This week, Jo Cox’s sister, Kim Leadbeater, has pleaded for people to pull together with ‘compassion and kindness’ to mark the four year anniversary of Jo’s death. The MP for Batley and Spen was shot and stabbed by far-right extremist Thomas Mair on 16 June 2016. Ahead of the fourth Great Get Together, the initiative started in Jo’s memory in response to the celebrated message in her maiden Commons speech that ‘we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us,’ Kim is calling for people to come together. She told Radio 4’s Today programme they are having to be more creative with the initiative this year because of the pandemic, but decided to go ahead and focus on acts of kindness and compassion. ‘One of the things that has got me through the last few weeks along with many other people is the way that many communities have pulled together and we have seen the best of humanity,’ she said. Here, in an exclusive interview with Grazia conducted 10 months after Jo’s death, Kim explains why coming together is so vital.
The week before she was murdered, Jo Cox had collapsed exhausted on to her sister Kim Leadbeater’s sofa after a long day of campaigning to remain in the European Union. The 41-year-old mother-of-two had changed into Kim’s hoodie and jogging bottoms before switching on the EU debate on the TV. Huddled together, the two women stayed up late, chatting and laughing, as Jo convinced her younger sister to vote remain.
‘At 10pm, I drove her back to her cottage five minutes away, hugged her goodnight – and that was the last time I saw her,’ says Kim, 40, a health and fitness consultant.
A week later, around midday on 16 June, while settling down to watch England play in Euro 2016, Kim’s phone rang. When she answered, she learned her sister had been stabbed 15 times and shot in the head and chest. She was bleeding to death in the market square, just five minutes down the road.
‘I still can’t think or talk about what happened on the actual day,’ says Kim. ‘When something as horrendous as that happens, your brain shuts down. It won’t let me go there. I was in acute shock for a long time afterwards and didn’t know what day it was for weeks.’
It’s 10 months on from that tragic afternoon and I’m sat in Jo’s place on Kim’s sofa. Although her sister is gone, the room is full of her memory – photos and tributes from around the world fill every corner. Upstairs, the loft has been extended to make room for all the cards, letters, books of condolence, blankets, pictures and poems she has been sent.
‘It’s all there for the children (Cuillin, six, and Lejla, four) when they want to read about their incredible mummy,’ Kim tells me. She says it actually helped that her sister’s murder was all over the news as she found it comforting to see the international outpouring of love for Jo.
Over the summer, I walked for miles talking to Jo about what happened and asking her how we should react. I’d say, “Right Jo, tell me what to do now, I don’t want to feel scared anymore. You need to guide me."
That’s why, when Khalid Masood killed five people and injured about 50 others in Westminster last month, Kim was desperate to reach out to the victims’ families. ‘As soon as I heard something had happened in London, it took me back to my darkest hours after Jo’s murder,’ she says. ‘I started shaking. I couldn’t bear to think about what the poor victims’ families were going through. I can’t stop thinking about how their lives have suddenly been changed forever. People think you can get on with your life but my life had my sister in it. That normal just isn’t there any more.’
Kim lives just outside Batley, West Yorkshire. It’s a town where Jo’s warm spirit seems to radiate from every wall, lamp post and noticeboard. Pictured on posters planting flowers here, or taking part in a tug of war with her constituents there, her friendly face beams down everywhere you go. It’s hard to conceive how this sleepy market town surrounded by gently rolling hills could have become the setting for the most shocking, cold-blooded murder the country saw last year.
It certainly doesn’t feel like a safe place for Kim anymore. As we chat, she locks and bolts the doors. ‘Safety first,’ she murmurs. Her house was checked over by a counter-terrorism unit following the attack to make sure it was safe for her to live in. The letterbox was sealed up and fire alarms reset; not only is she dealing with acute grief, Kim has lived in utter terror since losing her sister.
‘I’ve developed hypersensitivity,’ she tells me. ‘I’m suddenly very aware of things that I wouldn’t have thought about before. I had a phase of feeling like I was going to get knocked down by a car. Why would I suddenly feel like that? I can’t go on aeroplanes now and I’m too afraid to go on holiday. But I’ve got to remind myself, Jo wouldn’t want me to live like this.’
Kim describes her only sibling as ‘a tiny little thing [she was 5ft 1in] who was taking on the world’ and says Jo was hopeless at the minutiae of life because she was too busy looking at the bigger picture. ‘She’d never have any money on her or the right clothes to wear and she’d always forget to eat,’ Kim laughs. ‘She was so busy she’d rush around saying to her assistant, “I forgot my headscarf; can I borrow a headscarf?” or “Kim, I haven’t got any make-up on me, can I use your blusher?” It was because she was exhausted, working so hard all the time.’
Jo is of course still a huge part of Kim’s world. The days she feels she’s losing sight of what Jo would want her to do are some of her darkest, so she imagines conversations between them where she can ask Jo’s advice. ‘Over the summer, I walked for miles talking to Jo about what happened and asking her how we should react. I’d say, “Right Jo, tell me what to do now, I don’t want to feel scared anymore. You need to guide me.” It keeps me going, thinking about how she’d want us to fight back and show we’re not scared after these attacks. I can hear her, clearly, telling me to beat this and keep fighting to bring people together. Jo would not want us to close the curtains and retreat into depression. So doing nothing is not an option. We need to generate the change she was trying to make with her work.’
To honour Jo, along with the MP’s widower Brendan, the family have organised The Great Get Together. The initiative will encourage people to come together to celebrate diversity in their communities in the face of attacks like that on Jo; attacks designed to divide us. Through a variety of events – anything from street parties to afternoon teas – they hope to generate a national moment of positivity, unite the country and ‘create a legacy Jo would be proud of’.
As Jo said herself in her maiden speech to Parliament, almost exactly a year before she was murdered for her message of unity, ‘We have far more in common with each other than the things that divide us.’
To take part in the fourth The Great Get Together visit greatgettogether.org