“WE are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us,” the late Jo Cox said in her maiden speech in the House of Commons in 2015. These words were spoken just over a year before the MP – an social justice activist, humanitarian and mother-of-two – was, at just 41 years old, senselessly and shockingly stabbed and shot to death by a Nazi extremist outside her Batley and Spen surgery office in Yorkshire in the run up to the referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.

Those words she gave in her maiden speech are words that have haunted Britain over the past six months. They are also, now, the MP’s most famous quote, known to many of us for the saddest of reasons: because, when Cox was cruelly assassinated on June 16 of last year, they became so resonant. Partly, when we see these words we are reminded of how divided Britain became in 2016. Yet also, we can see in them the mantra that we need to hold onto in these times: unity.

The fact that a woman who so boldly stood for tolerance and compassion was the target of a political assassination was probably the most unfathomable and disturbing event of the British political year. It’s hard to watch tribute footage of Cox and not feel utter disbelief and bafflement that such an espouser of inclusive politics could be the focus of such violence.

The murder of almost any politician would be tragic, but what was particularly shocking, and appeared to say a great deal about the moment we had come to, was that she was a figure who stood for commonality, standing up for the dispossessed and working together across divides. This was the outlook that informed the tireless campaigning for a Remain vote that ultimately made her a target. It was as if decency itself was targeted for murder.

As MP Stephen Kinnock, who shared an office with her, put it: “Jo gave a voice to the voiceless, she exemplified the best of our country, and put her convictions to work for everyone she touched. Jo worked tirelessly across party lines because she understood that in our complex and interdependent world, compromise is a sign of strength not weakness.”

The trial of her killer, a racist and terrorist who cried “Britain First” as he murdered her, brought to us the horrific details of her death. But it was what gritty, determined Cox did in life which makes her our Person of the Year. We have come to know a great deal about her, which we might not otherwise have learned — and for the saddest of reasons. Through obituaries and tributes we learned that she was a feminist, chair for four years of the Labour Women’s Network, and an energetic campaigner who had worked as head of policy and advocacy for Oxfam. Even some of her holidays, with husband, Brendan Cox, had been spent working with children in Bosnia and Croatia. Her passing left behind a three-year-old daughter, Lejla, named after an inspirational Bosnian nurse, and five-year-old son, called Cuillin after the Skye mountains she and her husband loved to climb in.

We learned that she grew up in her constituency, in Batley and Heckmondwicke, where her mother was a school secretary, and her father worked in a toothpaste factory. Through her husband’s speech at the end of the trial of her killer, we became privy to the fact that, as a child, she was “painfully shy - so much so that she couldn’t even call rail inquiries to find out train times and used to ask her sister to do it for her” and that, later, as a student at Cambridge University, she was politicised by the realisation “that who you were and what accent you had often defined your life chances”.

For Jo, Brendan Cox has said, it was key that she stood as MP in her hometown. She was, he said, “connected deeply to her community and proud of her country, but interested in the world.” In her maiden speech she had spoken of how immigration had “deeply enhanced” this area of Yorkshire.

What emerged was a portrait of a woman who followed her own sense of what was right, and was not afraid to criticise her party. She was willing to work with members of other parties where goals were shared – on causes which included Syria, autism and the loneliness of the old. Among the most poignant comments made by Brendan Cox was this: “When Jo became an MP she committed to using her time well. She decided early on that she would work as if she only had a limited time and would always do what she thought was right, even if it made her unpopular.”

In the months since her death there have been a great many tributes, including the cover single of The Rolling Stones Can’t Always Get What You Want. Much of her work is being continued – for instance the anti-loneliness project she was developing in Yorkshire. The Jo Cox Foundation has been set up to advance the values she fought for. Her husband, Brendan Cox, delivered Channel 4’s Alternative Christmas Message, calling for us to “reach out to somebody that might disagree with us”.

A month earlier, he had described her assassination thus: “An act driven by hatred which instead has created an outpouring of love. An act designed to drive communities apart, which has instead pulled them together. An act designed to silence a voice which instead has allowed millions of others to hear it.”

The memory of Jo Cox represents a kind of glue, something to bind us when there seems so much division, a reminder that, as we go into 2017, in a world depleted by her loss, we should be seekers of what we have in common, not what drives us apart.