KemetLeads
Diane Abbott
Thirty-nine years in the same seat, most of them under abuse no other MP has had to count.
The rise
Born in Paddington on 27 September 1953 to Jamaican parents — a welder and a nurse — she read history at Newnham College, Cambridge, then worked at the Home Office, for the National Council for Civil Liberties and in television, and sat on Westminster City Council before Hackney North selected her.
What they did
Elected on 11 June 1987 for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, she became the first Black woman ever to sit in the House of Commons. She founded London Schools and the Black Child in 1999, served as Shadow Home Secretary from 2016 to 2020 — the first Black person in the post — and became Mother of the House on 5 July 2024 as the longest continuously serving woman MP.
The full picture
Labour withdrew the whip in 2023 over an Observer letter saying Jewish, Irish and Traveller people face prejudice, not racism; she apologised. Suspended again on 17 July 2025 after a BBC interview, she sat as an independent until readmission on 30 July 2026 with a formal warning. Her 2003 private-school choice drew criticism.
Why it matters
She held one seat for nearly four decades under a volume of racist abuse no other British MP has faced, and every Black woman elected after her walked through the door she opened.
“I receive racist and sexist abuse online on a daily basis. I have had rape threats, death threats.”