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Jo Cox tributes at the More In Common rally – live updates
Jo Cox tributes at the More In Common rally – live updates
(35 minutes later)
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Frostrup ends the Trafalgar Square event by urging the audience not to let this be just one day. Let’s take the spirit of unity and roll it out, she says.
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A video tribute from Bono is now being played. Bono says Jo Cox had all the patience in the world for people who needed help.
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Back in Trafalgar Square Frostrup says Jo loved musicals. She particularly loved Les Miserables, and some of the cast are on state singing her favourite song, Do you hear the people sing?
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Severin Carrell
Jo’s sister Kim Leadbeater is speaking from Batley. Her speech is being broadcast at the event at Trafalgar Square.
About 100 people including the Edinburgh South MP Ian Murray gathered on Portobello beach, Edinburgh, with candles marking out “more in common” pressed into the sand.
She says people asked if she was worried about speaking at such a big event. But there are much harder things in life than talking about someone you love, she says.
They heard Jo Cox’s friend, Oxfam colleague and former bandmate Kim Wallace say Jo and Brendan Cox loved climbing in Scotland: they had summited 98 of the country’s 282 Munros, hills over 3,000 feet (914m) high, and were planning their 100th this summer.
She says the family has been truly overwhelmed by the outpouring of support they have received. Knowing that she touched the lives of so many people has made a huge difference, she says.
“Jo was fearless,” Wallace said, choking back tears. “Jo was killed by hatred and if that happened to anyone else, Jo would not have been silent. She would’ve called it for what it was. I encourage you all to love the world like Jo did.”
She says Jo devoted her life to helping others. She did not always know or understand the causes Jo worked on. But there was a pattern: principles of justice, equality, tolerance, acceptance, peace and understanding. These can be applied globally, nationally or locally, she says.
For #JoCoxMP about 100 people gathered on #Portobello beach, Edinburgh, candles spelling out in sand #MoreInCommon pic.twitter.com/xotIBwHCq1
She says she does not understand why Jo was killed.
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But she knows that Jo would have wanted people to unite against division.
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The speaker in Trafalgar Square asks everyone in the crowd to hold hands with the people beside them and pledge to ‘love like Jo’. It is very un-British, the speaker says, “but Jo would have loved it.”
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Big round of applause in Batley when Brendan Cox speaks of his wife's opposition to extremism of all kinds.
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Police say around 2,000 people have turned out in Batley's market square to pay tribute to MP Jo Cox. pic.twitter.com/yAqpjexUpw
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Brendan Cox, Jo’s husband, is speaking now.
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He says that he wishes he was not here, and that he could be with her.
Some of Jo’s friends are now addressing the crowd in Trafalgar Square.
Today is her birthday. She should have been in her constituency today. She would have been campaigning for people to stay in the EU because she thought that was so important. He says she was worried about the forces the EU referendum would unleash.
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But he says he does not want to talk about that today. He wants to talk about Jo. There are things about her people will not know from reading about her. She was not 5ft. She was at least 5ft 1, or 5ft 2 on a good day.
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She was impractical, and once went on a cycling holiday but forgot her bike.
Malala Yousafza, who was shot as a schoolgirl for defying a Taliban ban on girls attending school and who subsequently won the Nobel Peace Prize, is speaking now.
Above all, she was a mum. She was the best mum any child could wish for. And they wish to have her back in their lives.
She says she knows from her own life how powerful it is when a family is lifted up in prayer.
He says he and his children have spoken every day about what they miss. They try to think, not what they are losing, but how lucky they were to have her in their lives.
She says the idea that we have more in common than what separates us was not just a line in a speech for Cox. It was a principle that she lived her life by.
He says one reason there has been so much support following her death is that she is seen to symbolise something under threat: tolerance.
She says Cox will not be remembered for the way she died. She will be remembered for the way she lived. We will live like Jo because we will love like Jo, she says.
He says her killing was political. It was designed to generate hatred. But what a beautiful irony it is that her death has instead prompted an outpouring of love. Jo lived for her beliefs, and died for them, and for the rest of our lives we will honour them, he says.
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"Jo's killing was an act of terror designed to advance hatred against others. ...it has advanced an outpouring of love," Brendan Cox
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Updated
A choir from the school attended by Jo’s son Cuillin is singing If I had a hammer.
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There is a tribute from the White Helmets, volunteer search and rescue workers in Syria.
Frostrup says music was important to Jo. One of her favourite songs was Somewhere Only We Know, which the family used to sing as they left their cottage in Wales.
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She says when Lily Allen heard about this, she offered to sing it today. She is singing now.
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Bill Nighy reads an extract from a speech by Robert Kennedy.
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Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in isolated villages and city slums in dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Mariella Frostrup, the broadcaster who was a friend of Jo Cox’s and who campaigned with her on various issues, is hosting the event.
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She says she and Cox campaigned together for gender equality, the education of girls and the alleviation of poverty.
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She says today would have been Cox’s 42nd birthday. They are honouring her as an activist and a humanitarian.
The actress Gillian Anderson is reading a poem, I will stand for love.
Jo believed that people achieved more together, Frostrup she says.
To celebrate Jo Cox. "I shall stand for love, because we need more light." #VoteRemain #MoreInCommon @dorothyoger pic.twitter.com/6PtBQC462k
Representatives from various faith groups, and from the Humanist Association, are laying 42 white roses to commemorate Cox.
Frostrup says today is also the birthday of Bernard Carter-Kenny, the pensioner who was seriously injured trying to save Cox. Frostrup sends her best wishes for his recovery.
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Here is the scene from Batley, in Jo Cox’s constituency, where another More In Commons event is taking place.
People waiting to sign the book of condolences at the Jo Cox memorial in Batley town square. pic.twitter.com/dV8aKh3R1L
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More In Common event in memory of Jo Cox
Here is the scene from the More In Common event in Trafalgar Square in memory of Jo Cox.
The band playing is Diddley Dee, a band that Jo loved and that played at her wedding.
Later there will be a film tribute to Jo, speeches from her husband Brendan, her sister Kim Leadbeater and Malala, the Pakistani activist and Nobel Peace Prize winners, as well as video messages and music.
