MP Diane Abbott gets Platinum Award as Weekly Gleaner honours stalwarts

LONDON:

UK MP Diane Abbott has been honoured with a Weekly Gleaner Platinum Award for being an iconic pillar of the black community for over 40 years.

The citation which was read at the award presentation in London on October 27 noted that she is synonymous with race, global justice at home and abroad, civil liberties, diaspora affairs, peace and security issues. She is the first woman of African descent elected to the House of Commons and one of the longest-serving members since 1987.

The Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington was the main recipient of the Weekly Gleaner Honour Awards which celebrates the newspaper’s 70 years of continuous publishing in the United Kingdom and also marked Jamaica’s 60 years of Independence.

Twelve other UK Jamaicans were presented with awards for their outstanding achievements in various fields and who have contributed to the betterment of the black community, and their fellow Jamaicans.

In addition to the Platinum Award, Ms Abbott was also presented with the award for public service.

Her extraordinary accomplishments include being the only black person from a state school to study at Cambridge in the 1970s, first black woman MP, first black MP at the despatch box during Prime Minister’s Questions and the longest-serving black member of parliament. She has built a distinguished career as a parliamentarian, broadcaster and commentator.

Abbott was born in London to Jamaican parents from Clarendon. Her father was a welder and her mother a nurse. She won a place at Cambridge after attending grammar school and then worked in local government and television before switching to politics.

In 1987 she created history along with Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant and Keith Vaz when they entered Parliament as the first elected black and Asian MPs. Abbott represents the London constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington where she has been elected nine times, with the biggest majority ever.

Outspoken on many issues, Abbott occupied a left-of-centre position in the Labour Party during the 1990s, when Tony Blair’s reform “modernisation” programme abandoned many of the party’s traditional socialist policies.

She has successfully held three shadow ministerial posts in public health, international development and home secretary.

She has been a vocal campaigner on better race-relations, transparency and justice, as well as fighting the cause around policing, surveillance, stop and search, and detainment without trial, issues which have affected members of the black community disproportionately. She is founder of the London Schools and the Black Child Initiative, which raises educational achievement levels among black children and she also flies the flag for Jamaica at every public opportunity.

The platinum award was presented to Diane Abbott by Andrea Messam, chief financial officer for the RJR Gleaner Communications Group, Yvonne Wilks O’Grady, corporate affairs and group marketing consultant at the RJR/Gleaner Communications Group, and George Ruddock, manager and editor of the Weekly Gleaner.

After the presentation, Ms Abbott said it was an honour to receive the award as Tthe Gleaner is synonymous with Jamaica. She said, “Everywhere I go in the world, Jamaicans always look to The Gleaner for their information. It’s quite an achievement to have been publishing the UK edition for 70 years, and a real honour to be recognised by such an outstanding media institution.”