Jo Cox, who has died aged 41, was a former head of policy and head of humanitarian campaigning for the global charity Oxfam who was elected Labour MP for Batley and Spen at the last general election; she established herself as a rising star of her party, albeit one unlikely to prosper under its current leadership.
Before she entered Parliament, Jo Cox had spent a decade working in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones, and in Parliament she made a name for herself campaigning to find a solution to the conflict in Syria and demanding the government do more to ensure that humanitarian aid reached people who needed it, including calling for RAF airdrops. She also established and became co-chairman of a new all-party parliamentary group on Syria.
“I’ve been in some horrific situations where women have been raped repeatedly in Darfur,” she told the Yorkshire Post in December last year. “I’ve been with child soldiers who have been given Kalashnikovs and kill members of their own family in Uganda. In Afghanistan I was talking to Afghan elders who were world weary of a lack of sustained attention from their own Government and from the international community to stop problems early. That’s the thing that all of that experience gave me – if you ignore a problem it gets worse.”
Her concern led her to put aside party divisions to campaign with leading Conservatives, though when in October last year she wrote a joint article with the former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell for The Observer, calling for humanitarian intervention in Syria with the establishment of “safe havens”, she was attacked by Labour’s international development spokesman, Diane Abbott, for siding with a Tory.
She had already upset the Corbynite wing of the party by voting for the Blairite Liz Kendall in the leadership election, even though she had been one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate.
In May this year she went on to co-write a column in The Guardian expressing regret for nominating the Labour leader and criticising his leadership. “Weak leadership, poor judgment and a mistaken sense of priorities have created distraction after distraction and stopped us getting our message across,” she wrote.
Later, in an interview with The Independent’s website, she warned that Corbyn could face a leadership challenge if Britain votes to leave the EU because of his failure to mobilise voters for the Remain campaign. “I want to see those Labour voters come out and vote Remain, “ she said. “If they don’t, and we leave [the EU], that is a conversation for June 24... Ultimately there are many of us who think that Jeremy needs to take responsibility,” she said.
Helen Joanne Leadbetter, always known as “Jo”, was born on June 22 1974 in Batley, Yorkshire. Her mother, Jean, was a school secretary and her father, Gordon, was a factory worker in Leeds.
Jo was educated at Heckmondwike Grammar School and at Cambridge University, although she did not enjoy the experience, and came to a “realisation that where you were born mattered. That how you spoke mattered... who you knew mattered. I didn’t really speak right or knew the right people. I spent the summers packing toothpaste at a factory working where my dad worked and everyone else had gone on a gap year. To be honest my experience at Cambridge really knocked me for about five years.”
It also led her to joining the Labour Party. After leaving university, she worked for Oxfam, becoming head of policy and was also an advisor to Gordon Brown’s wife Sarah, and Lady Kinnock. She became national chairwoman of Labour Women’s Network and a senior adviser to the Freedom Fund, an anti-slavery charity.
She was selected to fight the safe Labour seat of Batley and Spen at the 2015 election after the previous MP, Mike Wood, announced his retirement, and increased the Labour majority by 2,000 votes.
In Parliament, she became a member of the Communities and Local Government select committee and used her maiden speech to urge the government to match rhetoric about building a “Northern Powerhouse” with action, including more regional devolution and increased funding for local authorities.
“Having gone through that experience of being in a Cambridge college, surviving it and building myself up, meant that coming here (Westminster) was a walk in the park,” she explained to the Yorkshire Post, “ and a lot of the same people are here.”
A keen mountain climber, Jo Cox lived in a converted barge moored at Tower Bridge with her husband Brendan and two young children, Lejla and Cuillin.
On June 16 she was stabbed and shot in the street near to where she held her weekly surgery at Birstall, West Yorkshire. An air ambulance transported her to Leeds General Infirmary but she died of her injuries.
Jo Cox, born June 22 1974, died June 16 2016
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