Speaking of Brendan Cox and Jo Cox…
Street sign in Morlande, a district of Avallon, Burgundy, France. It says: “Jo Cox Street, British MP, assassinated because of her convictions, 22 June 1974 – 16 June 2016.”
In English it would say that.
Untranslated it says
Rue Jo COX
Députée Brittanique
Assassinée pour ses convictions
22 juin 1974-16 juin 2016
H/t Stewart
Thomas Mair has appeared in court.
The venue chosen for Thomas Mair’s first court appearance was the most important magistrate’s court in London. Deputy Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot was presiding.
Reporters from the broadcasters and Sunday newspapers and from overseas packed the press seats at the back.
As is almost always the case, the hearing was brief, but it had a key moment of drama – the moment the man in the dock was asked his name.
He stood, as asked, for what is normally one of the most mundane parts of the proceedings. Not this time.
“My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain,” he said.
Asked to repeat it, he said the same thing. Then he fell silent until he was taken from the dock and driven off to prison.
So that’s a guilty plea then.
(No, officially it’s not, of course, but it certainly is a declaration. And a hideous one at that – “traitor” – godalmighty.)
Another heartbreaker about Jo Cox, by Kate Proctor at the Yorkshire Post.
On Tuesday night Yorkshire’s women of 2015 gathered on Jo Cox’s houseboat on the River Thames for a party. These feisty ladies from West Yorkshire were brought together by the MP for Batley and Spen to celebrate and reflect on their first year in Parliament.
I started my job as Westminster Correspondent for the Yorkshire Post at roughly the same time, and have got to know this particular band of women very well. They are a close bunch, all elected in May 2015, and they include the powerhouses of Holly Lynch MP for nearby Halifax and Paula Sherriff, MP for Dewsbury. They are all inspiring in their own way and mother-of-two Jo Cox shone brightly. Her working class roots, her Yorkshire accent, her warmth and her fierce intelligence made her an excellent MP. In just one short year in Parliament there has been much to celebrate and this party thrown by Jo for these fine Yorkshire women was well deserved.
On Monday night.
When she stood up in Parliament to talk about foreign affairs and international relations people listen because she has rare first hand experience in the Middle East. She spent time in Gaza and that was deeply respected. I once saw her follow Labour MP Hilary Benn during one of the many debates on Syria, and thought she held her own and the attention of the room with much of the same skill as her party senior.
Notice the poignant mix of tenses.
During her time at Oxfam she met her husband Brendan, who is now working for the UN. They spent New Years running a camp for orphans and families connected to the Srebrenica massacre. The spirit of the Bosnian people had a lasting impact and the couple named their daughter Lejla, a Bosnian girls name. She was just two-years-old when I spoke to Jo at Christmas.
I saw this story via Lejla Kurić on Facebook. Proctor spelled the name Leija but Lejla silently corrected it, and I figure she probably knows. Anyway, I find that a touching detail – just one of so many in this horror. Now Lejla Cox age 2 1/2 has to grow up without her mother.
With the research emerging overnight that Jo Cox MP’s murderer Tommy Mair was a supporter of various extreme right wing groups and the three eyewitness accounts that he shouted “Britain first”, it is looking increasingly likely that this was an act of nationalist far right terrorism.
Quilliam condemns this repulsive act and remembers the wonderful life of Jo Cox, an MP, a mother of two, a tireless campaigner for refugees, the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group ‘Friends of Syria’ and the former Head of Policy at Oxfam. Our thoughts are with her friends and family on this dark day for British politics.
The terrorist Tommy Mair was a long standing member of the neo nazi direct action group, the National Alliance and the pro apartheid group White Rhino before carrying out his act of terror yesterday.
We call on the media to treat this act as it would any act of suspected jihadist terrorism. We call on society to expose, isolate and challenge all extremist ideologies and narratives for what they are. And we call on states to continue tackling extremism of all kinds, with consistency and urgency.
Within a week of the jihadist terrorist attack in Orlando, we must remember the negative symbiosis between Islamist and far right extremism, and the atmosphere that both extremisms create which is conducive to terrorism of any kind. Social polarisation, intolerance and acts of violence are rising across the world and cannot be seen in isolation from the predominant extremist ideologies and narratives.
Quilliam’s Managing Director Haras Rafiq says:
“For many years now, Quilliam has been raising awareness about the negative symbiosis between Islamist extremism and Far-Right extremism. These two are set to rise if we do not consistently call out both. build bridges and more importantly – allow for difficult conversations.The Far-Right and Islamist extremism share the same characteristics and emotional triggers – the same pathways in and out of extremism.”
