Legacy of Jo Cox
Abena Oppong-Asare Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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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.
Elected Women Representatives: Online Abuse
Abena Oppong-Asare Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing the debate.
When I gave my maiden speech in the House, I made a promise to my constituents that when I saw injustice, I would turn anger into action. What is the point of our being here today if that is not our aim? I do that to the best of my ability. When I do, I often have to advise my staff not to read our emails on a subject, not to check my Twitter mentions and not to take the contents of my postbag to heart. I know that it affects my staff, not just me. We face a sewer of hateful, racist and misogynistic abuse not once in a blue moon or on an individual issue, but regularly. It is normality; it is a fact of life. You get up, you check your phone and you try not to let the hatred get to you.
In research by the Centenary Action Group and the Equal Power campaign, 69% of the women surveyed said that abuse and harassment by the public or other parties was a barrier to pursuing a political career and seeking election. Colleagues have echoed that throughout the debate. In the six weeks before the 2017 general election, Amnesty International found that black and Asian female MPs received 35% more abusive tweets than white women. Online abuse is disproportionately experienced by women from an intersectionality identity. The statistics are alarming and unacceptable. The online harms Bill is a pivotal opportunity to tackle abuse against women and girls. It must include gender-based abuse as a priority harm rather than the categorisation of separate issues.
The Labour Women’s Network, which I have worked on, supports and trains women for public office. Half of our gold standard training programmes now focus on resilience and self-care because online toxicity requires it. LWN’s campaign to defuse abuse against women in public life calls for cross-party action to stem the escalation of misogynistic abuse, especially that aimed at ethnic minority MPs and councillors. We support calls to use 10% of the digital services tax to fund measures to reduce online hate against women and girls and to support the Jo Cox Foundation’s work to improve standards in public life.
I thank organisations such as Glitch, which has been spearheading the campaign against online abuse. It was founded by Seyi Akiwowo, a graduate of the Jo Cox women in leadership scheme. Online abuse has to stop. It is time for action and not anger on this issue. It is time to legislate against the targeted abuse that women have to face. As our sisters have said throughout the history of female political action, it is time for deeds, not words.