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Diane Julie Abbott (born September 27, 1953) is a British Labour MP in the constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington. She was the first female black MP when elected in the 1987 General Election.

Born in Paddington, London to Jamaican immigrants she went to Harrow City Girls' School and then Newnham College, Cambridge where she read History. After leaving university she became a researcher for Thames Television. Between 1976 and 1980 she was a civil servant and then between 1982 and 1987 a journalist. In the late 1980s she became the press officer of the Greater London Council (then led by Ken Livingstone).

Diane Abbott was married to David Thompson in 1991 until a divorce in 1993, she has one son by that marriage.

She attracted criticism from all political parties in late October 2003 and accusations of hypocrisy, after revealing her decision to send her son to the City of London School, one of the top private schools in the country, after having criticised Attorney General Harriet Harman for sending her son to a selective, although state, school in Orpington, Kent, and Tony Blair for sending his son to a similar school, the Brompton Oratory (which is also officially a state school).

External Link

Voting Record at Parliament ] photograph of Diane Abbott in Finsbury Park 1987 by Pogus Caesar

• 1953 births
• British MPs
• UK Labour Party politicians