Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece OBE
Pro-Chancellor, distinguished friends, colleagues, graduands and guests.
Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece OBE, is a leading figure in the field of equality and diversity policy in the United Kingdom. A ceaseless campaigner for fairness and for racial equality, she has given a lifetime to public service.
Meral was born in Islington. Her Turkish-Cypriot father, the late Hasan Nihat Hussein, came to the UK in 1948. Her mother, Ayshe Cuma Abdullah, arrived in 1952. Her parents met here in the UK, and subsequently got married and settled in Islington, North London. As early migrants, they worked hard in a variety of jobs, going on to open their own small family business in the 1960s. They believed in the rewards of a strong work ethic, and worked hard to establish a better life for their children.
Her maternal grandfather, Abdullah, was Sudanese. He was captured there when he was a young man, and taken as a slave during the Ottoman period, where he was sold to a merchant in Cyprus. He was subsequently given his freedom, and married a Turkish woman. Meral shares her Sudanese great-grandfather with her cousin the artist Tracey Emin.
Meral originally studied art history and fine art, gaining a place at Sir John Cass School of Art, London, before going on to work in local government and training as a librarian. She subsequently worked as a race equality officer in Islington and then later as a senior manager in the NHS, including a spell as Chief Officer for Haringey Community Health Council. During her period in the NHS she somehow also found time to also complete a degree in Health Care Management.
Meral put in many years of voluntary work, and was a school governor for many years. She also supported after school clubs for Turkish and Turkish-Cypriot children who were underachieving in local schools, and established and developed services for ethnic minority older people. She was instrumental in establishing the very first Turkish Women's project, nearly twenty-five years ago, dedicated to supporting Turkish and Kurdish women who were victims of domestic violence.
She was elected to Hackney Council as a Labour Councillor for Clissold ward in 1994, and became Deputy Leader of the Council in 1995. Meral was the first Turkish Cypriot elected to hold senior public office in the UK. In 1997 Meral joined the Liberal Democrats, and she was re-elected to Hackney Borough Council in Dalston ward in 1998. In the local government elections of 2002, Meral was elected Councillor for Mildmay ward on Islington Council, and she appointed the Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care from 2002 to 2006. She served as Chair of the Islington Health Partnership Board and as a member of Islington Primary Care Trust Board during this time and she was also a non-executive director of Camden and Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust.
In May 2008 Meral was appointed by Harriet Harman, the then Minister for Equalities, to serve on the Government’s Task Force to increase the numbers of ethnic minority women councillors in the UK. From 2009 to 2012, Meral served as a Commissioner to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She was also active within her own party, where she was Chair of the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats and a member of the Liberal Democrats Federal Executive Committee, and advised the party leader, Nick Clegg, on community cohesion and minority ethnic communities.
In 2009 Meral was awarded the OBE in the Queens New Year Honours for services to local government. Further recognition for her significant and valuable achievements came in 2010, when she was appointed as a peer to the House of Lords and took her seat as Baroness Hussein-Ece of Highbury in the London Borough of Islington. She made her maiden speech at the House of Lords in July 2010 in a debate on criminal justice. She is the first woman of Turkish-Cypriot origin to be a member of either House of Parliament.
Meral has been an active working peer since her appointment to the House of Lords. She has joined and contributes to a number of All Party Parliamentary Groups, including UN Women, and is vice chair of the All Party Group on Turkey, and secretary of the All Party Group on Cyprus. She remains committed to developing and supporting civil society dialogue in Cyprus, and hopes one day that there will be a lasting peace and equality for all citizens in Cyprus.
In recognition of her work for equal and fair representation of ethnic minorities and her input towards the peace process in Cyprus, Coventry University, by decision of the Academic Board, has the privilege of conferring the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, on Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece.