General Election Campaign: Abuse and Intimidation

Debate between Jim McMahon and Lord Swire

Thursday 14th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

First, let me congratulate the Members who brought this debate to the House. I was keen to take part, because I bring a specific perspective, having been a councillor for 13 years before arriving here and being a parliamentarian. I came in in a by-election, when Parliament was in a quite interesting place. We were obviously going through the referendum period, and I think that had a particular impact on how strongly people felt about voicing their concerns about politics.

We probably ought to be a bit careful not to present Parliament as a house of innocents who are somehow misunderstood by the public and who therefore get unfair criticism. Part of our democracy is that people can make contact and hold us to account, and sometimes that is robust. I would also say that I have heard the same things in this building that I have heard outside.

However, there is a line, and I cannot understand why it seems to be blurred in the eyes of organisations such as Facebook and Twitter. If people are inciting violence and racial hatred, or if they are being overtly sexist and calling for women to be raped, I cannot understand how anybody reviewing their posts would believe that they met the standard of fair and open speech. We need to be careful not to say that politics is the way it is and that it is uncomfortable at times, and not to allow that somehow to blur into something that is firmly over the line and that ought to be taken on by the organisations that are making a lot of money from these activities.

When they were established, Facebook and Twitter were meant to be, yes, social media but also publishing platforms. They were meant to be a way for everyday people to publish their views and thoughts, to interact and to share their ideas. It is fair to say that more often than not Facebook and Twitter are not publishing platforms—they are mind dumps where people just put stuff, and I am not entirely sure that they always think twice about what they put. Although I have experienced abuse, and perhaps I am slightly thin-skinned about some of it, it is in no way comparable to the level, in volume and tone, experienced by female Members of this place, and particularly BAME Members. There is a noticeable increase in the volume and tone of the vitriol that comes with that. We need to be honest about this, because if we are not honest about the problem, we cannot hope to find a solution.

When I was a local councillor, I had some interesting experiences that I want to relay, because they put into perspective how the public stray over the line, and how, as a politician, it can be difficult to navigate that situation and to know what is the best thing to do. Are we being too thin-skinned and there is a degree of challenge that we ought to accept, or should we be robust in defending our position all the time, because that is the way to clamp down on it? I do not think there is a book that tells us how to do this; if there is, I would like to see it. It is about judgment. I am very risk-averse with regard to challenging constituents in return. I am not comfortable with doing that. If a constituent is making threats of violence, I would expect the publishing platform to take action against that. If a constituent is setting up fake profiles in my name purporting to be me, I expect Twitter or Facebook to take action, not to ignore it and turn a blind eye.

Even worse in terms of trying to navigate the situation is the fact that when we send an email or press a button to report a racist or sexist tweet, or a tweet that is threatening violence, quite often we do not even get a response. We get absolutely no feedback unless we are the named victim. If somebody is saying, “Let’s rape all Labour women MPs”, who is the victim there? I report it because I have seen it, but I have no idea what action has been taken about it by Twitter in order to make a judgment on that.

Quite often in public life, we become the place where people lay their grievances. It is not fair. We have not done anything personally to deserve it, but we are in positions of power and authority, and people want to lay responsibility at the door of power and authority. As council leader I had a number of issues—in particular, a website that was designed to do nothing more than attack and try to damage people’s characters and reputations. It was very difficult to know what to do about some of that.

On the police response—I am being honest about this; I am a defender of the police force—I think that it goes deeper than resources and that there is a cultural problem. There is a view that says, “”Well, that’s politics, isn’t it?” and people do not quite understand that there is a line of acceptable behaviour that crosses private and public life. Abuse is no more acceptable just because someone is a politician. At times, the police think it is something over there that is not for them to get involved in. I have seen candidates being followed and intimidated. I personally could not go to my local shopping precinct with my children on a Saturday without being harassed and abused by a political opponent. The police advice at that time was “Find somewhere else to shop.” There is a deeper cultural problem with regard to some of these issues.

Because we publish our addresses as local authority members, we have been the victims of direct action at our house. We had somebody who was clinically diagnosed as mentally ill waiting outside my son’s school and waiting outside the house—somebody who had made threats to take my children. I think people sometimes do not understand that behind the politician—the face, and the person on the ballot paper—is a network of family and friends, and that we have a personal relationship with our family and friends and a duty of care to them. Because I am fearful about the impact on them, I am always very protective of my family and careful of what I say about some of the things I see and hear. I should say that on the most serious occasion, the police and the council were very good.

To put my personal experience into perspective, the most shocking thing that I have come across was the experience of an Asian woman councillor in Oldham. She dared to be in her 30s and not married, and her political opponents used that against her in an election campaign. She was campaigned against by the opposition but also, I have to say, by some registered members of the Labour party, even though she was a Labour candidate. The police, the authorities and political parties have a responsibility to set the bar high and to make sure that complaints are dealt with quickly in a way that is fair on the victims and fair on those who have been complained about. Allowing complaints to drag out for years on end is to nobody’s benefit.

The candidate I have just mentioned lost her seat as a result of that direct targeting. The worst part of the campaign against her were the people who came down the street outside the polling station in cars and shouted through megaphones, “It’s time to vote for a real man.” If her opponents believed that the candidate was weak and easily intimidated, they massively underestimated the person they were up against. She is one of the strongest people I know in politics. That situation still has not been resolved, and the people responsible have still not been held to account. I found that example the most shocking.

We need to look, in our politics—in this place as well as outside it—at the tone of our debates and what we say to each other, because people take their cue from that to some extent. Equally, we should be absolutely clear that there is a line that is continually crossed, and that the response from organisations such as, but not limited to, Twitter and Facebook is unacceptable on too many occasions.

Finally, I have heard a few times the comment, “People are different on social media, aren’t they? If you met them walking down the street, they would not dare to act in the way they act online.” I do not believe that for a second. I think that what we get on social media, from someone who is at their keyboard in their bedroom, is the real person. We see them without the veneer that they maintain outside because they are worried about being seen for who they are.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. Does he not agree that a lot of these people are intrinsically cowardly and that they would not do to our faces what they think they can get away with when they are sitting in their little attic room typing out abuse in the middle of the night, knowing that we do not know who they are?

[Jim McMahon]

I am not sure that I would take entirely what the right hon. Gentleman says, because there is a danger, if we follow that train of thought, of assuming that the person who is committing that kind of abuse cannot be dangerous. My concern is that people who continually harass and obsess about public figures do have the capacity to take it further—we have seen that, of course, with the loss of one of our friends from this place—so I would be careful not to jump to that conclusion. But the right hon. Gentleman is right to say that, at heart, those people are cowards.

Some of my colleagues have gone through abuse at a level that I cannot comprehend. Regardless of colleagues’ political beliefs, regardless of how they have voted in this place and regardless of what they have said in the printed media, they have my absolute support and back-up. Whatever the House of Commons needs to do to tackle this, I guarantee my support for it.