Diane Julie Abbott (born 27 September 1953) is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987. She served in the Shadow Cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn as Shadow Home Secretary from 2016 to 2020. She is both the first black woman elected to parliament and the longest-serving black MP. Though she is a member of the Labour Party, she sits in the House of Commons as an independent, having had the whip suspended in April 2023.
Born in Paddington, to a British-Jamaican family, Abbott attended Harrow County School for Girls before reading History at Newnham College, Cambridge. After joining and leaving the Civil Service, she worked as a reporter for Thames Television and TV-am before becoming a press officer for the Greater London Council. Joining the Labour Party, she was elected to Westminster City Council in 1982 and then as an MP in 1987, being re-elected in every general election since.
She was a member of the Labour Party Black Sections. Critical of Tony Blair's New Labour project that moved the party towards the centre during the mid to late 1990s, in the House of Commons Abbott voted against several Blair policies, including the Iraq War and the Identity Cards Act 2006. She stood for election as Leader of the Labour Party on a left-wing platform in the 2010 leadership election, finishing in last place in a contest that was won by Ed Miliband, who appointed her Shadow Minister for Health on the Official Opposition frontbench.
A supporter of Jeremy Corbyn's bid to become Labour leader in 2015, Abbott became Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, then Shadow Secretary of State for Health, and eventually Shadow Home Secretary. A Corbyn ally, she supported his leftward push of the Labour Party. She unsuccessfully attempted to be chosen as the Labour candidate for the 2016 London mayoral election, and backed the unsuccessful Britain Stronger in Europe campaign to retain UK membership of the European Union. Following the 2019 general election, Abbott was removed from the Shadow Cabinet by Keir Starmer.
During her political career, Abbott has made many controversial statements, several of which were about race. In April 2023, as a result of a letter Abbott wrote to The Observer in which she compared racism experienced by Jewish, Irish, and Traveller people to that experienced by black people, the Labour Party withdrew the whip.
Early life and career
Abbott was born to Jamaican parents in Paddington, London, on 27 September 1953. Her father worked as a welder and her mother as a nurse. Both of her parents left school at the age of 14. She attended Harrow County School for Girls (a grammar school) and then Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read history, achieving a lower second-class degree (2:2). At Cambridge, one of her supervisors was Sir Simon Schama.
After university, Abbott became an administration trainee (a fast-track route to senior positions in HM Civil Service) at the Home Office (1976 to 1978), and then a Race Relations Officer at the National Council for Civil Liberties (1978 to 1980). She was a researcher and reporter at Thames Television from 1980 to 1983, and then a researcher at the breakfast television company TV-am from 1983 to 1985. She was a press officer at the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone from 1985 to 1986, and Head of Press and Public Relations at Lambeth Council from 1986 to 1987.
Political career
Abbott's career in politics began in 1982 when she was elected to Westminster City Council, serving until 1986. In 1983, she was active in the Labour Party Black Sections movement, alongside Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng and Keith Vaz, campaigning for greater African Caribbean and Asian political representation. In 1985, she unsuccessfully fought to be selected in Brent East, losing out to Ken Livingstone. In 1987, Abbott was elected to the House of Commons, replacing the deselected serving Labour MP Ernie Roberts as MP for Hackney North & Stoke Newington. She was the first black woman to become an MP.
Abbott's speech on civil liberties, in the debate on the Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008, won The Spectator magazine's "Parliamentary Speech of the Year" award, and further recognition at the 2008 Human Rights awards. A speech by Abbott in a House of Commons debate on the Caribbean is included in Margaret Busby's 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa.