Caroline Cox, Baroness Cox

The Baroness Cox FRCS FRCN
The Baroness Cox in the House of Lords, 2008
Member of the House of Lords
Incumbent
Assumed office 24 January 1983
Personal details
Born	Caroline Anne McNeill Love (1937-07-06) 6 July 1937 England
Political party	Cross-bench (2004–present) Conservative (until 2004)
Alma mater	University of London University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Caroline Cox, Baroness Cox FRCN (born 6 July 1937) is a cross-bench member of the British House of Lords. She has been CEO of an organisation called Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART).^[1] Baroness (Caroline) Cox was created a Life Peer in 1982 and was a deputy speaker of the House of Lords from 1985 to 2005. She was Founder Chancellor of Bournemouth University; Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University from 2006-2013 and is an Hon. Vice President of the Royal College of Nursing. She was a founder Trustee of MERLIN Medical Emergency Relief International. Caroline Cox has been honoured with the Commander Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland; the Wilberforce Award; the International Mother Teresa Award from the All India Christian Council; the Mkhitar Gosh Medal conferred by the President of the Republic of Armenia; and the anniversary medal presented by Lech Walesa. She has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Honorary Doctorates by universities in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, the Russian Federation and Armenia.

A strong advocate of Christian Zionism,^[2] · ^[3] Baroness Cox actions have been either described as campaigns for humanitarian causes, particularly those relating to disability,^[4] or criticized.^[5] · ^[6] Since 2005 she has been a co-president of the Jerusalem Summit, a pro-Israel advocacy outfit.^[5] Their conference was sponsored by the Michael Cherney Foundation, which also funds the Intelligence Summit in the US, both of which are gatherings of neoconservatives such as Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, Harold Rhode, Walid Phares, R. James Woolsey and others.^[7]

Background

Baroness Cox was born as Caroline Anne McNeill Love, the daughter of an internationally renowned surgeon, co-author of the famous textbook known as ‘Bailey and Love’, Robert McNeill Love.^[8] She was educated at Channing School in Highgate. She became a state registered nurse at London Hospital from 1958, and a staff nurse at Edgware General Hospital from 1960. She married Dr Murray Newall Cox in 1959, remaining married to him until he died in 1997. The couple had three children, two sons and one daughter. In the late 1960s she studied for a degree at the University of London where she graduated with a first class honours degree in sociology in 1967 and a master's degree from the University of London.

Academic career and subsequent activities

On graduating, Cox became a sociology lecturer at the Polytechnic of North London rising to become Principal Lecturer. From 1974 she was head of the Department of Sociology. In 1977 she moved to become Director of the Nursing Education Research Unit at Chelsea College of the University of London. She was also made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. She was also concerned with education and backed the reforms to reduce powers of Local Education Authorities in 1993, arguing for a more strongly religious element to teaching. Her background in sociology led her to write books on the subject for nurses, and she also co-wrote a book (Rape of Reason) attacking alleged communist activity at the Polytechnic of North London in 1975. She was founding Chancellor of Bournemouth University.

Cox was a Director of the Conservative Philosophy Group from 1983-85.^[9] In 1987 she co-founded the Committee for a Free Britain funded by Rupert Murdoch which at one point called for "the legalization of all drugs"^[10]

She is a director of the Educational Research Trust, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation and the Centre for Social Cohesion.^[11] In 2006 she received an honorary law degree from the University of Dundee^[12] and was installed as the Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University in the same year.

Her work, either presented as of humanitarian character by her supporters or plumbed with suspicious political incentives by critics, takes her to conflict and post-conflict zones, including the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, the Karen, Karenni, Shan and Chin peoples of Burma. Previously, she visited communities suffering from conflict in Indonesia, helping to establish an organisation called "International Islamic Christian Organisation for Reconciliation and Reconstruction" (today dissolved^[13]) with late former President Abdurrhaman Wahid. She has visited North Korea to promote Parliamentary initiatives and medical programmes.

