Labour and Diane Abbott: Should they give her one more chance?
She's a political giant and the first black woman elected to parliament, but was this one reckless remark too many?
BY MICHAEL HAVIS
LONDON is not the best place for street interviews. There I said it.
I don’t like to dwell on the nuts and bolts of recording these videos too much, because I’m unsure how interesting it is for you, the reader, to hear about it. But honestly, shooting these in the city is a miserable slog.
Time and time again, I find myself approaching tourists, or people whose grasp of English is so basic that they struggle to politely decline. The locals you do find are in such a steaming hurry that they’ve barely got time to acknowledge you, yet alone refuse you, and they’re more suspicious (understandably, perhaps) of a man in the street with a camera.
Ironically, this time round, I also found that those who were willing to speak couldn’t be stopped once they started. There were people who declined to appear on camera, but were still so happy to unburden themselves of their views that I struggled to detach myself from them. There were also plenty of, how to say this, characters? One woman, having declined an interview, twice asked me to confirm I wasn’t recording her, then spent 10 minutes suspiciously eyeing me from the middle distance.
The result for me is this: something that might take an hour or 90 minutes in any mid-sized town centre takes twice as long. By the time you factor in the journey there and back, that means you’ve lost almost a full day.
And the thing is, I didn’t even want to go to London. I was meant to be in Thurrock, where Keir Starmer had just launched his big pledges for public office, to see how the Labour leader was landing among the archetypal “Essex man” that carried Margaret Thatcher to victory. But I was scarcely two minutes from my house when my car’s engine warning light flashed up, power dipped, and I had to limp to the mechanic and leave my car for the day. So, I improvised.
My mind flashed back to the seat of Hackney North and Stoke Newington, represented by one Diane Abbott. The Labour stalwart and Corbyn ally lost her party’s whip last year after making some rather misguided comments that seemed to minimise various forms of racism, among them anti-semitism. She implied that they weren’t as bad as anti-black racism, and more akin to the prejudice faced by gingers. If anyone can recall a genocide against strawberry-haired people, please let me know, because I surely can’t.
But there’s been a lot of pressure to restore the whip to her, and let her seek re-election as a Labour MP. After all, she’s a major figure in British political history — not only the first black woman elected to Parliament, but also the longest-serving black MP. She’s also been left out in the cold while Keir Starmer welcomed defecting Conservative MPs to his benches — one of them very controversial. Which begs the question, if they can be Labour MPs, why can’t a party member who sat on their benches for decades?
So, with my car in the shop, I boarded the train to London, ready to ask the people of Hackney: should Labour forgive Diane Abbott?
The first man I spoke to was a Jewish gentleman who loathed his MP, was glad she’d lost the Labour whip, and hoped it would stay that way. He said he was a Conservative voter, but nonetheless liked Keir Starmer and thought him fair-minded. He demurred when asked whether he could be persuaded to support Mr Starmer if another Labour candidate ran in Hackney.
Like so many voters I’ve spoke to in recent weeks, he was very fired up about the situation in Gaza, but this time he was on the Israeli side rather than the Palestinian. He drew a distinction between European and Middle Eastern Jews, placing himself firmly in the latter camp, and saying that his group weren’t so squeamish about the bloodletting in Gaza. It was not my most comfortable interview.
I was glad this week to speak to several members of the black community. They all said the same thing: that it was disproportionate to take the whip from Ms Abbott over her remarks, and it should be restored to her so she can continue as a Labour MP. They spoke about the slings and arrows she’d endured, and I was told more than once: “we all make mistakes”.
One gentleman I spoke to, an elderly white man, hoped to see the back of Ms Abbott. He said he’d written to her some years before about his mother and how she needed an operation, and said he’d never had a response. His companion (partner?) was far more loquacious on the subject, though he declined to appear on camera. He seemed to imply that Ms Abbott only served the black community, and — referring to “black lives matter” — he contended that “all lives matter”. This chap was so animated that at times I wondered if he was angry with me personally.
One interviewee actually came to me, which is a rarity. I was asking somebody else for his views about Diane Abbott, and she interjected that the MP had done nothing for her. She said she was homeless, had lost her job, her house, her kids, and that Ms Abbott had done nothing for people like her. Interestingly though, she also said that her MP deserved a second chance, and that she would vote Labour, if she could — voting without a fixed address is more complicated, however.
I thought her example was interesting. Of the people I spoke to, most were in favour of restoring the whip to Ms Abbott, but also most were planning to vote Labour regardless. There were two exceptions: one older white lady said she would vote Green, and one one black man was non-committal — he would only say that he preferred to vote for Diane Abbott.
Making a prediction for this seat is a faintly ridiculous exercise; it has only ever been won by Labour and the party currently has a majority there of over 30,000. The only question here is what Labour candidate will be elected as MP. Needless to say, Labour HOLD.