Black History Month: 1 October 2020
Starting off our commemorative Black History Month posts for influential black individuals, we have Diane Abbott, the first ever black woman elected to be an MP. Along with Bernie Grant and Paul Boateng, she also became one of the first members of African descent in the House of Commons. Her parents, originally from Jamaica, immigrated to the United Kingdom in the early 1950s. After obtaining a Master's in History from Cambridge University, Diane joined the government as a Home Office Civil Servant, but later went onto becoming a journalist. As a member of the Labour Party, she served as a press officer for the Greater London Council and the Lambeth Borough Council, while being vocal on race and civil liberties issues.
After her election, Abbott occupied a left position in the Labour Party during the 1990s, when Prime Minister Tony Blair's reform program abandoned many of the party's traditional socialist policies. She became known for her support for human rights issues, and, as well as this, won a special human rights prize in 2008, awarded by the Law Society. After the 2010 British general election, where Labour lost its majority, Diane was named shadow minister for public health, and even kept her seat after Labour's poor outcome in the 2015 general election. In October 2016, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reshuffled his shadow cabinet, elevating Diane to the post of shadow home secretary, but stood down in February 2020, upon the election of Kier Starmer.
Want to find out more about Diane Abbot? Click here for more on how she fought against racism to become the first black female MP, or here for more about her role as an MP and her political views.
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