Champion

This article is mainly a summary and review of the biography of Caroline Cox, subtitled A Voice for the Voiceless, by Andrew Boyd.

I would like to start with an extract from the foreword to the biography, written by Lord Tonypandy: ‘I regard Baroness Cox as one of the grLion Bookseat women of our generation — a 20th-century prophet. She has awakened the conscience of the House of Lords to the terrible challenges that face Christians in other lands.’

She was born in London in 1937, the daughter of Robert and Dorothy Love. Robert was an eminent surgeon who served in the Medical Corps in the First World War. They were a devout Christian family, but they didn’t practise family prayers. They were initially Presbyterian, but then joined the Anglican church, before Caroline was born.

Kneeling on the lino

To quote from the book, ‘Caroline’s personal faith grew throughout her childhood — a process of evolution, rather than revelation. She took her prayers seriously, and recalls kneeling on the floor, once on the brown linoleum of the breakfast room and again on the cold white tiles of the kitchen, to give her life to God’. She was confirmed at the age of 11, which was her choice, without pressure from her parents. Her confirmation text was Joshua 1.9: ‘Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.’

Nursing and marriage

Caroline became a nurse at the London Hospital at the age of 18. There followed a series of major life-changing events, some happy and some sad. One year later, her brother, Mike, died of leukaemia at the age of 22, which was a tremendous blow to all the family. It affected her mother, Dorothy, the worst; she relapsed into depression and died only three years later.

In the meantime Caroline met Murray Cox, who was a neuro-surgeon at the hospital, six years older than Caroline. Their courtship blossomed rapidly, to quote: ‘The sexual chemistry was fizzing, their souls were satisfied with a mutual love of Browning and Housman, and they were able to share in matters of the spirit as well. Both were committed Christians, for whom faith was at the forefront of life’ (p.30).

Murray and Caroline were married on January 10 1959 at St. Giles-in-the-Field, London. The church was packed. They decided to start a family straight away, and Robin was born after 11 months. A few months later Caroline was diagnosed with tuberculosis, possibly caught from nursing TB patients. She was in Edgware Hospital for six months and did not see Robin during that time. To quote: ‘She left the baby in a pram and returned home to find a toddler’.

Passion for justice

By this time, Caroline was a socialist in politics, without ever being a member of the Labour Party. She had a burgeoning passion for social justice and equality. Murray and Caroline had two more children, Jonathan and Pippa, by 1965. Caroline could not continue nursing and raise the family. She had earlier felt called to the mission field, but this was ruled out as the TB had left her with a damaged kidney. She therefore decided to pursue an academic career and started studying sociology as an external student of London University. She graduated with a first in 1968. Just before she heard about this, she was hanging out nappies and thinking, ‘If I have got a first, I can’t believe it! But I want to offer it to you, God, for your service’.

Marxist polytechnic

Her first post was that of Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Polytechnic of North London. As a committed Christian she presented a Christian view of Sociology. However, the polytechnic was dominated by Marxism and many of the students had been indoctrinated with Marxist philosophy. It was a time of student unrest and the students organised demonstrations to disrupt lectures or meetings which they considered anti-Marxist. Caroline bore the brunt of this and in 1974 the students passed a vote of no confidence in her. Together with two other academics, she published a book, The Rape of Reason, exposing the situation in further education at that time. This had a good review from Bernard Levin, who had a regular column in The Times.

Bolt from the Tory blue

She became head of Sociology at the Polytechnic but, because of increased pressure, resigned in 1978. She then obtained a position at the Nursing Education Research Unit at Chelsea College. In 1982 she had a phone call which was a bolt from the blue: an invitation to meet the Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, at Downing Street the next day. Mrs. Thatcher offered her a life peerage for her services to education. In due course she became Baroness Cox of Queensbury, a district of London. She was then, of course, a member of the House of Lords, which was a position of considerable influence. In 1983 she resigned her post at Chelsea College, as she had too many other responsibilities.

