Diane Abbot and the Conservative race row

Perhaps one of the most stand out points in the recent race row over Frank Hester’s comments about the Labour MP Diane Abbot is that this was not a drunken brawl or football hooligans shouting abuse, but within the top echelons of British society. This current row adds to the pressure Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is facing as a general election is around the corner. More important, however, is the fact that racist abuse does not seem to be disappearing from Britain’s streets anytime soon.

Diane Abbott has served as Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987 and is the first Black woman elected to Parliament as well as the longest-serving Black MP. She was embroiled in an earlier race row controversy over her earlier comments in 2023 when she suggested Jewish, Irish and Traveller people ‘were not subject to racism all their lives.’ This was seen as antisemitic, and the Labour Party withdrew the whip. What Abbot might have been trying to say was that people from these and other groups, experienced prejudice and discrimination, but not necessarily racial discrimination.

The current race row, however, concerns the views of Hester who is reported to have said in 2019, that ‘It’s like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV, and you’re just like I hate, you just want to hate all Black women because she’s there, and I don’t hate all Black women at all, but I think she should be shot’. Although there has been some suggestions that he did not make this statement, he has recently apologised. Hester, along with his technology company, The Phoenix Partnership, donated a combined £10.2 million to the Tories last year and in November gifted Sunak the use of a helicopter for a political visit, valued at £15,000. Not for the first time since taking up office as prime minister, Sunak has been left in a very delicate position over the behaviour of either party members or, in this case, an important party supporter and donor. Although he eventually acknowledged that the statement was racist and wrong, he repeatedly told MPs in the weekly House of Commons debate that Hester had apologised and his ‘remorse should be accepted’. At Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament 13 March 2024, the row dominated the session, as Labour Party leader Keir Starmer called on Sunak to give back the £10 million. To make matters worse for Sunak, a few days before this row over Hester’s remarks, another prominent Tory Party member defected to the populist Reform UK party, after he was suspended from the Conservatives for making ‘unacceptable’ remarks about Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. Overall, therefore, these two recent cases have created an embarrassing situation for the government and the Conservative Party. Hester’s company said he acknowledges that he was rude about Diane Abbott in a private meeting in 2019 but his criticism had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin. Whichever context in which one wishes to analyse Hester’s statement, it is both distasteful and disparaging.

As for the impact of this on Abbot, she is reported to have remarked that she feels unsafe, especially as a single woman who does not drive and regularly takes public transport Abbot has for years faced a torrent of verbal abuse. For example, in 2017, one analysis of abusive tweets in the lead up the general election showed that Abbott received 45 per cent of all such messages. She receives regular verbal threats and racist abuse and in light of this latest case has reported Hester to the Parliamentary Liaison and Investigations Team, a unit of London’s Metropolitan Police, set up following the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016. Conservative MP David Amess was also fatally stabbed at a 2021 meeting in his constituency. This situation is, therefore, something that should be taken seriously as it shows that even within the government, despite all the talk, firmer actions will need to be taken if we are to truly tackle the scourge of racist abuse.

Dr. Tony Talburt is a senior lecturer at Birmingham City University in the UK.