Mimi Harker OBE
I have been a local Councillor since 1999. I served as a Cabinet Member for 9 years, as Mayor of Amersham for two years. I was delighted to receive the OBE from Her Majesty, The Queen for my work and contribution to the Equalities Act 2010.
I am passionate about helping people, communities, and the voluntary sector, this passion has driven me to launch a number of campaigns and to raise over £2million for various causes, including a special education needs school, who needed money for their new media centre. One of my campaigns created the 12A film certification for the first Spiderman film; this gave parents more say on what their children could view at the cinema!
But my work does not stop there! Locally, loneliness and isolation are huge issues for the elderly, so I run Silver Sunday in Buckinghamshire. Internationally, I am a champion for CINI - Child in Need India, and a friend of the Duke of Edinburgh Scheme. I like to keep active, and am currently in my 22nd year as an elected Member. One of my fondest memories was running with the Olympic Torch in 2012 and working as a London Ambassador for the Olympics that summer.
Covid and Black Lives Matter created the perfect storm; this inspired me to create the Buckinghamshire Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Network in August 2020, the Bucks BAME Network, which has created a platform for our BAME communities to raise issues, debate policy affecting their specific communities, and to form partnerships to resolve those issues. It has given a hitherto unheard and ignored part of the community a voice.
In the 25 years since I’ve been in politics, the diversity profile of the party has changed enormously! I was the poster girl of the noughties as one of the very few Asian faces alongside Priti Patel MP, with aspiration to higher office. Some years later, when David Cameron was Party leader, we were joined by other prominent Asian women like Sayeeda Warsi, now a Baroness and Helen Grant MP, and there were more BAME women standing for local councils. I could see a real change taking place, although frankly, not enough of us were given the necessary patronage to be selected for safe seats and therefore, unable to give our skills and commitment to creating a better platform to encourage more talent from BAME women, a massive loss to the party!
It’s great to see more BAME representation on the Westminster benches, however, as a Party, we could do better! We have a wealth of talent, and more could be done to change the stereotypes which suggest that the Conservatives are becoming far more elitist!