Rachel Hopkins
Rachel Hopkins (born 30 March 1972) is a British Labour Party politician who has been Member of Parliamentfor Luton South since the 2019 general election. She has been on Luton Borough Council since 2011, and served as the cabinet's executive member for public health.
Early life and education
Hopkins was born in Luton and Dunstable University Hospital and raised in the area of Biscot. She attended Denbigh High School and then Luton Sixth Form College before going on to study at the University of Leicester. She later studied part-time for a master's degree from the University of Bedfordshire.
Hopkins' father, Kelvin Hopkins, was also a Labour Member of Parliament for the Luton North constituency between 1997 and 2019. Her grandfather, Harold, was a physicist.
On the Left
Rachel Hopkins is considered to be on the left of the Labour party, as her father was. She is also known to have voted for Brexit, like her father, making her one of the few known Labour MPs (alongside Graham Stringer and John Cryer) to have voted for it.
Socialist Campaign Group
In 2021 Rachel Hopkins was member of the Socialist Campaign Group in the House of Parliament.
Communist Party connections
"A Jobs-Led Recovery"
Jon Trickett MP, Grace Blakeley, Larry Elliot, Nadia Jama, Ben Chacko Morning Star, Rachel Hopkins MP.
TUC Fringe 2021
Mark Serwotka, Rachel Hopkins MP, Matt Wrack.
Cuba Solidarity at Labour Party Conference
Cuba Solidarity Campaign Monday, 4 October 2021.
After eighteen months and twenty online public meetings CSC was delighted to participate in and host our first face-to-face public meetings, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in September.
At the Labour Party Conference in Brighton we were invited to speak at ‘The World Transformed’, the Young Labour rally, as well as organising a fringe meeting as part of the main conference fringe programme.
CSC’s conference exhibition stall was extremely busy all week. Several MPs had their photographs taken with our ‘End the US blockade, 60 years too long’ poster, and it was great to see many existing CSC members visit to say hello and give their support, as well as Labour Party delegates who came to ask questions, buy gifts and join. More than 20 new members were recruited during the week.
On Saturday 25 September, CSC’s Natasha Hickman spoke at two events. Joining speakers from Colombia, Brazil, and Bolivia at The World Transformed Festival running concurrently with the Labour Party Conference, she contrasted the lack of mainstream media coverage for the mass demonstrations against imperialism and right-wing governments that had been taking place in these countries for many months compared to the way that the same media had responded to localised and much smaller events in Cuba. The meeting, ‘Latin America Rising: Imperialism, Resistance and Solidarity,’ hosted by Alborada attracted more than 100 people. Later the same evening, Natasha told a crowd of 200 at the Young Labour Rally that there was nothing controversial about standing up against the US blockade whose aim was to starve the Cuban people into submission. Other speakers at the rally included MPs Jeremy Corbyn, Richard Burgon and Zarah Sultana.
On Monday 27 September a further 150 people listened to Cuban Ambassador Barbara Montalvo Alvarez speak at her first fringe meeting since arriving in the UK in March 2020. CSC’s meeting ‘Solidarity and resistance: Cuba’s fight against COVID and the US blockade’, was sponsored by Unite the Union, and chaired by the union’s Assistant General Secretary Steve Turner.
Grahame Morris MP told the audience about the measures taken both in and out of parliament by MPs to pressure the Biden administration to reverse sanctions imposed by Trump including allowing Cuban Americans to send family remittances to the island.
Labour NEC youth representative and junior doctor Lara McNeill shared her first-hand experience of training as a doctor in Havana and told the audience what it was like to work in Cuba’s world class healthcare system. She compared the cost of training to become a doctor in the UK and the debts students would rack up here with Cuba where medical training is free and as a result doctors came from much more diverse backgrounds than in Britain.
CSC Director Rob Miller closed the meeting with a call for solidarity given the current difficulties the island faced. “Cuba has given so much to the world, it is time for us to give something back” he said.
Labour MPs Mick Whitley, Navendu Mishra, Paula Barker, Rachel Hopkins, Kim Johnson and Sinn Fein’s Chris Hazzard and Mickey Brady attended the meeting and expressed their ongoing support.[1]
Cuba Covid letter
April 15 2020, fifty one British members of parliament have written to Dominic Raab, the UK Foreign Secretary and acting Prime Minister to call for the US blockade of Cuba to be temporarily suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Grahame Morris MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cuba, coordinated the letter which asks the British government to make a public statement and to raise the issue directly with its counterparts in the United States’ government.
The letter from the British parliamentarians cites examples from around the world where governments and international organisations have demanded that humanitarian aid be allowed in to Cuba to help the country fight COVID-19. It quotes Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Arancha Gonzalez, Spanish Foreign Minister, and Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, who have all publicly called for sanctions to be suspended to Cuba and other sanctioned countries to allow for the delivery of essential supplies and medicine to stop the spread of the virus.
Yours sincerely,
Grahame Morris MP, Chair, APPG Cuba.
Dan Carden MP, Vice Chair, Kate Osborne MP, Vice Chair, Kim Johnson MP, Vice Chair, Paula Barker MP, Vice Chair, Alison Thewliss MP Allan Dorans MP, Amy Callaghan MP, Andy McDonald MP, Apsana Begum MP, Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, Beth Winter MP, Carol Monaghan MP, Chris Law MP, Chris Stephens MP, Claudia Webbe MP, Clive Lewis MP, Dave Doogan MP, Diane Abbott MP, Geraint Davies MP, Ian Byrne MP, Ian Mearns MP, Ian Lavery MP, Imran Hussain MP, Joanna Cherry MP, John McDonnell MP, Jon Trickett MP, Kate Osamor MP, Kenny MacAskill MP, Kirsten Oswald MP, Kirsty Blackman MP, Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP, Margaret Ferrier MP, Marion Fellowes MP, Martyn Day MP, Mary Kelly Foy MP, Mick Whitley MP, Mike Amesbury MP, Mike Hill MP, Navendu Mishra MP, Olivia Blake MP, Owen Thompson MP, Rachel Hopkins MP, Richard Burgon MP, Ronnie Cowan MP, Sam Tarry MP, Sarah Champion MP, Stephen Bonnar MP, Stephen Flynn MP, Yasmin Qureshi MP, Zarah Sultana MP[2]