Diane Abbott: hypocrite loses local and union support

Submitted by Janine on 7 November, 2003 - 9:41

Diane Abbott's decision to send her son to a private school is disgraceful. She has been widely condemned throughout Hackney for turning her back on the Borough's schools, teachers and children.

Below is a resolution - which I proposed - passed by Bakerloo Line RMT, condemning her and asking the national union to remove her from its Parliamentary group.

"This branch condemns Diane Abbott MP for sending her son to a fee-paying private school. Such schools are a backbone of class inequality and privilege. We reiterate our support for free, well-funded, quality, comprehensive state education for all children.

"As a Labour MP and avowed socialist, her job is to represent working-class people, to back the hard-working and hard-pressed staff in our schools, and to fight for the interests of all children in Hackney, not just those whose parents can afford private education.

"In taking this action, Diane Abbott has lost the trust and support of her constituents, and should lose the trust and support of this union too.

"We ask the Council of Executives to remove Diane Abbott MP from our Parliamentary group, as her continued membership of it is an embarrassment, and undermines our campaign for publicly-owned public services.

"This union resolves to only support political candidates and holders of public office who are genuine socialists and who stand up for working-class people."

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 15/11/2003 - 22:03

I think your response to Abbott's hypocrisy is good, and I hope she loses support across the Borough and within the local TU movement.

The "On a workers' wage" call also seems to me to require that elected representatives share the socialised provision of the area they represent, so that the gap between the richer and poorer in terms of lived experience is narrowed, and can be levelled upwards through genuine solidarity not the verbal kind. Such a sharing is meant to be a spur to such levelling-up.

While there is a particular issue for ethnic minority students in schools across the country, that issue is obviously not solved for anyone except Abbott and her child by her taking him into the more genteelly-racist confines of where-ever she has now placed him.

Either you share the broadly-lived experiences of your constituents, or you stop representing them or claiming to do so. If the school isn't good enough for my kid (and many of them aren't) why are they good enough for anyone else's?

Comradely,
Patrick Yarker

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