Oona Tamsyn King, Baroness King of Bow born 22 October 1967
is a Labour politician and former Chief Diversity Officer of Channel 4. She previously had served as a Labour Party Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow from 1997 until 2005, when she was defeated by Respect candidate George Galloway. She was the second black female MP elected to the House of Commons, after Diane Abbott.
King, who is mixed race, was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, to Preston King,
an African-American academic and his wife, Murreil Hazel (nee Stern), a
white Jewish social justice activist. She is the niece of the medical
doctor Miriam Stoppard (her mother's sister) and her playwright husband Tom Stoppard.
Her cousin is the actor Ed Stoppard.
On her father's side, she comes from a line of civil rights activists
and successful entrepreneurs. Her paternal grandfather, the civil rights activist, Clennon Washington King, Sr. fathered seven sons.
King was educated at Haverstock Comprehensive Secondary School on Crogsland Road in Chalk Farm (borough of Camden), London, and was a contemporary of fellow Labour politicians David Miliband and his younger brother Ed. It was at Haverstock that she first showed political ambition, telling her careers teacher she wanted to become Prime Minister.
Librarian work was suggested instead. She received a first class honours Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics from the University of York in 1990, and a scholarship to University of California, Berkeley.
Before becoming an MP, King was on the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, and worked as a political assistant to Glyn Ford MEP, the Labour Party Leader in the European Parliament, and later Glenys Kinnock MEP. From 1995–97, she was a political organiser for the GMB Southern Region.
She was selected to represent the seat of Bethnal Green and Bow early in 1997. Peter Shore had announced his retirement early but faction fighting in the Constituency Labour Party
led to party headquarters delaying the selection and imposing its own
shortlist; some leading competitors from the local Bangladeshi community
were not included.
By winning the seat in 1997, King became only the second black woman to be elected as Member of Parliament, the first being Diane Abbott. She was selected as one of 100 Great Black Britons for this achievement. In her "truly first-class maiden speech",
King described the racial abuse she and her family had suffered as a
child. She referred to herself as "multi-ethnic", representing "a truly
multicultural constituency where hardship and deprivation gave birth to
Britain's greatest social reforms." She described William Beveridge and Clement Attlee, as "surrounded by an East End infant mortality rate of 55 per cent" and said this led to social reforms including the NHS. She emphasised a need for coherence in the strategy for eradicating poverty and the role of education in its elimination.
Oona King was also a passionate advocate of international aid and
human rights. She served on the international development select
committee, and she served as the Vice-Chair of the All-Parliamentary
Group on Bangladesh.
She was selected to second the Queen's Speech debate in November 2002,
where she also discussed her views on genocide and a trip to Rwanda.
She served as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of
State for Trade and Industry and the Minister for e-commerce.
King supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
which was controversial for the constituency's large Muslim population.
This support was used against her in the election campaign of Respect's George Galloway, a leader of the Stop the War Coalition, who later defeated her in the 2005 general election. This challenge was one of the media highlights of the election.
She subsequently changed her views, after viewing the poor handling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath by the United States:
it shows that America has no grasp whatever on the activity needed to
rebuild a destroyed city. And if they can't do that in their own
country, then it's obvious why they can't do it in Iraq. So ... I regret
that we went to war with a country that has shown itself to be
incapable of the very basic actions required to deal with post-conflict
reconstruction.
She however maintained that she does not regret voting for the war in
Iraq, "I could never have voted against getting rid of Saddam Hussein.
He was responsible for the deaths of one million people."
Bethnal Green and Bow with its almost 45,000 Muslims was Galloway's
best chance to defeat Labour in what became a "bitter single issue
campaign."
King described the contest as "one of the dirtiest ..we have ever seen
in British politics" and complained of "quite disturbing" anti-semitic
racial abuse.
She was the putative target of vegetable and egg throwers during a
memorial service commemorating the Second World War bombing of a block
of flats with predominantly Jewish victims.
King claimed it was a deliberate part of Respect's campaign,
but Galloway's campaigners denied racial abuse
accusing the Government of a "war on Muslims".
Galloway criticised Labour for a postal vote strategy that was "close to illegal if not illegal"
and Tower Hamlets council electoral office for publishing an electoral
roll "so shot through with errors and anomalies... as to be almost
meaningless."
Both candidates were given police protection, King after her tyres were slashed and Galloway after a death threat.
King had said that she would remain in Bethnal Green & Bow with her constituency office funded from the GMB
trade union, attempting to act as an unofficial MP. However later in
2005 she began a career in the media, saying "I wanted to be an MP all
my life, and when it didn't work, I thought, well then, I'll just have
to go down a different path."
In 2007, King published her autobiography
The Oona King Diaries: House Music.
In 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed her to act as his Senior Policy Adviser on Equalities and Diversity and Faith.
In January 2009 King was appointed head of diversity at Channel 4.
She continues to live in Mile End, in a converted pub.
In 2010, King unsuccessfully challenged Ken Livingstone for the Labour nomination in the 2012 election for Mayor of London.
King's first campaign speech, at Haverstock school, focused on
"engagement with young people" as a way of reducing knife crime and
helping them achieve their potential. In June 2010, she was shortlisted
and in an interview with
The Independent
emphasised both her experience of "pushing and pulling the levers of
power" i.e. her experience of negotiating with top ministers and also
her willingness to work with political opponents.
Her opponent, Ken Livingstone,
accused her of using inappropriate methods of obtaining email addresses
of Labour Party supporters; King denied the allegation.
King had the backing of Neil Kinnock, Ben Bradshaw, and Alan Johnson
On 24 September 2010, Livingstone won the nomination.
On 26 January 2011, King was created a life peer as
Baroness King of Bow in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. She was introduced in the House of Lords on 31 January 2011,
where she sits on the Labour benches. When her appointment was
announced in November 2010, she resigned as a constituency
representative to the Labour National Executive Committee, to which she had recently been elected, before attending her first meeting.
Upon taking her seat in the Lords, she stood down from her Diversity Officer role with Channel 4.
In 2012 she was elected to the Progress strategy board as a parliamentarian.
King is married to Italian Tiberio Santomarco whom she married in 1994,
while working for an MEP in Brussels. The couple have three adopted children.
She is fluent in Italian and French.
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