Sir David Amess’ former aide Julie Cushion still finds her heart ‘missing a few beats’ when a member of the public asks to use the lavatory at weekly constituency surgeries. Two years ago, fanatical terrorist Ali Harbi Ali did just that before fatally stabbing the much-loved 69-year-old Conservative MP for Southend West.
Julie, who worked for Sir David for seven years, was there at Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea on that terrible October day in 2021.
She still remembers ‘an horrendous scream’, the paralysing shock and the ‘point at which I knew he’d gone’. But mostly, she racks her brain trying to think whether she ‘could have done anything differently’.
‘You keep thinking if I’d done A or B or C would it not have happened?’ says Julie, now constituency manager for Sir David’s successor, Anna Firth. ‘I don’t know. Probably not, but you keep thinking of all these things. What if I hadn’t done this or that? What if I hadn’t shown him [Ali] to the toilet?
‘I’m absolutely convinced that was when he prepared himself for what he was going to do. So now, I still get…’ She takes a deep breath.
Julie Cushion and Sir David Amess outside No 10 Downing St. She worked for the MP for seven years
Sir David Amess’s aide Julie Cushion shares what happened on the tragic day he was brutally murdered in 2021 in her first interview since
This is the first time Julie has spoken publicly about that day. She refuses to refer to the monstrous Ali by name. He is ‘horrible’, ‘evil’. Sir David was, she says, a ‘wonderful friend’ and a man ‘who got things done’.
A rare breed of politician, who put the wellbeing of his constituents above personal ambition, he worked all hours championing causes ‘he felt to be right’.
At the time of his murder, he was campaigning to raise funds for the Dame Vera Lynn Memorial Statue appeal.
He believed the Forces’ Sweetheart, who died at the age of 103, little more than a year before Sir David, should be remembered because she ‘put her life at total risk for her boys, as she called them, going into territories like Burma because she felt she had to be there. She had to raise their morale’.
‘David felt building a memorial to her — and others who put service to others first — was the right thing to do and he was determined to see it done,’ says Julie.
He launched the appeal four months before Ali booked an appointment to attend his constituency surgery. As a tribute to the MP, Sir David will now feature on the Dame Vera Lynn statue, which will commemorate not only her, but all artists who perform for the Armed Forces during times of conflict.
Julie is chair of the committee campaigning to raise funds for the bronze, designed and created by renowned sculptor Paul Day, which will be installed in the National Memorial Arboretum, Staffordshire. It features a 10ft diameter bronze disc with Dame Vera at its centre, surrounded by entertainers performing for the Armed Services.
Last month, Dame Vera’s daughter Virginia asked Mail readers to support the appeal in a moving interview. Readers of the Mail and Mail Online have shown immense generosity, giving many tens of thousands of pounds to help the appeal reach its £1.5 million target.
The Mail is continuing to support the push to ensure that Dame Vera — who in 2000 was named the Briton who best exemplified the spirit of the 20th century — will always be remembered. And that the ‘passionate’ wish of Sir David, whose life was so cruelly taken as he served the public, will be realised.
Two years ago, fanatical terrorist Ali Harbi Ali fatally stabbed the much-loved 69-year-old Conservative MP for Southend West
Sir David, who was born in East London like Dame Vera, entered politics to ‘make a difference’ and according to those who knew him, ‘went out of his way to help anybody’. Like Dame Vera, he tried to uphold the values of duty and decency that seem to be disappearing with Dame Vera’s generation.
‘He didn’t particularly like the way politics had become,’ says Julie. ‘He said if politics were like it is now when he first became an MP, he wouldn’t have stood. He didn’t like the nastiness, the point-scoring.
‘In the old days, MPs worked much more together across all parties to try and accomplish things. Now we’re getting very ambitious politicians who seem to be out for their own ends and achieving their own goals.’
Sir David, who was married to Lady Julia Amess, with whom he had five grown-up children, became an MP for Basildon at the 1983 general election. Following boundary changes, he held the seat for Southend West where he campaigned tirelessly for his seaside town to be made a city, something that was enacted after his death.
While Sir David had always hoped to become the Father of the House — a position held by the MP with the longest unbroken service in the Commons — his former aide says: ‘His passion was much more to do with the constituency than it was with Parliament. During Covid, most MPs stopped doing constituency surgeries, but he kept them going doing them virtually.
Emergency services at the scene near the Belfairs Methodist Church in Eastwood Road North, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, where Conservative MP Sir David Amess was killed
‘The moment he was able to, he set up precautions so people could come to see him. He was absolutely determined that people would be able to contact him during that period if it was safe to do so. That just shows the kind of MP he was.
