Diane Abbott yesterday defended her criticism of the Metropolitan Police following the shooting of gang member Chris Kaba, saying it was ‘problematic’ if a marksman was not even reprimanded, and there was a lack of accountability within the force.
Abbot, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington firmly rejected calls for her to apologise for criticisms of the police following the death of Kaba, dead by marksman Martyn Blake in Streatham in September 2022 after a ‘hard stop’ of the car he was driving. Blake was cleared of murder by a jury earlier this week; it only emerged afterwards that Kaba was wanted in connection with an earlier nightclub shooting in Hackney, had a criminal record and gangland links. The car he was driving had been used in a shooting the previous day.
She said there was a ‘lack of accountability’ within the force: “If people aren’t willing to face the consequences and police aren’t even being reprimanded… this is problematic”. Kaba’s history of gang-related violence was “not a reason to put a bullet in his head”, adding that the police didn’t know who he was at the time of the shooting.
The MP was responding after Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner criticised Abbot and others on the Labour left for denouncing police in the aftermath of the shooting. He told the Daily Telegraph: “I believe the liberal Left should apologise, now it has come out that his background included him having been involved in a shooting and chasing a man outside a night just days before his death. Let’s have an acceptance of what he was and what he did.”
Abbott was speaking at an online forum for Black History Month, in a conversation with journalist and academic Gary Younge.
She added: “Since the early 80s, there’s been a series of incidents where black people have died at the hands of police, [such as] Joy Gardner”. Gardner died of brain damage from asphyxiation in 1993, after police restrained her in her London home for deportation and bound her head with tape.
Abbott added: “The acquittal of the police officer that shot Chris Kaba shows that some things haven’t changed since I first joined politics.” She was the first black female MP when she was elected to Parliament in 1987.
“When I first ran for MP, I had bricks thrown at my window.” An Amnesty International poll in 2017 that showed she “received more abuse than any of the other female MPs.” “My emails are racist and violent.”
Abbott was also critical of Keir Starmer’s stance on reparation for slavery, which has become an issue at the current Commonwealth meeting “[He] should apologise for slavery and begin to talk about reparations”, despite his comments on “[looking] forward” and not having “very long endless discussions about reparations on the past”.
She added: “Keir’s mission is to drive the left out of the Labour party.” Asked by Younge why she stayed in the party despite this, and its role in being complicit with Israeli actions over Palestine, she said: “I’ve been in this party a long time.”
Abbott was suspended from the Labour Party in April last year, after writing a letter to the Observer that said Travellers, Jewish and Irish people do not face racism “all their lives”. She apologised on X shortly after the story and was reinstated this May before the election.
Abbott added: “The reality is, Keir Starmer has very little to offer working people. But I believe there’s a way forward, there always has been… you have to believe that working people will find a way through.” “We need mass movements supporting each other in the community.”
