As I prepared for my Zoom interview with Diane Abbott, I wasn’t sure what to expect. She is a trailblazer in many ways: the first black woman to be elected to the House of Commons, and the ‘Mother of the House,’ as the longest continuously serving female MP. When she popped up on my screen, with her micro bangs and glasses peering out at me, I was surprised by how humble she was. She greeted me warmly, asking me about myself and my studies.
To begin, I was particularly interested in her experience at Cambridge. Abbott matriculated in 1973 at Newnham, studying History. When Abbott started her degree, only 16% of undergraduates were female and only 6 colleges admitted women. She was also the only black person in the history faculty at the time. I wondered if the University, aware of this disparity, offered any kind of support to Abbott or attempted to redress these imbalances. “No,” she told me honestly. “To be fair to the university, it was almost as new to them to have a black student as it was for me to be there.” She adds that universities back then, and especially Cambridge, were “sink or swim” places with “no notions of pastoral care.” She recounted one instance in which she attended a May ball, and one of the students there assumed that she had come to work in the kitchen. This was just one instance in which she was made to feel uncomfortable during her time at Cambridge.
“The Labour party currently is so frightened of Reform, it’s saying things that you wouldn’t want a socialist party to say”
Abbott’s relationship with the current Labour party is tense. The party has shifted in policy towards the centre-right, while she has always been on the left of the party. She was removed from the shadow cabinet by Keir Starmer and following the controversy over her letter written to The Observer, she later had the whip withdrawn under his leadership. She has previously accused Starmer of trying to force the left out of the party. It is surprising, then, that in her memoir she claims she will “always belong to the Labour party at heart.” I asked her about this, and whether she could still recommend the Labour party to left-wing activists.
She responded that she was “much more involved in the community,” including the black women’s movement and issues of racialised policing, before becoming involved with the Labour party. This advocacy then led her to her involvement with the party, adding that, under First Past the Post, if the left vote is split, the Tories will benefit. “If it was proportional representation, it might be different – there would be space for new left-wing parties […] but at the current time, you should join the Labour party, even if it’s not the main thrust of your politics.”
Pressing further, I asked her what she thought about allegations of structural racism within the Labour party. She responded that “society as a whole is structurally racist.” While the Labour party, as a progressive party, makes a conscious point of not being racist, “things happen, and you realise that racism is still there.” She later added that “the Labour party currently is so frightened of Reform, it’s saying things that you wouldn’t want a socialist party to say.”
Interestingly, Abbott doesn’t think that “parliament is the best way to get involved in politics,” arguing that, “the most important way is to get involved is through grassroots organisations” on the local level. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t rule parliament out altogether.
Moving on from this, Abbott talks about racism in the UK today. “In some ways we’re less racist,” noting that “black children and white children going to school together” means more familiarity between the races than there was 50 years ago. Now, she notes, there are people of colour at the top of big law firms and running businesses, which you certainly wouldn’t have seen years ago.
"Trump must be the most racist American president since the civil rights era"
However, her view is that “given what a diverse society Britain is, there hasn’t been as much change as there should have been. And there is a danger, if we’re not careful, that we’re going to go backwards.” She points to the rise of far-right “fascist parties” across Europe, including in France, Germany, and Italy, adding that in the US, “Trump must be the most racist American president since the civil rights era.” So, in the international context, there is “a tide of racism and anti-immigrant feeling, and to a certain extent, Britain hasn’t escaped that.”
Not entirely convinced by the idea that diversity equates to political progress, I brought up the fact that the highest ranks of the Conservative party are diverse, yet their policies remain oriented towards an anti-immigration stance. She responds, “I don’t think that having Rishi Sunak or Kemi Badenock makes the Tory party less racist. It is progress of a kind that you now see people of colour inside these organisations. However, I don’t underestimate how complicated that is. Sometimes, in order to climb up the ladder in a firm, people of colour have to be more racist than the white people […] they can give you more problems as a younger person coming in than a white person will.”
She thinks that now she would advocate for electoral reform, although she never used to. This is largely because of the experience of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. “One of the things you don’t hear is that Jeremy in 2017 got more votes than Keir Starmer, and in 2019 he got more or less the same. But I think people just couldn’t tolerate the idea of someone with that type of politics possibly being prime minister.” Adding that, “it’s because it’s the closest the left has ever gotten to having a left-wing prime minister, that it ended so horribly.” Because of this experience, she now thinks that “maybe proportional representation is the way forward.”
Abbott retains a sense of optimism that we don’t hear much of anymore. When I expressed that, for a lot of young people, the world feels quite hopeless at the moment, she immediately jumped to reassure me. Smiling, she exclaimed that “it’s not hopeless at all! Politics is cyclical, and we’re at the bottom of the cycle right now. But I’m confident that in a few years, in terms of progressive politics, we’ll be on the rise.”
Want to share your thoughts on this article? Send us a letter to letters@varsity.co.uk or by using this form.
