Caroline, Baroness Cox, was appointed to the House of Lords by Margaret Thatcher. She uses her position to be what she calls ‘a voice for the voiceless’, meeting and advocating for those in vulnerable parts of the world – as well as for political influence. She talks to Stephen Tomkins.

As a member of the House of Lords, would you call yourself a politician or have you got some better word?
I call myself a nurse and a social scientist by intention, and a baroness by astonishment. I was the first baroness I’d ever met, so I wasn’t into politics, but I use the privilege of being able to speak in parliament to try to be a voice for people whose voices are not heard.

What are your memories of being a nurse in the 1950s and 1960s?
I trained at the London Hospital in Whitechapel, and found nursing a wonderful profession. I then worked as a staff nurse and then had the best nursing education anyone can have, which is six months as a patient with renal TB. That knocked me out of clinical nursing and that’s when I did my degree as an evening student…

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This is an extract from an article published in the March 2022 edition of Reform

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