Oona Tamsyn King (born October 22, 1967, in Sheffield) is a British politician. She was the Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Bethnal Green & Bow from 1997 until the 2005 election, when she was defeated by Respect candidate George Galloway.
King, who is Black and Jewish, was born in 1967 to a Jewish mother (Murreil Hazel Stern), and the U.S.-born civil rights activist Preston King; she was educated in Chalk Farm, London. She is the niece of the medical doctor Miriam Stoppard and playwright Tom Stoppard.
King received a joint degree in Politics from the University of York and the University of California, Berkeley.
King joined the Labour Party at the age of 14.
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.
She was selected to represent the seat of Bethnal Green & 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 has been selected as one of 100 Great Black Britons for this achievement.
In her maiden speech of July 5, 1997, King highlighted the influence that her and her parents' ethnic background had:
For me, racism is not an academic point. My father is black and my mother is Jewish. As a child in Newcastle, my mother was lined up against a wall and stoned because, as her schoolmates put it, she, as a Jew, was responsible for the death of their Lord... I have also been called names such as yid, nigger, wog, half-caste and mongrel. Those are unparliamentary terms, but I hope that my background can be a bridge between two cultures.
King supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was controversial for the constituency's large Muslim population.
This led to the RESPECT Coalition's George Galloway, a leader of the Stop the War Coalition, standing against her at the 2005 general election. This challenge was one of the media highlights of the election .
The campaign was beset by tensions and scuffles.
King said the fact that her mother was Jewish had come up repeatedly, "in a quite disturbing way. As a kid it was always 'oi, you nigger,' 'you wog' and all the rest of it, and now it was 'yids,' 'you Jewish bitch, get out of here,' all of that sort of stuff."
Both she and Galloway requested police protection. Together with Galloway, she made a plea for calm and restraint amongst local people, though she said: "I have to say it has not been helped by some of the language used by Respect. Extremism breeds extremism."
King said of Galloway, "What makes me sick is that when I come across someone who is guilty of genocide, I do not get on a plane and go to Baghdad and grovel at his feet."
Galloway had responded to claims of racism by noting his concern about "the deaths of many people in Iraq with blacker faces than hers." .
King lost the seat to Galloway by a narrow margin of 823 votes. A request for a recount by King and her agent was denied by the returning officer.
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, she is now pursuing a career in the media, and has said: "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."
King's view on the invasion of Iraq has changed since the poor handling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath by the United States in 2005:
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.
Multiculturalism hasn't failed; it's a statement of fact. We live together, side by side in this country very well, and far better than most. But to neglect any community is a recipe for disaster. To ensure that disaster doesn't come in the shape of the BNP, then politicians must wake up to the concerns of the white working class. Fast. [10]
