There is a sense of poetic justice in seeing Diane Abbott back in parliament after the 2024 election. She is now Mother of the House – the title given to the longest serving female MP – and all those who plotted to block her from standing must watch as she receives the respect she deserves. After enduring so much racism, and at a time of few political wins for the left, we have to ask: how did Abbott end up having the last laugh?
Her autobiography offers some clues. Born to working-class Jamaican parents in 1953, she was clearly always both strong-willed and intellectually gifted. Which is not to say she didn’t have to work hard: early signs of her determination include insisting to her teachers that she apply to Cambridge, swotting up on Latin for the entrance exam, and beating considerable odds by winning a place from her state school. After graduation she entered the Home Office as part of the civil service fast stream, and made history in 1987 as the first Black woman MP.
But this book is far more than just a list of her achievements. Inside its pages are 70 years of Black British history, and four decades of political ups and downs, encompassing Thatcher, Kinnock, Blair, Brown, Corbyn, and Starmer. Among other things she recounts how the left took charge of the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone, the New Cross house fire in 1981 and the organising across the Black community that followed, as well as resistance to the Iraq war.
Abbott has become well known as the target of online abuse in recent years. But what is clear from this book is how racism has always been a part of her professional life, starting with bricks through her office window when she first stood as an MP. And as her story progresses so too does the list of leaders of the Labour party that have failed to support her. I’m glad to see so many people named and shamed for their behaviour. Neil Kinnock was the leader of the party when she was elected alongside two Black men – Bernie Grant and Paul Boateng. She writes that he “did not see it as a triumph and noticeably did not celebrate it as such”, believing them to be the “embodiment of the ‘loony left’”. When Abbott was subsequently asked to go on Question Time, Peter Mandelson, then the director of communications, failed to respond to her various requests for briefings, and she had to wait longer than her colleagues before getting an office in parliament. I was shocked even by her treatment under Corbyn, a long-term ally and friend, whose office forced her to temporarily stand down as shadow home secretary just before the 2017 election.
Abbott uses this book to remind people of her lifelong efforts to oppose draconian immigration policies and defend civil liberties. On leaving the Home Office in the 1970s she says: “I could not visualise spending the rest of my working life locking people up, crafting racist immigration legislation and generally infringing on civil liberties.” It must be frustrating for her to see so little change in this area.
After her appalling treatment by Starmer’s Labour she is upfront in saying that the party now offers very little space for the left, writing “whatever issue you look at, the convergence between Labour and the Tories remains deeply disappointing”. She describes the Corbyn era as an “interlude” and comments that the period “tested to destruction the idea that the left will be allowed significant influence in the Labour party”. Even though she has always been against it, she concludes that there is a need to look again at proportional representation, and considers the alliances that would be required to make it work, including the possibility of coalition with the Greens.
Having read A Woman Like Me I was left with a feeling of melancholy. I imagined the world in which she became home secretary and turned one of the most poisonous arms of government into a bastion of progressive policy. As her generation of politicians retire there will be fewer bold voices on issues like migrant rights: the Labour party under Starmer would certainly have blocked Abbott if she were starting her career now. But the longer she has survived the more her support has grown. As one person said to me on the doorstep in Chingford, where I stood as an independent this year after being deselected by Labour – “I don’t agree with her on everything, but you’ve got to admire her ability to keep going.” History, they say, is written by the victors. But as this book and Abbott’s career show – history, as written by the underdogs, can be powerfully inspiring.
• A Woman Like Me by Diane Abbott is published by Viking (£25). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
