Oona King

Oona Tamsyn King, Baroness King of Bow (born 22 October 1967) is a business executive and former British Labour Party politician.

During her second year (1988–89), she gained a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with a first class honours degree in politics in 1990.

Before becoming a member of parliament, King was a researcher for the European Parliament.

She also worked as a political assistant to Glyn Ford MEP, the Labour Party Leader in the European Parliament, and later Glenys Kinnock MEP.

In 1995–97, she was a political organiser for the GMB Southern Region.

She was a Labour Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow from 1997 until 2005.

Oona King was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, to Preston King, an African-American academic, and his Jewish British wife, Hazel King (née Stern), a social justice activist.

A maternal aunt is the medical doctor Miriam Stoppard and the actor Ed Stoppard is a cousin.

On her father's side, she comes from a line of American civil rights activists and successful entrepreneurs.

Her paternal grandfather, civil rights activist Clennon Washington King Sr., and his wife had a daughter and seven sons, including her uncle C. B. King, a pioneering civil rights attorney in Albany, Georgia.

King's maternal grandfather was born Jewish, and her maternal grandmother converted to Judaism.

Through her grandmother, King is a first cousin, once removed, of Ted Graham, Baron Graham of Edmonton.

King was educated at Haverstock Comprehensive Secondary School on Crogsland Road in Chalk Farm (borough of Camden), London.

She was a contemporary of fellow Labour politicians David Miliband and his younger brother Ed.

In her first year as an undergraduate at University of York, King was briefly a member of the Socialist Workers Party.

She was selected to represent the seat of Bethnal Green and Bow early in 1997.

Peter Shore had announced his retirement early, but factional fighting in the constituency Labour Party led to party headquarters delaying the selection and imposing its own shortlist.

Some leading candidates from the local Bangladeshi community were not included.

Winning the seat in 1997, King became the second black woman to be elected as a member of parliament, the first having been Diane Abbott.

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%" and said this led to social reforms, including the NHS.

She emphasised a need for coherence in the strategy for eradicating poverty, and the importance of education in its elimination.

King served on the international development select committee, and 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 visit to Rwanda.

King served as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Minister for e-commerce.

In 2003 she was selected as one of "100 Great Black Britons".

King supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was controversial for her constituency's large Muslim population.

However, she had said in September 2005, after seeing how poorly the United States had handled the crisis of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans, that:

"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."

Bethnal Green and Bow, with a population of approximately 45,000 Muslim residents, was George Galloway's best chance to defeat a Labour candidate in what became a "bitter single issue campaign" over King's support for the Iraq War.

King described the contest as "one of the dirtiest ... we have ever seen in British politics" and complained of "quite disturbing" anti-semitic and racial abuse.

Galloway said Labour's postal vote strategy in the seat was "close to illegal, if not illegal".

Both candidates were given police protection, King after her car tyres were slashed and Galloway after receiving a death threat.

King lost the seat by 823 votes, a 26.2% swing from King to Galloway.

King said that, whilst her support for the war in Iraq had been a major issue, false claims in the Bangladeshi press that she wanted to get rid of halal meat had played a part in her defeat.

King had said that she would remain in Bethnal Green and 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 said 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."

In 2007, King published her autobiography, The Oona King Diaries: House Music.