‘Anybody could walk in to see him. They would have to be prepared to wait because it could take a while depending upon how many were there. He was determined to see as many as he could.’
The day of his murder was, Julie says, ‘very normal’. It’s this, you sense, that she still finds hard to compute.
A constituent had left Sir David —an animal lover who kept birds in his office in Westminster — a knitted bird in a cage as a present.
‘We were talking about the effort the constituent had gone to, to do that for him,’ says Julie.
‘Another constituent had just got a new car. They’d driven [to the church] to show it to him. He’d literally taken a drive in it for about five minutes and then come back and carried on his surgery.’
Ali, the son of an ex-Somali government official, who, it emerged, had been plotting to attack an MP for years and researched a number of potential high-profile targets including Michael Gove, Dominic Raab and Sir Keir Starmer, had emailed Sir David’s office the month before, asking for a meeting.
He said he was moving to the MP’s constituency and an appointment was arranged for October 15.
‘I was in the room outside [Sir David’s],’ says Julie. ‘I check the constituents in. Have a chat. Make sure we’ve got all the contact details we need. He [Ali] seemed a perfectly nice person.
‘He said he’d moved to the area and wanted to know about the healthcare in the area and getting involved in local churches. He didn’t seem nervous. He wasn’t twitchy or anything just perfectly normal. He asked to use the toilet. I showed him where it was.’
The first Julie knew something that day was not ‘perfectly normal’ was an ‘horrendous scream’.
‘There was a colleague in with David taking notes. It was her screaming. My initial thought was something, a piece of furniture or something, had collapsed in the room. The next thing I know she’s running out saying, ‘He’s stabbing David’. She said he was frantically screaming about the Middle East and Iraq — all that kind of thing.
‘I grabbed the phone and just couldn’t think. I remember her saying, ‘Dial 999’. I just froze. I was staring at the phone thinking, ‘What am I doing with this?’ Just for a moment and then, obviously, I made the call.
Julie Cushion with a model elephant made in memory of Sir David Amess
‘It was just so surreal. Unbelievable. Nothing you’d ever, ever imagine happening. I mean with Jo Cox [The MP for Batley and Spen fatally shot and stabbed outside a library in Birstall, West Yorkshire, where she was about to hold a constituency surgery], it was out in the street, but this was somebody who had pre-arranged an appointment and boldly came in to see Sir David knowing that that’s what they were going to do.
‘I still can’t get my head around it. How can you do that? It’s just unbelievable.’
After calling the emergency services, Julie was told to stay on the line.
‘I remember screaming down the phone saying, ‘where are you? You need to come now.’ I just remember getting in such an anxious state because it didn’t seem quick enough.
‘The people who were due to see David at the next appointment turned up. We had to keep them outside the building, but I remember this chap boldly said, ‘I’m going to go in. Just let me see if I can do anything.’
‘Bless him, very courageously he went in but he said there was nothing he could do. He [Ali] was still holding the weapon in his hand.’
When police arrived they restrained Ali.
‘We had to stay outside the building because it was a crime scene,’ says Julie. ‘The ambulance crew were running backwards and forwards with equipment. I knew the moment they slowed down it was because it had gone beyond the stage of them being able to do something and then the yellow [police] tape went up. That’s when I knew he’d gone.’
Ali, 26, was found guilty of murder and of preparing acts of terrorism and given a whole life jail sentence in April 2022.
Julie, determined, like her old boss, ‘to do the right thing’, agreed to continue as constituency manager when Anna Firth, an ex-barrister hugely supportive of the Dame Vera appeal, was elected to Sir David’s seat in February 2022.
She remains close to Sir David’s widow Lady Amess who is still devastated by her husband’s death but supports her determination to see the memorial that mattered so much to him completed.
‘We have to carry on and do what David would have wished, but I have my moments,’ says Julie.
‘Doing surgery is still difficult, but I knew if I didn’t do the first one after his death, I wouldn’t be able to do it again. I was determined to carry on. I have to keep in mind that was one horrible, evil individual. We can’t let these people win.
‘That’s why this memorial is important. It was instigated by David to recognise Dame Vera’s amazing service to her boys and our country.
‘It was very important to him which is why it’s very important to me and to Lady Julia because she knew it was something he wanted to see happen.
‘Dame Vera cared about making a difference, as did David.’
It is for the rest of us to care, too.