You wouldn’t expect to find anything to smile about in Jo Cox: Death of an MP (BBC2). There was one little moment though, for me anyway. Maybe Jo would have seen the funny side too. Her sister Kim is talking about their childhood in Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire. “We used to go up and play in the barley fields,” she says.
What! You as well? What is it about future politicians and cereal crops? Wait though, there was maybe more danger for Jo and Kim – they got chased by a horse, and a bull! Yeah, Theresa, off our naughty step, goody two-shoes …
Actually there’s more, if not to smile about, then at least to feel good about here. Jo just sounds like such a bloody brilliant human being, and that’s not something that’s often said of a member of parliament. But then it’s not often that you really believe a politician has gone into it as a means to helping people. “It was never just about getting a constituency,” says Kim. “It was getting her home constituency, with the people that she cared about and the area that she knew and loved.”
And they loved her back. Not just her family, and Fazila and Sandra who worked with her and were with her when she died, and Brendan her husband, of course, now bringing up their children without her. But also people who didn’t agree with her views. Like Alistair here, sales director of the fire engine factory she visited on the morning of her death. They were all staunch leavers, and she had been campaigning hard to remain in Europe. But, “Jo was respectful of people’s views; she listened,” he says. “I just instantly felt a lot of warmth for Jo.”
Even her supposed flaws make her more appealing. Jo was a rubbish cook, says Brendan. There was never any milk in the fridge, or money in her purse, or clothes to wear. Who cares about frigging milk though, or cash, or clothes, when there’s work to be done, a difference to be made, a world to be changed, for the better? “I can’t remember anyone not liking Jo,” says Kim.
Thomas Mair didn’t like her. Well, maybe he would have done, if he had actually met her, instead of just shooting and stabbing her. He didn’t like what she stood for though.
The film traces his life backwards from that moment too, so far as it can of a man who no one really knew. There are chilling clips from the police interview room, of Mair with his arms folded, appearing calm and offering nothing – not saying “no comment” but actually saying nothing at all, for six hours. And CCTV footage of him in town in the time leading up to the attack, staking it out, pacing around with his pathetic disguise and his bag of killing equipment.
Members of the investigating team contribute as well, describe what they found on his bookshelves at home and in his search history, the extreme rightwing stuff he was looking at every day. Here was a lonely obsessive, immersing himself in Nazi ideology – pornography of hatred. You can imagine him sitting there, at home and in the library, thinking that he, who had never belonged to anything before, was part of something bigger.
And yet he was also complex and contradictory. He volunteered at a charity that had been useful to him, helping others, including people of different races. “There was never any indication that he was racist in any way,” says Karen, the head of the charity. “The Tom I knew was so kind, considerate, caring.”
It’s brave of her to say so, but she gets some backup from Prof Roger, the fascism expert. “Nobody is ever completely a terrorist,” he says. You do often hear that so-and-so was polite and neighbourly, before the evil won out. This poignant documentary does not make sense of it, because it is senseless. But it asks the right questions, from and about everyone involved, about the murder and about the climate in which it happened. It is a thorough and forensic exploration – engrossing, worrying, but mostly just really sad.
Most heartbreaking of all: the home video footage, of Jo with the kids, playing in the kitchen, larking about in the back of the car. She looks pretty brilliant at that too, being a mum.
