Oona King

Oona Tamsyn King, Baroness King of Bow (born 22 October 1967) is a Labour politician and former Chief diversity officer of Channel 4. She had previously served as a Labour Party Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow from 1997 until 2005, when she was defeated by George Galloway, the Respect candidate.

Early life

King, who is mixed race, was born in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, to Preston King, an African-American academic and his wife, Murreil Hazel (née Stern), a Jewish social justice activist. She is the niece of the medical doctor Miriam Stoppard (her mother's sister), while her cousin is the actor Ed Stoppard. On her father's side, she comes from a line of civil rights activists and successful entrepreneurs. Her paternal grandfather, the civil rights activist, Clennon Washington King, Sr. fathered seven sons. C.B. King, a pioneering civil rights attorney, is her uncle.

King was educated at Haverstock Comprehensive Secondary School on Crogsland Road in Chalk Farm (borough of Camden), London, and was a contemporary of fellow Labour politicians David Miliband and his younger brother Ed. It was at Haverstock that she first showed political ambition, telling her careers teacher she wanted to become Prime Minister. Librarian work was suggested instead. At the beginning of her period as an undergraduate at University of York she was briefly a member of the Socialist Workers Party During her second year (1988–89) she gained a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with a first class honours Politics degree in 1990.