Jo Cox MP

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader for her comments, because the murder of Jo Cox MP almost defies words. It is so devastating and so heartbreaking that any words are inadequate to express the scale and the depth of the loss—the loss to her husband Brendan and their children, to her parents, her sister, her family, but also to that wider family of friends, colleagues and constituents. It is a loss that has affected everybody who knew her, but also so many more who had not yet got to know her. It is not just the loss of who and what she was, but the loss of what would have been and what more she would have done. It is a loss that is so profound and overwhelming that we, individually and collectively as a nation, are the poorer for it.

Jo was clearly very special. She was exceptional. A physically tiny Yorkshire lass—she could not have been more than five-foot high—she was morally and intellectually strong. Driven by her values, she knew she had a role to play in creating a better country and a better world. For the all too short time she was in Parliament she brought those values, with all the skills, experience and knowledge from her past roles with Oxfam and NGOs, working with Glenys Kinnock, the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, and for Gordon and Sarah Brown, to her life as a Labour MP. We have heard her described as a force of nature, decent and determined. She made people feel good about themselves and what they could achieve. She was passionate, she was serious, and she was good fun. As one of her friends in the House of Commons said:

“She was the best of us, and she made the best of us”.

She saw that a role in politics should be a force for good—a force that could make lives better. That is what brought her, like so many others, into politics.

Our democracy will be seriously undermined and weakened if this outrage stops our brightest and our best from stepping forward into public life. When good people of passion and principle tell their family and their friends they want to be a councillor or a Member of Parliament, I want their families to be proud of them, not to fear for them. Yet the level of vitriol and violence contaminating our public and political life will deter some of the best people who we need the most. Almost every MP can report threats and abuse, sometimes violent. Although social media makes it easier, it is too easy just to blame the internet.

All of this has coincided with the deterioration of political debate. Of course we must argue our differences on policy with emotion and with conviction, but too many have gone beyond that. The tone of the debate and the language, particularly around immigration and asylum seekers, shames many. The drip-feed of denigration and abuse poisons the very air that we breathe, so those of us who can speak out, and those who report and write, need to think very carefully about past actions and words, and the way forward. In the words of Jo’s husband Brendan, Jo would have wanted us to,

“all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her”.

The hope for the future is that the good in society comes to the fore, as we have seen in the reaction from the public, both at home and abroad, at this terrible time, and as we saw in the amazing courage and bravery of Bernard Kenny, who risked his own life, and in the love and loyalty of her assistant, Fazila Aswat.

Over the weekend, my husband drew my attention to a 1968 drawing of Martin Luther King standing over a cross-legged Gandhi saying, “They think they’ve killed me”. That was saying that—despite his death, because of how he had inspired others—his values, commitment and passion lived on and, through others, achieved, and still achieve, great things. Jo’s legacy has to be that same inspiration—an inspiration to others to continue her work; an inspiration to us all to be better; an inspiration to those who have encouraged hatred and bitterness that they must stop. More than anything else, it must be an inspiration to others to fulfil her promise and her legacy. The following message was left in the Batley book of condolences, and I can think of no finer tribute. I imagine that it is from a young woman who had met Jo. She wrote:

“You told me I’d do great things. I’m going to prove you right and I’m going to carry on your legacy”.