Controversies on her role in Sudan

Her operations in Sudan to allegedly "free slaves" were investigated by independent observers who described her activities as mere "slave exchanges", in which slaves allegedly "liberated" were exchanged under suspicious conditions involving individuals disguised in the form of Arab merchants to falsely indulge into accusing Muslims of slave operations.^[14]

Cox's operations in Sudan have been set up with the help of CSI and in close collaboration with Lord Avebury, head of the British Parliament's Human Rights Caucus. Since 1991 she has entered Sudan illegally through other African countries (among them: Uganda and Ethiopia), and started operations intended at influencing before the U.S. Congress and European national parliaments, in an attempt to gear towards sanctions against Sudan. CSI arranged for two reporters of the Baltimore Sun to "buy a slave" in Sudan, not in territory under government control, but in an area under the control of Cox's ally John Garang. Long before the creation of South Sudan, CSI's Eibner stated in the 1990s his hope to see Sudan divided into different countries.^[15]

Baroness Cox's actions in Sudan are matched with those of David Littman in the same time: Littman was the CSI representative in Geneva, Switzerland.^[16]

Kirsten Sellars in her book, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, (pp. 173–174) writes:

In fact, the scope and nature of slavery in Sudan is hotly disputed. Not only that, but the modus operandi of the Christian human rights groups engaged in 'slave redemption' – buying slaves to set them free – is the source of great controversy. Their legions of critics, ranging from Unicef and Human Rights Watch to Anti-Slavery International and Save The Children, accuse them of adopting methods which perpetuate rather than eliminate the practice.^[17]

This criticism is based on how Cox ran the British section of Christian Solidarity International, and then helped to form the Surrey-based breakaway, Christian Solidarity Worldwide. And adds:

In the late nineties, Cox made numerous forays to Sudan to 'redeem' slaves. Her supporters see her as a latter-day saviour, but her detractors argue that buying slaves encourages an abominable practice. Sir Robert Ffolkes, Sudan programme director of the Save The Children Fund, says that it 'condone[s] the practice of purchasing human beings', while Mike Dotteridge of Anti-Slavery International says that it allows it 'potentially to flourish'. Patrick McCormick, spokesman for Unicef, makes the same point: 'We find it hard to believe that it hasn't encouraged . . . slave traders to increase their business.' As Christopher Beese of Merlin, the British medical charity, says of Cox: 'She's not the most popular person in Sudan among the humanitarian aid people . . . some of them feel she is not well-enough informed.' These are valid criticisms – albeit criticisms that raise important (and largely unanswered) questions about the distorting effects of all humanitarian efforts in Sudan.^[17]

Sellars also observes that Anti-Slavery International used a 1999 report to the UN's Working Party on Slavery to challenge some of the claims being advanced about the scale of the problem. It said:

A representative of Christian Solidarity International spoke at the beginning of this year of 'tens of thousands' of people in slavery in Sudan, and of 'concentration camps' for slaves. At Anti-Slavery International, we know of no evidence to justify an assertion that 20,000 people or more are currently held as captives and slaves in these areas of Sudan. We know that abductions have continued to be reported . . . but realise that a number as large as 20,000 would be more visible than the smaller group which we understand is actually held, of hundreds or several thousand individuals scattered around separate households.^[17]

One possible explanation of events comes from a (2002) press release from The European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council, which drew on reports from 'The Irish Times', 'Independent on Sunday', 'The Washington Post' and the 'International Herald Tribune', which it states, chose to publish, or republish, articles exposing the deep fraud and corruption at the heart of claims of "slave redemption" in Sudan.^[18] The jist of this is that people (mostly children) pose as slaves to obtain the money offered to buy them from western organisations and that this has been orchestrated to fund the SPLA who use it to fund their fight against the Moslem government.

One key figure in this type of version of events is repentant Iran/Contra sinner Elliott Abrams — "He’s the guy who lied and wheedled to aid and protect human rights abusers,”^[19] The Nation’s David Corn wrote upon Abrams’ 2001 return to government, in reference to Abrams defence of the U.S.-backed military regime in El Salvador even after evidence emerged of regime-sponsored massacres. The point here is that Abrams used his time out of government to develop the new specialty that paved his path back: religion and the Middle East, but also work on Sudan.

In 1996 he became president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington outfit dedicated to applying faith-based morality to public policy. To boost support for Israel, Abrams urged a new kinship between observant Jews and evangelical Christians. He promoted a strongly pro-Israel stance toward peace negotiations with the Palestinians, criticizing the 1993 Oslo accords as too demanding of Israel.^[19]

Abrams was also chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The Ethics and Public Policy Center is one of several institutes and programs established by neoconservatives to promote an increased role of religion in public policy. This argues that Abrams used an instrumentalist position on human rights, saying that human rights should be a “policy tool” of the U.S. government. The Center was previously run by Ernest Lefever, one of the founding members of the 1970s version of the anti-communist Committee on the Present Danger.