From 1983 to 1998, Baroness Cox was largely occupied with relief and support work in various countries like Poland and with different organisations. This was the era of glasnost and perestroika. Originally she went to meet with some Christian dissidents. One was Valery Senderov, a brilliant mathematician, who had spent time in the gulags. Speaking about this, he said that it had made him a better Christian. When Caroline asked him to explain, he said, ‘through all that suffering, although I learnt to hate the system, I praise God that I never, ever, hated my jailors’.

Christian Solidarity

In autumn 1990, Caroline received an invitation to become a board member of Christian Solidarity International. This organisation was founded in 1977 to support persecuted Christians and others who were in trouble. She has visited many countries where there has been, and still is, war, destruction, slavery and oppression waged by governments upon minority groups, often including the persecution of Christians.

In November 1994, Caroline visited Myanmar (Burma) at the invitation of an English doctor, Dr. Martin Panter, who was working with ethnic minorities, especially the Karen and Karenni peoples.

The Karen people, who are Christian, have been systematically persecuted and driven from their land by successive Burmese governments since independence from Britain in 1948. They crossed into Burma from Northern Thailand. To quote from the book, ‘In a Burma the tourists would never visit, a war of ethnic cleansing was being ruthlessly waged. Minority groups were confined to the jungle, stateless, trapped, and subjected to a sustained military offensive’. Then they arrived at the Karen military and administrative headquarters at Manerplaw, where they were greeted by General Hla Htoo, a veteran Karen freedom fighter in his 70s. Within two months of their visit the Karen base would be obliterated. On returning to England Baroness Cox spoke about the plight of the Karen people in the House of Lords. To quote, ‘It appears incongruous and unprincipled to be actively promoting trade with a brutal regime, when other countries are trying to put pressure on that regime to desist from its gross violations of human rights’.

Sudan

The civil war in Sudan has continued since independence from Britain in 1956. Caroline has made many visits to Sudan on behalf of CSI and CSW. During her visits she obtained first-hand evidence of raids by government and Arab forces on villages in southern Sudan. Describing one such raid on Nyamlell, she said, ‘They [the raiders] were Arabs from the Rizeigat and Misseriya tribes. They killed 82, mainly men, and wounded many more, leaving the old for dead. They put houses to the torch, seized livestock, stripped the village of every personal possession —even cooking pots — and rounded up the cattle. Herded behind the horses with the cattle went 282 women and children who would be sold into slavery.’

Baroness Cox has sought to bring the notice of the British Government to the human rights abuses in Sudan and many other countries with a view to bringing political pressure to bear and the use of sanctions. She has particularly championed the rights of Christians in such countries as Nagorno Karabakh, Burma, Sudan and Nigeria.

Christian faith

On page 176 of his book, Andrew Boyd gives a statement of the faith of Caroline Cox: ‘She reads the Bible when she can and uses study notes. She pursues her faith with the same determination with which she pursues physical fitness. (Caroline Cox runs regularly.) She will pray before switching on the radio or opening her substantial mailbag. Prayer will be resumed in the car. On visits overseas she will take herself off for walks to meditate. Her Christian discipline is High Anglican, with more than a hint of Orthodox acquired from her attachment to Armenia, although she prefers to call herself Anglican Unorthodox: ‘Anglo-Catholic with a good sermon is my ideal. There is the liturgy, which I love, and good ministry of the word.’

On the home front she has been concerned with such issues as education, abortion, and homosexuality. She has also campaigned for years for the rights of the disabled.

This is only a brief outline of the life and ministry of Caroline Cox. For much of her life she had the help and support of her husband, Dr. Murray Newell Cox, who was a psychiatrist. He died suddenly in 1997 at the age of 65, whilst undergoing heart surgery.

I will conclude with a quotation from Lord Longford, the distinguished Catholic peer. ‘She has the power of conscience. Her eyes blaze with conscience. The very effect is compelling. I don’t think I have ever known anyone in the Lords whose conscience was so transparent.’

Biographies:
Baroness Cox, a Voice for the Voiceless by Andrew Boyd, Lion Books,1998.
Baroness Cox, Eyewitness to a Broken World by Lela Gilbert, Monarch Books, 2007.

Getting to know Baroness Cox