Abbott’s son is charged with police assault
Diane Abbott gave her son a private education
THE son of Labour shadow home secretary Diane Abbott has appeared in court charged with assaulting two police officers in Whitehall.
James Abbott-Thompson, 28, is accused of “beating” the two constables at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Cambridge-educated Abbott-Thompson is further charged with a offence under the Public Order Act.
It is alleged he used threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour during the incident on Friday afternoon.
Abbott-Thompson, of Tottenham, north London, made a brief appearance at Westminster Magistrates Court on Monday.
He was released on bail and will next appear at City of London
Magistrates Court in February.
AbbottThompson is
Ms Abbott’s son from her brief marriage to
Ghanaian architect
David Thompson.
He received a private education in London and Ghana, before studying law at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Abbott-Thompson worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) for four years and eight months including a twoyear stint at the British Embassy in Rome.
He left the FCO in June this year and now works for a data protection consultancy with offices in London and Dublin.
Quizzed about sending her son to a private school after slamming colleagues for doing the same, Ms Abbott said the decision was “indefensible”.
She said: “I’d done a lot of work on how black boys underachieve in secondary schools so I knew what a serious problem it was. I knew what could happen to my son if he was sent to the wrong school and got in with the wrong crowd.
“Once a black boy is lost to the world of gangs it’s very hard to get them back.”
Her son contacted a phone-in programme on LBC to say that his mother was following his own wishes.
“She’s not a hypocrite, she just put what I wanted first instead of what people thought,” he told the radio station.
‘Black boys underachieve at secondary schools’