A
Labour MP Killed and My Past Haunts Me
June 2016
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Tributes
were
left and vigils were held following the
death of Labour MP Jo Cox after a gun
and knife attack on Thursday June 16th.
From the beginning, I found this more
deeply disturbing than just another
death of a bright progressive and
compassionate politician. She seemed to
pull up buried things from my past as
well as resonate with my present
concerns, my reading and writing.
Jo
Cox
was born in the same year as my son,
1974. She came from the same part of the
UK that I grew up in – West Yorkshire.
The towns she represented were familiar
to me. She went to the same college in
Cambridge, Pembroke, that I attended.
She wanted to change the world. She
worked in NGOs doing that. She entered
politics. So did I – but she was more
successful at the politics – she got
elected.
Jo
Cox
had been an activist who spent a decade
working at Oxfam in various senior
capacities in the U.K., U.S. and
Brussels – including heading the
humanitarian program. After that she
worked at the Freedom Fund, an
anti-slavery organization, and at the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In
May 2015 she was elected MP for the
Labour Party – my party when I was in
the UK. She had experience of
humanitarian work in war zones, Dafur,
Uganda, Afghanistan - some of the
notorious post conflict areas known to
War Child that I have written about (See
article April 2013). Both Oxfam and Save
the Children issued statements on her
death. She has pushed for ending the war
in Syria and had planned to bring the UN
Special Envoy for Syria to the UK
parliament. She worked for Syrian
refugee protection.She
had spoken movingly in parliament about
the diversity of her constituency that
provides the best curry as well as the
best fish and chips. The Indian Muslims
in Batley held a vigil in memory of her.
Pembroke College emailed me
as it does from time to time. It said
Pembroke as a whole community were
honouring Jo’s memory by making a
collective gift to a Syrian refugee
cause in honour of Jo, who was
personally committed to alleviating the
plight of Syrian refugees. This would be
done at the dinner recalling the 30
anniversary of the opening of Pembroke
to women, June 18th.
Pembroke also told me about
a fund in Jo’s memory in aid of the
following charities: The
Royal Voluntary Service,
to support volunteers helping combat
loneliness in Jo's constituency, Batley
and Spen in West Yorkshire; HOPE
not hate, who seek to
challenge and defeat the politics of
hate and extremism within local
communities across Britain; The
White Helmets: volunteer
search and rescue workers in Syria.
Unarmed and neutral, these heroes have
saved more than 51,000 lives from under
the rubble and bring hope to the region.
These read like causes I would want to
support.
I began to feel a strange
empathy for Jo Cox who dug up things
from my past and spoke to reinforce my
present. As an undergraduate I got into
trouble for holding fund raising bread
and cheese lunches in my student hostel
for Oxfam. Over the years Oxfam (Canada)
has remained the largest recipient of my
charitable donations. When she was
tragically killed I had just sent in
proofs on an article promoting the need
to address conflicts and wars producing
refugees, including the Syrian conflict,
and encouraging NGOs to join in that
more forcefully. Strange coincidence.
But there are differences
too. Although Jo Cox and I were both
raised in middle class families in the
West Riding, a Yorkshire Post article of
December 2015 reveals that we
experienced Pembroke and Cambridge
differently. She felt that where you
came from, how you spoke and who you
knew mattered too much. She felt that
her Cambridge experience undermined her
for about 5 years. Of course I am deeply
aware of the UK class structure as felt
by those who are “us” rather than “them”
and who come with the lilt of speech
from areas like West Yorkshire. Yet
somehow I experienced Pembroke and
Cambridge as immensely liberating and
empowering and I made new friends. I
sang in the college choir. I read in
Chapel – indeed my passionate Yorkshire
accent managed to share the prize for
reading in Chapel with someone whom I
felt sounded like a deadpan god in an
echo chamber. It
seems Jo Cox eventually turned things
around and pulled her political insight
and her active political commitment out
of her Cambridge experience.
Strangely, the person who
killed her also seems to fit into
concerns we have shared. I wrote an
article about Judt’s book on Europe in
2009. He describes:
The town Longwy, erstwhile
centre for iron and steel in industrial
northern Lorraine is changed. The town
is quiet and deserted with no work for
the sons of the former steel workers.
Wives and daughters have part time work.
The town has counterparts across Europe.
Judt showed how a long-time
union town with a communist deputy had
turned to the right wing national front.
Regions which were socialist had become
far right supporters. The neo-fascist
program is one big scream against
immigrants, unemployment, crime and
insecurity, at “Europe” and at “them.”
Happily, Jo Cox, progressive, Labour
Party candidate, won Batley and Spen
constituency. However, the fierce Brexit
debate shows that towns in the UK have
parallels with Judt’s description of the
town of Longwy. In Britain there is also
the one big scream against everything Jo
Cox stood for.
Her killing is a huge loss
for the constituency, for the Labour
Party, the UK parliament and the UN
effort to end the Syrian war. I can only
hope that her death may inspire others
to pick up this torch that was knocked
out of her hand.
(This was written just days before the
UK yes vote to exit the European Union
where Judt's Longwy situation appears to
have been a factor.)
