28 Facts About Jo Cox

Helen Joanne Cox was a British politician who served as Member of Parliament for Batley and Spen from May 2015 until her murder in June 2016.

Jo Cox was selected to contest the Batley and Spen parliamentary seat after the incumbent, Mike Wood, decided not to stand in 2015.

Jo Cox held the seat for Labour with an increased majority.

Jo Cox became a campaigner on issues relating to the Syrian civil war, and founded and chaired the all-party parliamentary group Friends of Syria.

On 16 June 2016, Jo Cox died after being shot and stabbed multiple times in the street in the village of Birstall, where she had been due to hold a constituency surgery.

Jo Cox studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, initially studying Archaeology and Anthropology before switching to Social and Political Science, graduating in 1995.

Jo Cox later studied at the London School of Economics.

Jo Cox then became head of Key Campaigns at Britain in Europe, a pro-European pressure group, before moving to Brussels to spend two years as an assistant to Glenys Kinnock, wife of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, who was then a Member of the European Parliament.

From 2001 to 2009, Jo Cox worked for the aid groups Oxfam and Oxfam International, first in Brussels as the leader of the group's trade reform campaign, then as head of policy and advocacy at Oxfam GB in 2005, and head of Oxfam International's humanitarian campaigns in New York City in 2007.

From 2009 to 2011, Jo Cox was director of the Maternal Mortality Campaign, which was supported by Brown and her husband.

Jo Cox was the national chair of the Labour Women's Network from 2010 to 2014, and a strategic adviser to the Freedom Fund, an anti-slavery charity, in 2014.

Jo Cox was on the board of Burma Campaign UK, a human rights NGO.

Jo Cox was nominated by the Labour Party to contest the Batley and Spen seat being vacated by Mike Wood at the 2015 general election.

Jo Cox was selected as its candidate from an all-women shortlist.

Jo Cox made her maiden speech in the House of Commons on 3 June 2015, using it to celebrate her constituency's ethnic diversity, while highlighting the economic challenges facing the community and urging the government to rethink its approach to economic regeneration.

Jo Cox was one of 36 Labour MPs who nominated Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015, but said she had done so to get him on the list and encourage a broad debate.

Jo Cox campaigned for a solution to the Syrian Civil War.

Jo Cox was a Remainer in the campaign leading to the 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union.

Jo Cox was married to Brendan Jo Cox from June 2009 until her death in June 2016.

Jo Cox was an adviser on international development to Gordon Brown during Brown's premiership, whom she met while she was working for Oxfam.

The Jo Cox family divided their time between their constituency home and a houseboat, a converted Dutch barge, on the Thames, moored near Tower Bridge in London.

Four hours after the incident, West Yorkshire Police announced that Jo Cox had died of her injuries shortly after being admitted to Leeds General Infirmary.

Jo Cox was the first sitting MP to be killed since Ian Gow, who was killed by a Provisional IRA car bomb in July 1990, and the first MP to be seriously assaulted since Stephen Timms, who was stabbed by Roshonara Choudhry in an attempted murder in May 2010.

The murder attracted worldwide attention with tributes and memorials for Jo Cox being made with condemnation of Mair.

In May 2017, a memorial, designed by Jo Cox's children, was unveiled in the House of Commons.

The unveiling took place at the first "Great Get Together" event that the Jo Cox Foundation held and was in the form of a family day at Parliament.

On 2 July 2021, Jo Cox's sister Kim Leadbeater, who declared that she had not previously been a political person but 'cared deeply' about where she had been born and grew up, was elected in the 2021 Batley and Spen by-election.

On 24 June 2017, a coat of arms, designed with the input of Jo Cox's children, was unveiled by her family at the House of Commons, where MPs killed in office are honoured with heraldic shields.