Caroline Cox, Baroness Cox

Caroline Ann Cox, Baroness Cox (born 6 July 1937) is a cross-bench member of the British House of Lords, and campaigner for many humanitarian causes and issues relating to disability.

Background
Cox was born Caroline Ann McNeill Love, the daughter of a surgeon from Hertford. She was educated at Channing School in Highgate, London. She became a state registered nurse at London Hospital from 1958, and a staff nurse at Edgware General Hospital from 1960. She married Dr Murray Newall Cox in 1959, remaining married to him until he died in 1997. The couple had three children, two sons and one daughter. In the late 1960s she studied for a degree at the University of London where she graduated with a first class honours degree in sociology in 1967; as a research assistant at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, she obtained a masters degree in economics.

Academic career
On leaving, Cox became a sociology lecturer at the Polytechnic of North London rising to become Principal Lecturer. From 1974 she was head of the Department of Sociology. In 1977 she moved to become Director of the Nursing Education Research Unit at Chelsea College of the University of London. She was also made a Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. She was also concerned with education and backed the reforms to reduce powers of Local Education Authorities in 1993, arguing for a more strongly religious element to teaching. Her background in sociology led her to write books on the subject for nurses, and she also wrote a book attacking corruption at the Polytechnic of North London in 1975. She was founding Chancellor of Bournemouth University.

Cox currently serves as Vice President of the Royal College of Nursing.

She is a director of the Educational Research Trust. In 2006 she received an honorary law degree from the University of Dundee and was installed as the Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University in the same year.

Current Disability Activities
She has supported disability causes for many years, is an active member of the World Committee on Disability and a judge for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Disability Award, which is distributed annually at the United Nations in New York to a nation that has met the goals of the UN World Programme of Action Concerning disabled persons.

Current Humanitarian and Human Rights Activities
She is Chief Executive of HART (Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust); a Patron of the Medical Aid for Poland Fund; a Trustee of MERLIN (Medical Emergency Relief International), a non-executive director of the Andrei Sakarov Foundation, and an International Representative for Elam Ministries. She is also a member of the Standing Conference on Women's Organisations, and a vice-president of the Girl Guides Association.

Publications
Author of the following publications: Islam, Islamism and the West: Is Idiological Islam Compatible with Liberal Democracy? (2005); A Sociology of Medical Practice (1975); Rape of Reason: The Corruption of the Polytechnic of North London (jt au 1975); The Right to Learn (jt au 1982); Sociology: A Guide for Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors (jt au 1983); Choosing a State School: how to find the best education for your child (jt au 1989); Trajectories of Despair; misdiagnosis and maltreatment of Soviet orphans (with John Eibner 1991); Ethnic Cleansing in Progress: war in Nagorno Karabakh (1993); and Made to Care: the case for residential and village communities for people with a mental handicap.

House of Lords
Her peerage was announced on December 15, 1982 on a list of "working peers", on the recommendation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and she took the title Baroness Cox, of Queensbury in Greater London. Cox initially sat as a Conservative and served briefly as a Baroness-in-Waiting (a whip, the lowest rung of government) in 1985, but disliked the job and instead became a Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords from 1986.

During the debates over the Education Reform Bill, Cox worked together with Michael Alison to ensure that a commitment was made that state education was 'broadly Christian' in character. She became a frequent contributor to Lords debates on Africa, and also raised other "forgotten conflicts" in letters to the press. She was already highlighting fighting in Sudan in September 1992, and also highlighted the actions of the Azeri government in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Other political activities
Cox is a Eurosceptic. She rebelled over the Maastricht Treaty, supporting an amendment to require a nationwide referendum on ratification on July 14, 1993. In May 2004 she joined three other Conservative peers in signing a letter published by the UK Independence Party urging voters to support it in the elections to the European Parliament. The Leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard, immediately withdrew the Conservative whip from the four. Cox now sits in the Lords as a crossbencher.

In June 2002 Cox hosted a launch event for "Great Britain has Fallen!", a book written by Nigerian missionary Wale Babatunde, and also wrote endorsements saying the book "showed the way forward" for reversing Britain's moral decline. Her actions received some criticism as the book argues against multiculturalism, describes homosexuality as "destructive", directly compares abortion to the Holocaust, and says that the death of Diana, Princess of Wales "was God's punishment for sexual scandal". Labour MP Tom Watson called on the Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith to discipline Cox for her actions supporting the book.

Baroness Cox is the honorary vice-chairman of the International Islamic Christian Organisation for Reconciliation and Reconstruction. She is one of 18 co-founders of the One Jerusalem organisation, which aims at "maintaining a united Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel", and became a Co-President of the Jerusalem Summit on January 24, 2005. She sat on the presiding council of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism in the 1980s (see Jillian Becker)

Baroness Cox is a strong supporter of self-determination Nagorno-Karabakh. Frank Pallone, Jr., co-chairman of the US Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues, paying tribute to Cox's dedication to Armenian issues, called Cox a "true Armenian nationalist who would give her life for Armenia and Karabakh." She was awarded the Mkhitar Gosh Medal by the President of the Republic of Armenia.

Anti-Slavery campaigning
The issue of contemporary slavery has been at the forefront of Cox' activities, especially in Sudan. In 1997 she joined Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a group which had been formed in 1979 as the UK branch of Christian Solidarity International. Between 1997 and 2000, Christian Solidary Worldwide directly intervened to buy the freedom of slaves, and in a letter to The Independent on Sunday Cox claimed to have redeemed 2,281 slaves on eight visits to Sudan. In 1995 she won the William Wilberforce Award, named in honour of the former MP who led the fight to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire, for her humanitarian work generally.