In her statement to Good Morning Britain responding to Tory donor Frank Hester, there was a striking personal tone to Diane Abbot’s comments.
“It is frightening. I live in Hackney, I don’t drive, so I find myself, at weekends, popping on a bus or even walking places, more than most MPs.
“I am a single woman and that makes me vulnerable anyway. But to hear someone talking like this is worrying.
“For all of my career as an MP I have thought it important not to live in a bubble, but to mix and mingle with ordinary people. The fact that two MPs have been murdered in recent years makes talk like this all the more alarming.
“I’m currently not a member of the parliamentary Labour party, but remain a member of the Labour party itself, so I am hoping for public support from Keir Starmer.”
Diane Abbott’s description of not living in a bubble, mingling with the wider population and regularly using public transport to get around, struck a chord when I heard it because that was exactly how I last spoke to her - getting on the Underground at Victoria Station after the 11 November Palestine demonstration.
In many respects what she described is how we want our politicians to behave.
But the other side of that is political figures on the receiving end of open hostility are exposed to the threat of harm as they travel about in public. I know from my own experience working for politicians on the left of the Labour Party how hard and sometimes very grim this can be. Imagine what it must be like for such a high-profile black woman, so routinely and aggressively vilified for so long as Diane Abbott.
Hester’s comments within the wider framework of racism in our society ought to be taken as a call to action against that racism in Britain.
But at the main party political level however it has instead been another pre-election slug-fest between the two front benches over donations, proving to be part of the problem of how racism is discussed, not anywhere near the solution.
The sight of Diane Abbott repeatedly rising to her feet to try to speak during Prime Minister’s Questions – only to be ignored by the Speaker – symbolised a substantial part of what is wrong with the controversy over Frank Hester’s comments in which he said that looking at her makes you “want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot.”
PMQs was a jarring exercise of politicians debating the implications of the Tory donor’s remarks about Diane Abbott, in Diane Abbott’s presence, with Diane Abbott unable to speak.
As with PMQs, so with Labour. Since Hester’s slurs were first reported by the Guardian, there has been a severely discordant manner to how they were dealt with by her own party. Repeatedly, things of the utmost seriousness are said and done about Diane Abbott without any actual regard to her and her own position.
Labour has treated the Hester story as a means to turn the screws on the Tory party and demand they return his money. Several news cycles have been consumed by the Hester affair. Yet for Labour to pursue it with such self-interest without reference to Diane Abbott’s own opinions, or without correcting its own treatment of Diane Abbott, is worse than hollow. She has now been suspended from the Labour whip for eleven months, with party sources this week still insisting that "an investigation by the Labour chief whip into her conduct is still ongoing and there is no imminent prospect of her being given the whip back.”
On Thursday Labour even sought to raise money off the back of what Hester said about Diane Abbott, emailing the entire party membership under the title “We are fuming”. Perhaps there was some self-reflection before an email was sent trying to raise money off the back of racism directed at a Black MP suspended by the party for eleven months. Perhaps not.
We do not need to waste time on the merits of whether Diane Abbott’s letter to the Observer was a mistake. She herself has said so. There was no equivocation. “I wish to wholly and unreservedly withdraw my remarks and disassociate myself from them,” she said at the time, adding that “there is no excuse, and I wish to apologise for any anguish caused.” Diane Abbott did not only apologise for any offence caused but apologised full stop. “Once again,” said in her statement, “I would like to apologise publicly for the remarks and any distress caused as a result of them.” But despite Diane Abbott’s immediate unequivocal apology she has remained in limbo for nearly a year. She herself has previously said that she does not expect to get a fair hearing from the Labour leadership.
Many people from way outside the Labour left are able to see there is a problem. Former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, Former Deputy Leader Harriet Harman and Tony Blair’s former political secretary John McTernan have called for the whip to be restored to Diane Abbott.
Diane Abbott is Britain’s first and longest serving black woman MP. She is the most senior black MP. She is a former candidate for the Labour leadership and a former Shadow Home Secretary. For decades she has faced levels of racism, sexism and abuse on a scale that most people cannot even begin to contemplate. Whilst in some cases in recent days Labour figures have issued expressions of “solidarity” with Diane Abbott over Hester’s poisonous views, many have done so without any recognition that there is an issue on Labour’s side. Such solidarity is empty without the necessary demand for a resolution to the Labour Party’s stance towards her.
In reality Labour used the racism against Diane Abbott to its own immediate ends, not in order to fight racism or to actually defend Diane Abbott. This, as Gary Younge has written, is “the definition of instrumentalisation.”
It is problematic for a white-led Labour Party to decide for itself how to lead on a case of racism without reference to the actual people – or person in this case - on the sharp end of that racism.
Often Diane Abbott is described by senior Labour figures as a “trailblazer.” That description is true but campaigners such as Diane Abbott blazed a trail not simply for themselves but for a politics that was ground-breaking. As the events over Hester demonstrate, they are still required. The politics that led to Diane Abbott becoming an MP was the demand for Black representation, based on Black self-organisation, in order for there to be effective Black leadership of the anti-racist movement required to overcome racism directed at Black people in Britain. It was and is a politics based on agency. This was what the demands of the Labour Party Black Sections in the 1980s were about. Many including in the leadership of the Labour Party opposed it at the time. Hester’s derogatory language show how racism is still far from defeated. But Labour’s instrumentalisation of the racism directed at Diane Abbott are the opposite of the politics that ensured Black and Asian representation in Parliament.
If there is solidarity to be offered to Diane Abbott, it should start with resolving her case and reinstating the whip.
if you agree with what I’ve written here, you can sign and share the petition to restore the whip to Diane Abbott. It’s here.