From all of us at Quilliam, we remember Jo and take inspiration from the bright horizon and vision of the future that she painted for us, free from the hate and extremism that threatens us all. And we call on our nation to unite to prevent such future tragedies.
Never mind. Apparently the “source” is a “satire” site although I’m damned if I can find any confirmation of that. I was misled by the fact that it cited Breitbart – not because Breitbart is reliable but because it doesn’t consider itself satire.
Oh god oh god oh god.
Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, commented on the tragedy in her own, provocative style, saying that “it’s no use trying to teach people that pacifism doesn’t work when you have things like these happening almost every day. A woman who had a family, a husband and two young children, was shot dead in the middle of the street like a beggar. Who should we be upset with? The murderer for being insane enough to do something like this or the woman herself, for failing to take precautions to save her own life?”
“I know I’m going to cause a lot of different comments by saying this, but I’m furious with that late, stupid woman,” Palin told Breitbart News. “I know she was a lefty and I know that means she was against guns, but if she were able to somehow miraculously come back to life now, what do you think she’d say about it? Do you think she’d change her mind about guns? I bet she would. She’d never leave the house without a 12-gauge shotgun by her side. And that’s why I’ve made a habit of doing that, as well.”
“But no, she had to go off and try to prove a point,” she added. “And now what? Her children will be motherless and her husband a widower. As a matter of fact, you know something? That woman had a million opportunities to bring along protection. And she failed to do that. And now she’s dead. So you know what? She got what she deserved, if you ask me.”
I have no words.
The Guardian is live updating coverage of the murder of Jo Cox. The newest item is terrifying:
In a further indication of far right reaction to the murder of Jo Cox, the Observer’s home affairs editor Mark Townsend reports that another Yorkshire MP received a death threat for sympathising with refugees the day before Jo Cox was murdered.
Notts Casual Infidels, a far right group belonging to the extremist Infidels network, posted an image of York Central Labour MP Rachael Maskell addressing a “refugees welcome rally” at 9:39am on Thursday June 15 with the warning: “This bitch needs to disappear.”
Hours after Cox’s death later that day, the same group said in a Facebook post: “We knew it was only a matter of time before we take it to the next level. We have been mugged off for Far to (sic) long.” The post was later deleted.
There are far too many people who think various “bitches” need to disappear.
Julian Borger had a conversation with Jo Cox on Tuesday.
On Tuesday in Westminster, she talked for an hour about trolling, Brexit, Labour in the north, Syria and humanitarian intervention, life as an MP and the struggle to make a difference. We were supposed to meet on Wednesday, but it was brought forward because she had to go to her Yorkshire constituency a day early in an attempt to shore up the remain vote. That was what she was doing when she was killed.
The overwhelming majority of Labour members in Batley and Spen oppose her position on the EU referendum, and she conceded Labour had failed to connect with its supporters on immigration. A dispassionate debate on the issue was becoming impossible anyway. She felt she was pushing against the tabloid press and daily scare stories such as the supposedly imminent invasion of Turkish migrants across the Channel.
“I hear that repeated back to me on the doorsteps. Whatever was on the front page of the tabs that day. It’s getting through,” she said.
She believed passionately that it was possible to stand up for the pummelled working class of northern England, and at the same time strive to protect Syrians from bombing or at least help to care for the orphans of that war.
It’s a difficult balance…or perhaps an impossible one. I very much like the idealism of being welcoming to immigrants…but what about the idealism of welcoming huge numbers of religious conservatives? That doesn’t sound so appealing, whatever religion the newcomers adhere to.
It was not an easy or popular stance in a country at an inward-looking point in its history, and she was becoming accustomed to high levels of trolling from right and left.
Being a woman with an unpopular position invited particular levels of bile. She noted that when she wrote a critique of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in the Guardian last month, she received 10 times more internet hate mail than her male co-author. Her defence of immigration also drew fury. She did not mention on Tuesday that she had referred some direct threats to the police, or that a man had been arrested in connection with those threats in March.
10 times more internet hate mail than her male co-author, and more bullets and stabs and death. She got trolling, and hate mail, and threats, and murdered.
As a daughter of the working-class north, but also a former aid worker and human rights advocate in war zones abroad, she said she could not betray one part of that identity for another. She had to somehow stand for both. She described blank stares from constituents when she talked about Syria and the scale of the suffering there, but said she would go on talking about the war and mass killing in other foreign fields regardless.
I admire that. It really is hard standing for both.
She was not optimistic about her political future or that of her party. She felt the EU referendum had “made it OK somehow for Labour people to switch to Ukip.” Neither had she gone into politics to remain a backbencher for the foreseeable future. “I came in to make a difference, to be a minister, to make policy,” she said. She clearly possessed many of the attributes of a potential party leader – female, northern, working class roots, eloquent and photogenic – but she insisted she was not cut out for the top spot.
