Britain’s first black female MP faced hostility from the media and political establishment from the start. Nearly 40 years on, she is still not giving up
Six weeks ago, the Conservatives’ biggest donor, Frank Hester, was revealed by the Guardian to have spoken at a meeting of his healthcare company, the Phoenix Partnership, about one of Britain’s longest-serving and most pioneering MPs. “You see Diane Abbott on the TV and … you just want to hate all black women,” Hester said. “I think she should be shot.”
The meeting had taken place in 2019, when Abbott was Labour’s shadow home secretary. As a lifelong defender of civil liberties, a radical leftwinger and a close ally of the then party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, Abbott was notably different from previous holders of the role. But there was an anger and viciousness to Hester’s remarks, which are being investigated by the police, and also a limit to the Labour support for her that they prompted, which was very striking.
