‘NEVER BE SILENCED.’

Entrepreneur, campaigner and philanthropist Gina Miller has spent a lifetime fighting injustice. Despite discrimination, domestic violence and death threats, she will not be silenced. She tells us her powerful story.

ON HER CHILDHOOD: I grew up in British Guiana with four siblings, a parrot and a pet monkey. It was a childhood full of noise, colour and happiness. My father, who started as a petrol pump attendant and saved up enough money to educate himself to become Attorney General of our country, taught me about justice, caring for people and the power of story-telling. My mother, an eco-warrior before the term even existed, taught me never to waste anything or take things for granted.

I left Guyana when I was 11. My father was instrumental in starting an opposition party that spoke about people not power, that challenged our autocratic government. I didn’t know it at the time but my parents were worried about my brother and I being taken – targets of revenge – so we were sent to the UK to be safe.

Having grown up listening to BBC World Service and devouring books by Charles Dickens and the Brontës, I had an idealistic view of Britain and pictured green, rolling hills and welcoming people. However, on the journey from Heathrow Airport to my new school in Eastbourne, with my nose pressed up against the car window, everything seemed so grey, and everyone seemed so subdued and cold. My parents helped me to unpack my trunk and then left. That was the first time I felt truly sad and alone.

ON HER FIRST JOB: I was a curious child and loved school. I didn’t just learn things, I questioned almost everything. I must have driven my teachers mad asking “why, why, why?” When I was 14, Guyana introduced currency controls that prevented my parents from continuing to send funds for me and my brother. They had some money put aside in the UK and managed to buy us a flat in Eastbourne but, beyond that, we had to learn to survive and become independent. We hid it from our schools because we didn’t want to be taken into care.

I wanted to help my parents, to contribute, so I decided to get a summer job. I went to a local charity shop and bought a white blouse, a black and white skirt and my first pair of heels to make myself look older, then I tottered into The Grand Hotel in Eastbourne and asked if they had any jobs. To my great surprise, they offered me work as a chambermaid.

ON HER EARLY CAREER: My father taught me that the law meant justice, making people’s lives better, stabilising societies and righting wrongs. I never considered doing anything else. I studied law at the University of East London and was on track for a First but was violently sexually attacked a month before my finals. The mental and physical scars meant that I shut myself away for more than seven months and I could not bring myself to go back. The attackers didn’t just take away my dignity and my confidence, they took away my dreams and every sense of who I wanted to be. In the Britain of the late 80s, my mother was very concerned about how people would react if they knew about the sexual violence I had suffered. She thought they would blame me or think less of me, so she advised me to keep quiet and carry on as if nothing had happened.

“You’re a coloured woman. People won’t believe you. You will be judged,” she said. So I kept silent and pretended; I became a mannequin, a shadow of my former self, going through the motions but not really living or feeling. I only started to rebuild myself two years later when I was 24 and my daughter, Lucy-Ann, was born. The beautiful baby girl I was so excited to meet and hold was deprived of oxygen at birth and suffered brain damage, resulting in symptoms of autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia. I was advised to send her away to an institution but I just couldn’t do that. I had to fight to keep her; I had to become a lioness. That sense of determination drove me to start my own business. I did a degree in marketing and HR, before launching one of the country’s first specialist financial services marketing agencies.

‘My father taught me that the law meant justice, making people’s lives better, stabilising societies and righting wrongs.’

‘My father taught me that the law meant justice, making people’s lives better, stabilising societies and righting wrongs.’

‘My father taught me that the law meant justice, making people’s lives better, stabilising societies and righting wrongs.’

ON HER TOUGHEST MOMENT: I was told that if my agency was going to be taken seriously, I needed a man to front it. So I brought in a highly-respected financier from the City, who I ended up marrying some years later. That’s when everything changed. To the rest of the world, he was successful, intelligent, articulate. Behind closed doors, he was manipulative, gaslighting, and emotionally and physically abusive. His constant belittling broke me. Every day, I’d wake up with a sense of loneliness, dread and shame. I became numb to everything and everyone around me. It’s the most devastating torture you can go through.

One morning, my daughter said, “Mummy, why did Jon push you down the stairs last night?” Her bedroom was opposite ours, and not only had she heard everything, but through the crack in the door, she had seen everything. It was a huge wake-up call – I was not crazy; this was really happening. I packed up a little overnight case and we fled. We had nowhere to go so we slept in my car for three weeks.

ON CAMPAIGING: I use my sense of fairness and justice to do whatever I can to help. My legal training is invaluable as I tend to have a policy mindset, which ultimately can change people’s lives. I’ve campaigned across many issues over the past 30 years: responsible capitalism, transparency and governance in the financial and charity sectors (earning me the nickname of “the black widow spider” and a “wrecking ball”), modern-day slavery, special needs, domestic violence, political accountability, wills and online harm.

The internet has completely transformed our world and now dominates nearly every aspect of our lives yet the providers, who make billions, act with impunity. This must be rectified – regulation is no longer a “nice to have” but a necessity.

ON BREXIT: Brexit and my connected constitutional court actions catapulted me into the spotlight. Overnight I became an avatar of hate and was the target of the most vile and threatening abuse. One newspaper editor actually said to me, “It’s so easy to attack you because of the way you look and sound.” It was disgraceful. I’d walk into court looking calm and composed but, on the inside, I was terrified not just because of the death threats to me but to my children. The prevailing view was that, as a woman of colour, I couldn’t possibly be bright enough to be instigating these actions. I should be grateful to be here and I should either shut up or “go back home”.

ON HER STYLE: Clothes are often my armour. My “stepping up” outfit is a flared trouser suit and heels. Trouser suits are so comfortable, especially as I’m always dashing around, but they’re also an act of defiance. When I started out in business, people told me I should wear dresses to look “more feminine”.

ON STAYING SANE: When I need to switch off, I’ll sit on the sofa and do absolutely nothing for an hour or so. There is so much noise in our lives that we ignore that feeling in our gut, our instinctive inner voice. I try to reconnect with that and to refill my resilience tank. At the other end of the scale, I love dancing (often around the kitchen) to Latin music and jazz. My kids laugh to think of me at 80 still doing the same.