Jo Cox MP

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My 86 year-old Auntie Eileen was keen to assure me yesterday that she had voted for Jo Cox this week—what she meant was that she had voted remain, because Jo had advised her to do so. During the general election last year Jo Cox had talked to her and Eileen thought she was lovely. She voted for her and joined the rest of the world in her admiration for this Labour woman whom we all hope our politicians should be like.

I am rich in aunts, uncles and cousins who live in and around Batley and Spen, where I was born, where my parents were born and where my grandparents were born. My father was a Labour Party member in Birstall until he died last year—unfortunately before he could vote for Jo Cox. Like Jo Cox, I, too, am proud to have been made in Yorkshire.

I joined ordinary people to pay my respects to this amazing woman and her family in the Birstall town square yesterday. There was such a sense of deep sadness and loss, and in talking to people, they know the national and international significance of the political assassination of their local and much-loved MP. They are ordinary, decent Yorkshire folk who cannot believe that this has happened in their town. I was not sure whether I should speak today because, unlike others, I only knew and grew to admire Jo Cox in the last few years. But my family and friends said that a local Yorkshire voice should be heard in your Lordships’ House today, and I was to say that this is not what the people of Batley and Spen Valley are like. I was to say how terribly shocked they are at the waste of a lovely, warm, vibrant, effective, honest and special politician who had belonged to them. They wonder, like my Auntie Marie—I have a lot of aunties—who said to me yesterday, “What have we done to create a world where this can happen?”.