Baroness Hyde of Bemerton
Main Page: Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I am profoundly grateful to have the opportunity to speak for the first time in your Lordships’ House. Indeed, I am profoundly grateful simply to be here. It is really not a normal trajectory from Cox Green comprehensive to here. I am deeply thankful to the incredible staff of this place—Black Rod, the doorkeepers, the librarians, the clerks and so many others who have been generous, patient and kind in their welcome. I am grateful to my supporters, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, and the noble Lord, Lord Katz, for their encouragement and guidance. I am also grateful to my noble friends Lady Royall, Lady Smith of Basildon and Lord Kennedy of Southwark, and many others who have offered the same from all sides of your Lordships’ House.
I owe an enormous debt of thanks to people across the Labour movement who have mentored, challenged and shaped me. I cannot name everybody but I will single out the Fabian Women’s Network and the Labour Women’s Network for their life-changing sisterhood, without whom I would not be chair of the Fabian Society nor in your Lordships’ House.
Of course, I must thank my brilliant, endlessly patient husband and my twin boys, who make everything possible, even on the darkest of days.
Soft power, conflict resolution and diplomacy are rooted fundamentally in relationships and curiosity about how we live together well in all our glorious diversity. Indeed, my own life story has been shaped again and again by people with whom at first glance I appeared to have little in common.
I have spent over 20 years living and working around Caledonian Road—the Cally—a tough but extraordinary neighbourhood with some of the best people ever. I spent many of those years living on the Bemerton Estate, and I chose the title “Baroness Hyde of Bemerton” so that I would never, ever forget where I came from nor lose sight of whom I am here to serve and to ensure a functioning democracy for.
But let us go back. I was born on the banks of the Thames to a student and an NHS worker, and I want to thank my parents for raising me in a home where public service mattered and where working hard, putting others before yourself and collective endeavour were not abstract ideals but daily practice. They taught me that we achieve far more together than we can ever achieve on our own.
When I was 12, I experienced a significant bereavement through suicide, and that loss has undoubtedly shaped my life. In this House I intend to use my lived experience of suicides to help build a world in which they are vanishingly rare. There is much good work in the suicide prevention space and yet there is clearly more still to do.
I had a difficult time in adolescence and as a young woman, and there were many times when I was pretty unwell. But, as Rebecca Lucy Taylor might say,
“now I see it clear with every passing of each year.
I deserve to be here”.
The arts played a huge role in getting me through to the other side of this, and I remain a fierce champion for them—not as an optional pastime for the fortunate few but as a life-changing and often life-saving public good. They are essential—and fun.
I moved to Islington, and between my approximately 6,000 jobs—waitress, receptionist, call centre worker; the list goes on—I became embedded in the Cally community: youth work, homeless night shelters, community organising. The people at All Saints Church, in particular Kim, May, Feulah, Auntie Grace and Pat, took me in and treated me as one of their own.
From that Cally community I saw, time and again, that even in the hardest circumstances people still build connection, still love, still contribute. These lives, marked by poverty, addiction and struggle, changed me for ever through their grace, generosity and hospitality.
Prisons loomed large over these communities in every sense: nearby were HMP Pentonville and, back then, HMP Holloway. In 2008 I began working in Holloway with women whose children had been removed from them, and I spent the next decade working in and around prisons before undertaking a prison-related PhD.
Prison work led to me getting involved in politics, and I will use my time in this place to work for prisons and a justice system that ensures fairness for victims, and that rebuilds and restores and does not perpetuate or exacerbate harms.
To return to the subject of this debate, how we live together—generously and well—is one of the defining questions of our time. Long-held narratives fracture; truths have become flexible. Many people have felt, although this is changing, that things are not working for them, and desperation sets in.
When in pain and despair, that impulse to withdraw—to build walls—is an entirely understandable one, personally, nationally and internationally. Yet being isolated and surrounded by only those we agree with, who look and sound like us, diminishes our experience of what it is to be human and our ability to live in peace.
Internationally, these are somewhat unchartered times. Therefore, I draw on the words of the explorer Ernest Shackleton for inspiration. He said: optimism is moral courage.
So let us screw up our courage, and let us invest in, and utilise, our soft power as our morals and our optimism demand. Let us in every sphere keep connecting, keep listening and keep hoping.
As Nick Cave taught me, hope
“is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like … keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in”.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I will do my very best to serve the people and communities of this country while I am in this place. I will get things wrong, I know. But while I am here, I will always give my very best as I act justly, love mercy and walk humbly. It is the honour of my life to do so—and to do so as a Labour Peer.