The Battle for a Principle

Beginning of article

It was an extraordinary story of determined amateurs fighting for a passionately held principle against the weight of the legal and political establishment.

The story began early last year when Peter Jepson, a Labour party member for 16 years and part-time law lecturer, saw an advertisement in Tribune, the left-wing weekly. It invited applications from women to be Labour's candidate in the new constituency of Regent's Park and Kensington North in London.

Mr Jepson, who is writing a PhD thesis on racial discrimination, thought it "didn't look right" and looked up the Sex Discrimination Act. Eventually he realised that political parties were "qualifying bodies" …