Legacy of Jo Cox

Abena Oppong-Asare Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger). As a current chair of the Labour Women’s Network, it is an honour for me to rise today to pay tribute to Jo Cox, its first ever elected chair. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) for securing this special debate. I speak today despite the fact that I did not know Jo personally. From hearing friends speak, I regret that considerably.

Jo led the Labour Women’s Network from 2011 until her election to Parliament in 2015. Jo is remembered by our organisation as an activist, a feminist, a humanitarian, a friend, a parent, a politician, a leader and a doer. Crucially, Jo is remembered as a sister, most importantly a sister to my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) who made an enormously moving and passionate speech. I know she will be a fantastic representative in this place.

Jo embodied sisterhood to all women: to the women she knew, who still feel echoes of her straight-talking support and gutsy humour encouraging them; but also to women like me, whom she would never meet, on whose behalf she eagerly sought to turn gender equality on its head. The Jo I hear about from LWN colleagues was proudly political and a proud intersectional feminist. Her sisterhood embraced women in all their diversity.

I stand before you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as part of Jo’s legacy: as the first black chair of the Labour Women’s Network and as part of the parliamentary Labour party, which is 51% female. Having spoken to many of Jo’s friends, they suspect that Jo would only pause to applaud that historic achievement for a moment before rolling up her sleeves and urging the rest of the House to crack on and catch up. Jo herself said:

“One of the reasons I am entering politics is because only 23% of the House of Commons is female. If women don’t make that 50/50 then the people taking decisions about our communities are never going to be reflective of the needs.”

The House is now 34% women. That should be noted as part of Jo’s legacy, but I am sure we can still feel her impatience for speedier change.

In that spirit, the Labour party and the LWN created the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Scheme, on which I was a trainer. It has offered intensive personal and political development to almost 175 women from every region of the UK. Among them are train drivers, firefighters and carers. The youngest participant was 18; the oldest mid-60s. Some 30% were women of colour, 20% were disabled and 25% were LGBT. They include Seyi Akiwowo, the founder of the unstoppable digital self-care campaign Glitch; Bex Bailey, named Time magazine’s person of the year for her role in the Me Too movement; and the award-winning sound engineer Olga Fitzroy.

The scheme uses Jo’s own approach of tough love and hard work to inspire an army of feminist changemakers. We remind participants that Jo, too, hit set-backs and made mistakes, faced abuse and wavered. Nevertheless, she persisted and in Jo’s name ultimately 300 women, graduates of the scheme, will likewise persist. Few women graduate from the scheme without internalising the voice of its architect, Nan Sloane, reminding them to

“Get into the room, take up the space, take politics seriously and never apologise for yourself.”

I also want to take the opportunity to thank our hard-working officers Clare Reynolds and Jane Heggie and the rest of the executive committee.

Alumni of the programme include my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), now the shadow Secretary of State for International Development, and my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), now the chair of the women’s parliamentary Labour party. These are all roles that, had things been different, we could well have seen Jo taking on herself. We hope she would be proud to see the graduates of the leadership scheme ably carrying the batons.

As the years pass, Jo’s colourful legacy continues to grow brighter. We see it in the Jo Cox Foundation, which leads incredible work in her name. We see it in her amazing children. We see it in every glass ceiling smashed, every gesture of sisterhood and every act of brave persistence from generations of women she has inspired.