Francis Mading Deng and J. Stephen Morrison's (2001) Report of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Task Force on U.S.-Sudan Policy^[20] lists Elliott Abrams (then Chair of U.S. Committee on International Religious Freedom, and Ethics and Public Policy Center) and L. Paul Bremer (then with Kissinger Associates, Inc.) as two of its presenters. Cox, and Deng (and Dan Eiffe of Norwegian People's Aid who smuggled arms to the SPLA under the guise of religious aid^[21] both made contributions at a February 14, 2000: Hearing on Religious Persecution in Sudan of which Abrams was Commissioner.^[22]

Abrams' (2001) The Influence of Faith: Religious Groups and U.S. Foreign Policy, draws its inspiration from Samuel Huntington and was funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation drawing on the center’s work, it set out a long-standing use of religion in this manner:

“…some missionaries became what we would now call lobbyists and their “interest group” often allied with less devout expansionists.”^[23]

The book also mentions “premillenial dispensationalism,” whereby the British promise of a “Jewish homeland in Palestine as evidence of Jesus’ imminent return”^[24] was used as propaganda or “attuned” as Abrams puts it. Premillenial dispensationalism” is still put about by Michael Ledeen and his wife. Abrams also speaks of Father Edmund Walsh, an American Jesuit priest, and founder of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, in 1919, the man who reputedly encouraged Senator McCarthy to use anti-Communism as a stepping stone. And it also mentions that Reagan’s presidential aides worked Pope John Paul “to crack open the Eastern Bloc”.^[25]

Member of the House of Lords

Her peerage was announced on 15 December 1982 on a list of "working peers",^[26] on the recommendation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and she was granted the title of Baroness Cox, of Queensbury in Greater London, on 24 January 1983.^[27] Cox initially sat as a Conservative and served briefly as a Baroness-in-Waiting. She served as a Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords from 1986 to 2006.

Education Reform bill

During the debates over the Education Reform bill, Cox worked together with Michael Alison to ensure that a commitment was made that state education was 'broadly Christian' in character.^[28] The bill later passed as the Education Reform Act 1988.

Foreign affairs

Lady Cox became a frequent contributor to Lords debates on Africa, and also raised other "forgotten conflicts" in letters to the press. She was already highlighting fighting in Sudan in September 1992, criticising Sudan's Islamist government and backing Dr. John Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Army,^[29] and also criticised the actions of the government of Muslim Azerbaijan in the Armenian Christian breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Cox chairs the British Armenian All-Party Parliamentary Group.^[30] She is also a strong supporter of self-determination for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is officially a part of Azerbaijan.^[31] Paying tribute to Cox's dedication to the Armenian cause, Frank Pallone, Jr., the co-chairman of the US Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues, praised her devotion to Armenia and Karabakh.^[32] On 15 February 2006 she was awarded the Mkhitar Gosh Medal by the President of the Republic of Armenia Robert Kocharyan.^[33]

Lady Cox is also the Vice Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea.^[34] The Group has stated that the Obama administration brings with it an opportunity for a formal cessation of hostilities and normalisation of relations with North Korea.^[35]

Eurosceptic

Lady Cox is a Eurosceptic. She rebelled over the Maastricht Treaty, supporting an amendment to require a nationwide referendum on ratification on 14 July 1993.^[36] In May 2004 she joined three other Conservative peers in signing a letter published by the UK Independence Party urging voters to support it in the elections to the European Parliament. The Leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard, immediately withdrew the party whip, formally expelling them from the parliamentary party. Cox now sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.^[37][38]

Geert Wilders controversy

In February 2009, Cox courted controversy when she and UKIP peer Lord Pearson invited Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders to show the anti-radical-Islam film Fitna before the House of Lords. However, Wilders was prevented from entering the UK on the instructions of Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.^[39] In response, Cox and Pearson accused the Government of appeasing militant Islam.^[38][40]

Legislative Activities

Lady Cox introduced the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill to the House of Lords, initially on 10 May 2012.^[41] with the observation that "Equality under the law is a core value of British justice. My bill seeks to preserve that standard. Many women say: 'We came to this country to escape these practices only to find the situation is worse here.'"^[42] It had its second reading and debate on 19 October 2012, but went no further.^[43]

Lady Cox aims to prevent discrimination against Muslim women and 'jurisdiction creep' in Islamic tribunals, which would be forced to acknowledge the primacy of English law under a bill introduced to the House of Lords in May 2012. The bill will introduce an offence carrying a five-year jail sentence for anyone falsely claiming or implying that sharia courts or councils have legal jurisdiction over family or criminal law. The bill, which will apply to all arbitration tribunals if passed, aims to tackle discrimination, which its supporters say is inherent in the courts, by banning the sharia practice of giving woman's testimony only half the weight of men's. In a similar way to Jewish Beth Din courts, sharia tribunals can make verdicts in cases involving financial and property issues which, under the Arbitration Act 1996, are enforceable by county courts or the high court.^[42]

