She was called an ‘extremist’ by opponents and treated as a liability by Labour. This exclusive extract from a biography explains how she defied them all to make history in 1987
The 1987 election campaign was the first time the Labour party had fielded so many black and Asian candidates. Yet Diane Abbott got the impression that “the national party thought we were an embarrassment”. Certainly, “they offered no support of any kind” and Labour’s party political broadcasts featured practically no black people.
The Tories, on the other hand, saw Abbott as an electoral asset – but not for Labour. Together with Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn, she featured on their “So this is the new moderate militant-free Labour party” advert. There were two versions: one that featured 24 faces and one that featured six; Abbott was on both. Abbott remembers getting more recognition from the Tory posters than from any Labour material.
