Tributes to Jo Cox

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Let me begin by saying again Jo’s own words:

“Who can blame desperate parents for wanting to escape the horror that their families are experiencing? Children are being killed on their way to school…one in three children have grown up knowing nothing but fear and war. Those children have been exposed to things no child should ever witness, and I know that I would risk life and limb to get my two precious babies out of that hellhole.” —[Official Report, 25 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 1234.]

When Jo spoke, we all listened. Why? Because the principle that she drew on in that speech and in life is the simple idea that we have more in common than that which divides us. Her words demonstrate that if we choose, we do not always have to see ourselves as different from those far away. We can choose to see what unites us. We all listened because her words spoke to each and every one of us.

To know Jo, even a little bit, was to understand how proud she was of her family and to hear her relish her role as a mum. Many of her friends have spoken of that joy, that warmth and that natural charm. She had a way of talking not just about herself and her own ideas, but always about what we could do together.

Jo took on the toughest of problems and the most forgotten causes, and fought campaigns that we could all feel a part of and that would truly make change happen. Whether it was Darfur or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jo knew how easily our global responsibilities fade from view without conscious activism. As she herself wrote:

“This active internationalist approach is not inevitable. It has been, and is still contested across the political spectrum.”

Jo wrote about a fight not just for one country, one people or one cause, but for a world view that bestowed on each of us rights and on all of us the responsibility to protect. That is especially true in relation to her activism in pursuit of women’s rights. Faced with the great joy and great risk of motherhood, women are uniquely and equally vulnerable. When the world could not find the wherewithal to meet the millennium development goal to cut maternal mortality, Jo took on this huge challenge and made global leaders sit up and listen to women.

Jo did not just believe that women’s voices should be heard; she made it so. She was a feminist whose activism saved women’s lives and whose political skill got women elected to this House. Many in this place will never have seen the quiet, careful work of Jo and her colleagues at Labour Women’s Network to give women the knowledge and networks to take control and win power. She did it not by hectoring or lecturing, but by believing in the goodness of others. As Jo’s friend and mine, Kirsty McNeill, has written:

“Half holding you upright, half shoving you forward. That’s what it meant to have Jo’s arm around your shoulder.”

How we all long for those arms round our shoulder today—for one more hug, and definitely for one more smile—but it cannot be.

The words from Jo’s maiden speech must therefore truly ring out today:

“we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]

Cheap populism cannot take hold. Jo’s vision of our country, explained in that speech, is one that we know in our hearts to be true. It is not where you come from that matters; it is the compassion and love in your heart. You might be ferociously proud of your home town, as Jo was, but you know that compassion does not end at its boundaries.

And here is another thing that does not end: Jo Cox’s life had real meaning. She gave love to us all and that can never be lost. We may feel lost today, but inside us all, the love is still there.