A journalist observed that sharia law in Britain is exactly the sort of topic mainstream politicians will not touch. Baroness Cox stated that "We cannot sit here complacently in our red and green benches while women are suffering a system which is utterly incompatible with the legal principles upon which this country is founded. If we don't do something, we are condoning it."^[38][44]

Baroness Cox of Queensbury is fighting to stop sharia 'seeping' into enforcing divorce settlements.^[45]

Cox re-introduced her legislation on 11 June 2014.^[46][47]

Other Activities

In June 2002 Cox hosted a launch event for Great Britain has Fallen!, a book written by Nigerian missionary Wale Babatunde and also wrote endorsements saying the book "showed the way forward" for reversing Britain's moral decline.^[48]

One Jerusalem

She is one of 18 co-founders of the One Jerusalem organisation,^[49] which aims at "maintaining a united Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel" and which has connections to the IEDSS’ New Atlantic Initiative.^[50] On 24 January 2005, she became Co-President of the Jerusalem Summit, an organization devoted to promote D. Radyshevsky's "universal zionism".^[51][52] One of the stated aims of the Jerusalem Summit is "The establishment of a Palestinian State must be removed from the international agenda".^[53] A Jerusalem Summit London was held January 27–30, 2007 with a view to:

"Attempting to stem the tide of rising Islamic fundamentalism in Europe [and] to rekindle the faded force of Christian Zionism in the United Kingdom.^[54]

Cox, who in 2014 was speaking at an event organised by the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security at Tel Aviv University and The Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies, mentioned the alleged ‘Trojan Horse plot’ in her speech as an example of secret takeover strategies by ‘Islamists’ in Africa made in order to ‘Islamize’ the continent.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide

She was president of Christian Solidarity Worldwide until 2006, thereafter remaining as its patron.^[55] Between 1997 and 2000, Christian Solidarity Worldwide directly intervened to buy the freedom of alleged slaves, and in a letter to The Independent on Sunday Cox claimed to have redeemed 2,281 slaves on eight visits to Sudan.^[56] Both the veracity of this claim^[57] and the rational of slave redemption^[58] have been questioned by others in humanitarian community. In 1995 she won the William Wilberforce Award.^[59] She is also a patron of the Christian Institute.

Global Panel Foundation and Prague Society

She is a Member of the Board of Advisors of the Global Panel Foundation, a respected NGO that works behind the scenes in crisis areas around the world.^[60] Baroness Cox is also a member of Prague Society for International Cooperation, another respected NGO whose main goals are networking and the development of a new generation of responsible, well-informed leaders and thinkers.^[61]

Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust

The Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), founded by Baroness Cox in 2003,^[62] works to provide lasting change through aid and advocacy for those suffering oppression and persecution, who are largely neglected by the international media. HART believe that in order to adequately meet the needs and requirements of the persecuted, oppressed and overlooked; we must ask the local people for their priorities, giving them the dignity of choice and the responsibility of their own programmes. Lady Cox travels to HART funded aid and advocacy programmes in Nagorno Karabagh, East and West Burma, East Timor, India, Nigeria, southern Sudan and northern Uganda. An Australian branch of HART was established in 2009.^[63]

Disability activism

Cox supports disability causes as a member of the World Committee on Disability. In 2004 she was a judge for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Disability Award, distributed annually at the United Nations in New York to a nation that has met the goals of the UN World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled Persons.^[64]

Bibliography

• A Sociology of Medical Practice (1975)
• Rape of Reason: The Corruption of the Polytechnic of North London (Keith Jacka, with Caroline Cox and John Marks, jt au 1975)
• The Right to Learn (jt au 1982)
• Sociology: A Guide for Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors (jt au 1983)
• Choosing a State School: how to find the best education for your child (jt au 1989)
• Trajectories of Despair; misdiagnosis and maltreatment of Soviet orphans (with John Eibner 1991)
• Ethnic Cleansing in Progress: war in Nagorno Karabakh (1993)
• Islam, Islamism and the West: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy? (2005)
• Made to Care: the case for residential and village communities for people with a mental handicap
• Baroness Cox: A voice for the voiceless. (1999) Boyd, A. Lion Books. ISBN 0-7459-3735-7

References

External links

• Survivors of Maraghar massacre: 'It was truly like a contemporary Golgotha many times over' - Caroline Cox
• "Taking Islam Seriously"
• "The West, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy?" by Caroline Cox and John Marks. Review.