She was torn, she said. Part of her wanted to stay on and “fight to save the Labour party” in the political turmoil that might follow a Brexit vote. Part of her wanted to get out of politics if she could not make policy, and look at other ways of making a difference in the world. She spoke enthusiastically of the work her husband, Brendan, was doing in researching how to fight negative stereotypes of immigrants in the public consciousness, caricatures that increasingly dominated public debate in Britain.
And then she talked about life on a houseboat, and then she left to get ready for her trip north.
Polly Toynbee on the ugly climate in the UK right now:
There are many decent people involved in the campaign to secure Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, many who respect the referendum as the exercise in democracy that it is. But there are others whose recklessness has been open and shocking. I believe they bear responsibility, not for the attack itself, but for the current mood: for the inflammatory language, for the finger-jabbing, the dogwhistling and the overt racism.
It’s been part of a noxious brew, with a dangerous anti-politics and anti-MP stereotypes fomented by leave and their media backers mixed in. Only an hour before this shooting Nigel Farage unveiled a huge poster showing Syrian refugees fleeing to Slovenia last year, nothing to do with EU free movement – and none arriving here. Leave’s poster read: “Breaking Point. We must break free from the EU and take control of our borders.” Nicola Sturgeon, Caroline Lucas and many others condemned it as “disgusting”, and so it is.
Nigel Farage and the leavers there, Donald Trump and his fans here. It’s a bad time.
Rude, crude, Nazi-style extremism is mercifully rare. But the leavers have lifted several stones. How recklessly the decades of careful work and anti-racist laws to make those sentiments unacceptable have been overturned.
This campaign has stirred up anti-migrant sentiment that used to be confined to outbursts from the far fringes of British politics. The justice minister, Michael Gove, and the leader of the house, Chris Grayling – together with former London mayor Boris Johnson – have allied themselves to divisive anti-foreigner sentiment ramped up to a level unprecedented in our lifetime. Ted Heath expelled Enoch Powell from the Tory front ranks for it. Oswald Mosley was ejected from his party for it. Gove and Grayling remain in the cabinet.
When politicians from a mainstream party use immigration as their main weapon in a hotly fought campaign, they unleash something dark and hateful that in all countries always lurks not far beneath the surface.
It’s not Godzilla or T Rex or witches or zombies. It’s just humans, being humans.
I’ve seen many people praising the Guardian’s editorial on the murder of Jo Cox, and rightly so.
Jo Cox, however, was not just any MP doing her duty. She was also an MP who was driven by an ideal. The former charity worker explained what that ideal was as eloquently as anyone could in her maiden speech last year. “Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration,” she insisted, “be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”
What nobler vision can there be than that of a society where people can be comfortable in their difference? And what more fundamental tenet of decency is there than to put first and to cherish all that makes us human, as opposed to what divides one group from another? These are ideals that are often maligned when they are described as multiculturalism, but they are precious nonetheless. They are the ideals which led Ms Cox to campaign tirelessly for the brutalised and displaced people of Syria, and – the most painful thought – ideals for which she may now have died.
That is what makes it so hideously tragic – she was a generous person doing generous work.
We are in the midst of what risks becoming a plebiscite on immigration and immigrants. The tone is divisive and nasty. Nigel Farage on Thursday unveiled a poster of unprecedented repugnance. The backdrop was a long and thronging line of displaced people in flight. The message: “The EU has failed us all.” The headline: “Breaking point.” The time for imagining that the Europhobes can be engaged on the basis of facts – such as the reality that a refugee crisis that started in Syria and north Africa can hardly be blamed on the EU, or the inconvenient detail that obligations under the refugee convention do not depend on EU membership – has passed. One might have still hoped, however, that even merchants of post-truth politics might hold back from the sort of entirely post-moral politics that is involved in taking the great humanitarian crisis of our time, and then whipping up hostility to the victims as a means of chivvying voters into turning their backs on the world.
The idealism of Ms Cox was the very antithesis of such brutal cynicism. Honour her memory. Because the values and the commitment that she embodied are all that we have to keep barbarism at bay.
Alex Massie in the Spectator on a day of infamy. (The actual Roosevelt phrase is “a day that will live in infamy.”)
The poster unveiled by Nigel Farage this morning marked a new low, even for him.
The mask – the pawky, gin o’clock, you know what I mean, mask – didn’t slip because there was no mask at all. BREAKING POINT, it screamed above a queue of dusky-hued refugees waiting to cross a border. The message was not very subtle: Vote Leave, Britain, or be over-run by brown people. Take control. Take back our country. You know what I mean, don’t you: If you want a Turk – or a Syrian – for a neighbour, vote Remain. Simple. Common sense. Innit?
