Frank Hester: words used in his Diane Abbott attack feed the petri dish of hate that spawned MP Jo Cox's killer

They are an essential part of planning and coordinating a collaborative, multi-team endeavour, without which mistakes can happen and duplication occurs. Following the daily conference-in-chief, the opinion editor and I move into a separate meeting - the leader conference. In that, Ismail Mulla and I examine the items on the previous agenda that we feel merit further examination. These are not, as far as we can help it, our views; the copy we want to flow from this meeting is a distillation of decency and thoughtful common sense, written beautifully and always with something to say.

And I wish you could have been in the leader conference today, when we discussed Frank Hester’s comments about Diane Abbott: “I am struggling to muster words strong enough to condemn his,” I told Ismail. He nodded, knowing he too would not enjoy the task at hand.

What words, though, you may ask if you’re not up to speed? Ordinarily I wouldn’t repeat what he said, but in order for me to dissect it and offer context, I must. So: Mr Hester is a major - the biggest, in fact, and that’s significant later on - Tory donor. He is a businessman and he’s from Yorkshire.

At his firm’s headquarters in Leeds, he is reported (by The Guardian) to have said: “Honestly I try not to be sexist but when I meet somebody like that [an executive from another organisation] I just … It’s like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV and you’re just like, I hate! You just want to hate all black women because she’s there, and I don’t hate all black women at all, but I think she should be shot.”

He used those racist, misogynistic words just 11 miles from where MP Jo Cox was shot dead - Birstall - and just three years after her assassination. Shot dead by a brainwashed white supremacist; a deranged and dangerous racist, empowered by the words and deeds of others. Now repeated in Parliament by MP Wes Streeting as he expressed his revulsion, when written down it is difficult to comprehend:

“You just want to hate all black women because she is there…I think she should be shot.”

Digesting those sentiments is difficult, not least because they are specifically targeted at a single, black, 70-year-old woman who is made all-the-more vulnerable for her circumstances. I’m sorry I have repeated them, but I hope you understand why I felt it necessary in order to properly examine this. Because here is the biggest ever donor to the Tory party - and if you’ll allow me to use that as a proxy for power and influence, which I don’t think is unreasonable, one of the most important cogs in the Conservative machine - on the face of it, fetishising in private the murder of a high-profile politician because, he says, he hates her so overwhelmingly that it compels his irrational hatred to extend to all black women - and in order to satiate that irrational hatred, he’d like to see Diane Abbott shot.

Whether Frank Hester likes it or not, those words are sinister, even if he suggests, as he has done, that they were said in jest - playfully, is the word he has used in a statement today. Unquestionably, they are borrowed from the lexicon of forces that drove Thomas Mair to murder Jo Cox. Words like that feed the petri dish of prejudice that spawns killers like Mair. ‘Playing’ with those words is playing with fire.

The worry for me is that he doesn’t seem to get it, either. He doesn’t realise, even when it is pointed out to him, that he is feeding that volatile monster. In his apology, HERE, he says sorry for being ‘rude’ about Diane Abbott. Rude!? His statement goes on to say he feels his words ‘had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin.’ I’m sorry, Frank, but we know when the emperor before us is resplendent in his birthday suit, as evidenced by Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch’s statement just now that his comments were indeed racist.

Oh, and, as Ismail and I mused earlier today, the concern is far greater than for a pompous rich man’s bigoted words. It is little wonder, we said, that Ministers are branding diversity and inclusion initiatives poppycock in public if the man bankrolling the Government feels compelled by the very existence of Diane Abbott - a single, 70-year-old woman, remember - to hate all black women. And, we exchanged, what if this sort of idle vindictiveness exists at the top of boardrooms up and down the country? Is it naive to assume it doesn’t? It is little wonder, we agreed, that the gender pay gap holds back women and that people of colour feel denied the same opportunities as their white counterparts when it comes to career progress if views of this nature pervade corporate Britain.

Do remember, this is, in the scheme of things, in the outfield of where cricket’s most infamous racism scandal brought to its knees Yorkshire County Cricket Club. On so many occasions Ismail and I have said to one another: ‘if people think this is a YCCC problem, or even just a cricket problem, they’re woefully complacent. This is a societal and a cultural problem, we have repeatedly agreed. Little did we know that one of the region’s most successful men would so spectacularly illustrate our conviction.

James

Editor | The Yorkshire Post

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Write to me at: [email protected] - it’s nice to read a friendly word or two.

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