This month, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Houses of Parliament to lunch with Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. This occasion is both social and political. I wanted to tease out her thoughts on the political situation in the UK and on how far our community has travelled along the road to being at ease in a society that once overdosed on racism and colonialism.
I congratulated her on the political show broadcast by BBC1 on Thursday evenings, which features both Abbott and Michael Portillo, with Andrew Neil in the chair. Portillo and Abbott share a hinterland, and that contributes to the programme's success. They are both second-generation immigrants who have lifted themselves through the English postwar state education system. Both were born in 1953, both attended Harrow grammar schools (one the boys' school, the other the girls') and both went on to read history at Cambridge. Now, they are both parliamentarians free of leadership ambitions. Abbott never had any, and Portillo finally cast his aside. All this undermines the tendency to point-scoring which is so common among politicians. Their moments of disagreement on any issue are moderated by a taunt and a tease.
Abbott and I explored the view that new Labour is becoming a vanguard party in the Marxist-Leninist mould, with an all-knowing and all-seeing leadership whose diktats the rest must follow. But, no doubt to the chagrin of Hilary Armstrong, the Labour Chief Whip, Abbott is not easily dictated to.
We talked about our children. With my youngest son, I said, I found not a generation gap but an apparent chasm. We agreed that globalisation has ripped his generation from its moorings, casting them hither and thither.
Her boy is doing well at his new school (a fee-charging school, as was so controversially revealed a while ago), but I advised her to encourage him to keep his "attitude". White people in authority often say that young blacks have "an attitude". To my mind, it is just self-confidence.
Abbott will retire to the Caribbean in the distant future, hoping to be of political use between Caribbean folk at home and those abroad. As we parted, I shared an observation that was offered by a mutual friend about Baroness Amos, Leader of the Lords: "Amos is famous for not being Diane Abbott." She giggled mischievously and we bade farewell until next year.
