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PORTSIDE CULTURE

VOICE OF THE LEFT  
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Faiza Shaheen
September 18, 2024
The Guardian
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_ Faiza Shaheen reviews the memoir of UK Labour party MP Diane Abbot,
who has held her seat since 1987. She is the first Black woman to be
elected to parliament, and is the country's longest-serving female MP.
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A Woman Like Me
A Memoir
Diane Abbott
Viking
ISBN: 9780241536414

There is a sense of poetic justice in seeing Diane Abbott
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after the 2024 election. She is now Mother of the House – the title
given to the longest serving female MP – and all those who plotted
to block her from standing must watch as she receives the respect she
deserves. After enduring so much racism, and at a time of few
political wins for the left, we have to ask: how did Abbott end up
having the last laugh?

Her autobiography offers some clues. Born to working-class Jamaican
parents in 1953, she was clearly always both strong-willed and
intellectually gifted. Which is not to say she didn’t have to work
hard: early signs of her determination include insisting to her
teachers that she apply to Cambridge, swotting up on Latin for the
entrance exam, and beating considerable odds by winning a place from
her state school. After graduation she entered the Home Office as part
of the civil service fast stream, and made history in 1987 as the
first Black woman MP.

 

 
But this book is far more than just a list of her achievements.
Inside its pages are 70 years of Black British history, and four
decades of political ups and downs, encompassing Thatcher, Kinnock,
Blair, Brown, Corbyn, and Starmer. Among other things she recounts
how the left took charge of the Greater London Council under Ken
Livingstone, the New Cross house fire in 1981 and the organising
across the Black community that followed, as well as resistance to the
Iraq war.

Abbott has become well known as the target of online abuse in recent
years. But what is clear from this book is how racism has always been
a part of her professional life, starting with bricks through her
office window when she first stood as an MP. And as her story
progresses so too does the list of leaders of the Labour party that
have failed to support her. I’m glad to see so many people named
and shamed for their behaviour. Neil Kinnock was the leader of the
party when she was elected alongside two Black men – Bernie Grant
and Paul Boateng. She writes that he “did not see it as a triumph
and noticeably did not celebrate it as such”, believing them to be
the “embodiment of the ‘loony left’”. When Abbott was
subsequently asked to go on Question Time, Peter Mandelson, then the
director of communications, failed to respond to her various requests
for briefings, and she had to wait longer than her colleagues before
getting an office in parliament. I was shocked even by her treatment
under Corbyn, a long-term ally and friend, whose office forced her to
temporarily stand down
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as shadow home secretary just before the 2017 election.

Abbott uses this book to remind people of her lifelong efforts to
oppose draconian immigration policies and defend civil liberties. On
leaving the Home Office in the 1970s she says: “I could not
visualise spending the rest of my working life locking people up,
crafting racist immigration legislation and generally infringing on
civil liberties.” It must be frustrating for her to see so little
change in this area.
After her appalling treatment by Starmer’s Labour
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that the party now offers very little space for the left, writing
“whatever issue you look at, the convergence between Labour and the
Tories remains deeply disappointing”. She describes the Corbyn era
as an “interlude” and comments that the period “tested to
destruction the idea that the left will be allowed significant
influence in the Labour party”. Even though she has always been
against it, she concludes that there is a need to look again at
proportional representation, and considers the alliances that would be
required to make it work, including the possibility of coalition with
the Greens.

Having read A Woman Like Me I was left with a feeling of melancholy.
I imagined the world in which she became home secretary and turned
one of the most poisonous arms of government into a bastion of
progressive policy. As her generation of politicians retire there will
be fewer bold voices on issues like migrant rights: the Labour party
under Starmer would certainly have blocked Abbott if she were
starting her career now. But the longer she has survived the more her
support has grown. As one person said to me on the doorstep
in Chingford, where I stood as an independent this year after being
deselected by Labour – “I don’t agree with her on everything,
but you’ve got to admire her ability to keep going.” History,
they say, is written by the victors. But as this book and Abbott’s
career show – history, as written by the underdogs, can be
powerfully inspiring.

* U.K. politics
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* Labour Party
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* Racism
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* women's rights
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* Immigration
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