to communities in a crisis, but we rarely start with them,” Caitlin Prowle says at the start of her sit-down conversation with Women in Westminster. “I’d love to see more ‘crack-on politics’. People just getting on and making change happen.”
“Crack-on politics” is a phrase that Prowle returns to throughout our discussion. It captures her political outlook: impatient, pragmatic, and focused on results rather than process.
Those attributes are helping the former activist, union organiser, and Labour advisor build a strong reputation as one of a new generation of voices within the Labour movement. Now, as Head of Political Affairs at the Co-operative Party, she has a national stage to put her ideas into action.
Having landed her first job in politics aged 19, Prowle laughs when asked about the speed with which her career has developed to date.
“I came to politics quite late. I actually wanted to be a musician first,” she tells us. However, she recognises that the roots of her politics developed during her South Wales childhood. “My mum was relentless in building a better community. That’s where I get it from,” she explains.
Prowle describes an upbringing in a staunchly Labour family and community where political activism was more than a distant and abstract Westminster issue. Instead, it was very much part and parcel of daily life.
“Both sides of my family were Labour. I had a councillor grandfather on one side and a lifelong trade-unionist grandfather on the other,” she tells us. “Those principles − fairness, community, solidarity − weren’t abstract. They were the fabric of life.”
Prowle’s early political heroes came from that same tradition. She cites women like Mo Mowlam and Glenys Kinnock as examples of leaders who were relentless in driving changes that created a path that women of her generation could follow.
“They showed me that change takes focus, courage, and heart,” she says. “They had drive, vision, and a refusal to accept the status quo. My mum had that too. I think that’s what’s been instilled in me.”
That determination and focus underpins Prowle’s approach to politics, but it also sits alongside a fundamental awareness that politics and policy are never abstract. At heart, they are always essentially about humanity.
“Politics is always about relationships between people,” she observes. “If you can understand where someone is coming from − what they care about, who they represent − you can get things done. People want to work with people they like and trust. That’s as vital as any policy paper.”
Prowle believes that embracing that philosophy has been pivotal in her career to date. Whether operating as a community organiser, or building strong and trusted relationships with colleagues, her ability to connect with people is something that she has gradually learned to recognise as a key strength.
But those relationships always have a clear purpose. They are not an end in themselves, but a means to accelerate change. Prowle’s impatience for change emerges as a major theme during our conversation.
“There’s this received wisdom that political change has to be incremental, that it takes years,” she argues. “I think that’s a choice, not a rule. It suits institutions to say that. But the problems we face are urgent. Saying ‘change takes time’ can be a way of lowering expectations.”
Prowle’s experience across the Labour movement has also convinced her that momentum for change is driven when people band together for a common cause.
“Change happens when groups of people come together around a shared goal,” she says. “It’s the same in communities. People getting together and saying, ‘this isn’t good enough, we’re going to do something about it.’ Change is hard alone, but much easier together.”
That belief in the power of communities now sits at the heart of Prowle’s work for the Co-operative Party. “The Labour movement talks about redistributing wealth very well,” she tells us, “but we haven’t always talked as clearly about redistributing power. That’s where the Co-operative Party comes in − it’s about sharing power, not just money.”
Prowle’s case is grounded in evidence. She cites research work that the Co-operative Party carried out with Hope Not Hate that shows people trust their local communities much more than they do national politics. After a summer where divisions have often been openly on display, she sees that local trust as a key route to rebuilding faith in politics. She gives one example from her hometown.
“If you go to a place like Pontypool, people might not trust Westminster, but they trust their rugby club,” she says. “They’re proud of it, they belong to it, they feel connected. That’s what politics has to learn from − those places of belonging and pride that have survived even when everything else has been stripped away.”
Prowle believes that community ownership is one practical way of rebuilding that trust, shifting from people being “users” of services to stakeholders in them. “Ownership changes the psychology completely,” she explains. “It’s how you build power and confidence back into places that have felt powerless for too long.”
Reshaping the dynamics of power is, Prowle argues, how the Co-operative Party adds value within the Labour movement. She wants to see partnerships between communities and policymakers become the norm. “Communities must never be an afterthought,” she says. “The first question policymakers ask should be ‘what does this mean for people on the ground?’”
And when it comes to work at a grassroots level, Prowle observes, it is often local women who are driving it forward.
“In so many places it’s women leading the work − keeping things running, creating networks, building resilience. Women just get things done. Talk about crack-on politics. A lot of women have that baked in.”
And it is not just at the grassroots level that Prowle sees women making a difference. She firmly locates herself within a new generation of women in UK politics who are adopting what she describes as “pragmatic idealism.”
“We’re more impatient for change,” she says. “There’s a boldness, a refusal to accept that progress has to take decades. There’s still huge work to do, but I see a new wave of women coming through who are fearless and focused. That gives me real hope.”