The Nazis gave us this one:
Back to Alex Massie:
Nigel Farage isn’t responsible for Jo Cox’s murder. And nor is the Leave campaign. But they are responsible for the manner in which they have pressed their argument. They weren’t to know something like this was going to happen, of course, and they will be just as shocked and horrified by it as anyone else.
But, still. Look. When you encourage rage you cannot then feign surprise when people become enraged. You cannot turn around and say, ‘Mate, you weren’t supposed to take it so seriously. It’s just a game, just a ploy, a strategy for winning votes.’
When you shout BREAKING POINT over and over again, you don’t get to be surprised when someone breaks. When you present politics as a matter of life and death, as a question of national survival, don’t be surprised if someone takes you at your word. You didn’t make them do it, no, but you didn’t do much to stop it either.
Sometimes rhetoric has consequences. If you spend days, weeks, months, years telling people they are under threat, that their country has been stolen from them, that they have been betrayed and sold down the river, that their birthright has been pilfered, that their problem is they’re too slow to realise any of this is happening, that their problem is they’re not sufficiently mad as hell, then at some point, in some place, something or someone is going to snap. And then something terrible is going to happen.
And it does happen, it keeps happening.
Jeremy Corbyn pays tribute to Jo Cox with other Labour MPs & announces suspension of campaigning until the weekend https://t.co/8EkBqa5b3l
— Sky News Tonight (@SkyNewsTonight) June 16, 2016
If you really want to break your heart you could just check out Jo Cox on Twitter.
Mum. Proud Yorkshire Lass. Labour MP for Batley & Spen. Boat dweller. Mountain climber. Former aid worker.
Or the reactions.
The Indy has a statement by Brendan Cox, husband of MP Jo Cox who was just murdered by yet another man with a gun.
In a statement, Brendan Cox said: “Today is the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. More difficult, more painful, less joyful, less full of love. I and Jo’s friends and family are going to work every moment of our lives to love and nurture our kids and to fight against the hate that killed Jo.
“Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day of her life with an energy, and a zest for life that would exhaust most people.
“She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now, one that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn’t have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous.
“Jo would have no regrets about her life, she lived every day of it to the full.”
The Independent on Jo Cox:
The Labour MP who campaigned tirelessly for refugees
In a tragically short 15 months as an MP, Jo Cox, who was been killed at the age of 41, made her mark as one of the brightest and best of the MPs elected for the first time at last year’s general election.
Many newcomers struggle to stand out from the Commons crowd, but the former head of humanitarian campaigning at Oxfam made an instant impact. She called repeatedly for Britain to do more to help the victims of Syria’s civil war. She knew what she was talking about: she was still in regular contact with friends and former colleagues in the aid world working to help refugees in the region.
She set up a parliamentary group on Syria and staged Commons debates on the plight of the refugees. She argued forcefully that the UK Government should be doing more both to help the victims and use its influence abroad to bring an end to the Syrian conflict.
So she of all people was shot and stabbed to death.
I’m bleeding from the eyes right now, as well as shaking like a leaf.
Ms Cox spent 10 years in the aid world, dangerous work which often took her to conflict zones. She met her husband Brendan, a former executive at Save the Children, while they worked in the aid industry. He became Gordon Brown’s adviser on international development while he was Prime Minister. Ms Cox worked closely with his wife Sarah Brown as director of the Maternal Mortality Campaign to prevent mothers and babies dying needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth.
We don’t have enough people like that, we can’t afford to lose any!
She joined Oxfam in 2002, as head of their EU Office in Brussels, and became head of policy and advocacy in 2005. A strong campaigner for women’s rights, she chaired the Labour Women’s Network for four years. Ms Cox urged Jeremy Corbyn to take a tougher line against supporters who attack his critics on social media. She received sexist comments and remarks about her appearance after criticising him.
And then she received bullets and stabs.
She had two small children.
Hideous news from Birstall, West Yorks – Labour MP Jo Cox has been murdered.
Jo Cox, 41, Labour MP for Batley and Spen, was left bleeding on the ground by her attacker. A 77-year-old man also suffered slight injuries.
A 52-year-old man was arrested near Market Street, Birstall, West Yorkshire Police said. The MP held a weekly advice surgery nearby.
The MP’s death was confirmed at police headquarters in Wakefield.
…
Ms Cox, who was born in Batley, was elected in 2015.
She was educated at Heckmondwike Grammar School and graduated from Cambridge University in 1995.
A former head of policy for Oxfam, she also worked as an adviser to Sarah Brown and Baroness Kinnock.
I feel sick.
