People throw flowers on to hearse as it carries coffin through MP’s constituency of Batley and Spen

The people of Batley and Spen have turned out in their thousands to pay their respects to the MP Jo Cox, who was murdered outside an advice surgery last month.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jo Cox. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

As the hearse carrying Cox’s wicker coffin reached Heckmondwike, where Cox grew up in West Yorkshire, children from a primary school threw white roses at the car. The MP had visited Norristhorpe junior and infant school at the start of the year after hearing that its choir had performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London. “She said she wanted to hear them sing, so she came in for an assembly and they performed for her,” the year two teacher Kim Wharton said.

The choir sang at the memorial for Cox in Batley last month on what would have been her 42nd birthday, performing Love Shines A Light and Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Norristhorpe pupils throw white roses at the cortege. Photograph: John Giles/PA

On Friday, the children stood solemnly by the side of Westgate in their blue jumpers as the cortege passed. Some were only a few years older than Cox’s son, Cuillin, five. He and his sister, Lejla, three, were in the back seat of one of the funeral cars, with their father, Brendan, as they drove towards Batley for a private service.

Lejla waved at the crowd, as young children are taught to do: an innocent gesture which prompted tears among many of those lining the road.

Heckmondwike was silent as the cortege approached, with just the sound of a helicopter above. Yorkshire Bank staff stood outside the branch in their uniforms, while employees at Betfred stood at the window, unable to leave the bookmakers unattended. A lady from Fultons Food stood guard in her tabard outside the discount shop, head bowed as the cars passed.

Someone had attached a poster to lamp posts and traffic lights, with a drawing of Cox protected in a plastic wallet. “Today I pledge to #LoveLikeJo” read the message, alongside a quote from her maiden speech: “Far more unites us than divides us.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The poster fixed outside Cox’s office. Photograph: Nigel Roddis/EPA

On the morning of the funeral, Brendan Cox wrote about the mass killing in Nice, France, on Twitter.



Brendan Cox (@MrBrendanCox) Jo wld ask us not 2 fight hate with hate but draw together 2 drain the swamp that extremism breeds in.Thinking of all victims of hatred 2day

Many in the crowd had a personal story of meeting Cox.



Jason Yarrow, 48, a travelling salesman, had a photo on his phone of the MP meeting his six-year-old son, Will, at his Beaver group. “Will had got a bit upset because they took a group photo with Jo and there was a bigger boy in front of him, and he worried he wouldn’t be seen,” Yarrow recalled. “So Jo made a special effort to have another picture taken, just the two of them.” In the shot, Will and the MP are making tiger claws with their hands, with Cox sending the camera a mischievous grin.

Yarrow’s family live in Birstall, where Cox was shot and stabbed outside the library on 16 June. Thomas Mair, who has been charged with her murder, was arrested on their street.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People are reflected in the glass of the hearse in Batley. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Another constituent, Janet Hartley, recalled the MP knocking on her door before last year’s general election. “Other politicians get other people to do it but she came herself,” the 57-year-old carer said. “She took time to listen to you, even if you were telling her about quite personal, private things that had nothing to do with the government.”



Cox had visited Hartley’s grandchildren’s school the morning she was killed, she said, and her eight-year-old granddaughter had been left “devastated” by events.

A-level students Nawami Jasm and Natalie Burggy, both 17, said they had come from Leeds to pay their respects and brought sunflowers.



“I never met Jo but she seemed a happy person and sunflowers are happy flowers,” Jasm said.

Deanna Dove, 76, was holding a red and a white rose. “Red for love and white for Jo: a true Yorkshire rose,” she said. “We will never forget her. She was tough, like Yorkshire people are. Very, very strong. We will take her to our hearts for ever.”