The Great Get Together is the UK’s annual celebration of everything that unites our communities, inspired by Jo Cox’s belief that we have more in common than that which divides us.
On 16 June 2016, Jo Cox, a British Labour Party politician and Member of Parliament (MP) for Batley and Spen, died after being shot and stabbed multiple times in Birstall, West Yorkshire. In November 2016, 53-year-old Thomas Alexander Mair was found guilty of her murder and other offences connected to the killing in an act of terrorism. The judge concluded that Mair wanted to advance white supremacy and exclusive nationalism most associated with Nazism and its modern forms. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order.
The need to celebrate unity and reject division is as relevant now as it was when the first Great Get Together took place in 2017. This June would have been Jo’s 50th birthday and her foundation continues to spread her message of inspiring communities to bring people together.
‘’While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.’’
Jo Cox
Community Rail Lancashire took part in this year’s Great Get Together by bringing a group of women together from Blackburn to travel by train to Hebden Bridge so that they could spend an afternoon together. They walked along the canal and took in the beauty of the Calder Valley. They shared stories of childhood and adulthood and celebrated their diversity and their commonality over coffee and cake.
Further information abut The Great Get Together and The Jo Cox Foundation can be found at,
https://www.jocoxfoundation.org/about/about-jo-cox/
https://www.jocoxfoundation.org/our-work/stronger-communities/great-get-together/