General Election Campaign: Abuse and Intimidation

Jo Swinson Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady]

Yes, absolutely. We might even say that what is happening online is being replicated in some offline publications, or perhaps vice versa. The whole thing has to be toned down. As politicians, we have a role to play.

The sad reality is that the President of the United States won his election after a campaign built on playing to the worst side of people, playing up to Islamophobia, insulting the nation’s ethnic minorities and making totally unacceptable misogynistic comments, starting with but not limited to his opponent, the first woman ever to stand for President on a major-party ticket. Our first duty has to be to set an example for others, and that challenge is undoubtedly all the harder when the man supposed to be at the pinnacle of western democracy is acting as if he is at the nadir.

We have our own particular experiences in Scotland. In the 20 years since the devolution referendum, many of us have prided ourselves on being ahead of the curve, in terms of what the Scottish Parliament has achieved. It was a new Parliament with family-friendly hours, procedures far less impenetrable than we have in this place, innovations—at the time anyway—such as the public petitions committee, and of course election by proportional representation. All that helped to reinvigorate democracy and take it back to the people. The Scottish independence referendum, too, was an incredible exercise in popular political engagement. There were packed meeting halls, outdoor rallies and, yes, online debate. Some of that has been seen all over the world in recent years, and perhaps Scotland was part of it and helped to catalyse and inspire engagement elsewhere.

We have to accept, however, that there has been a downside. There has been abuse and harassment—particularly, but not limited to, online—of spokespeople, party leaders and high-profile campaigners. Many of the campaigners in the independence referendum were not traditional politicians, but were becoming politically active for the first time, and some of them have ended up Members of this House—and as of June, not all of them are on the SNP Benches. Many of them found the abuse and intimidation hurtful and difficult to deal with. Those who made it here are the ones who persevered, but undoubtedly many other campaigners did not, and that is a loss to our democracy.

While the debate that precedes a referendum is to a certain extent generalised, the debate that takes place during an election campaign focuses much more on individuals, leaders and candidates. It involves a level of personalisation, which means that policies and issues are sometimes obscured by the people and the personalities involved. It is a case of playing the man and not the ball, as the saying goes, although, of course, it is far too often a case of playing the woman and not the ball. The evidence we have heard so far today makes that very clear. During the general election campaign, I noticed snarky anonymous comments about me online, based largely on my political affiliation but occasionally on my lack of hair follicles, but that was nothing by comparison with what female candidates have had to go through; some have not been anywhere near as fortunate as me.

I pay particular tribute to my former colleague Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, who was my predecessor as the SNP board member of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. She is a significant loss to the House, although I have no doubt that we shall see her again in some shape or form. Amnesty International produced a briefing for the debate containing testimonies that are incredibly powerful; I recommend it to all Members and, indeed, anyone who is watching the debate. In a contribution to that briefing, Tasmina spoke of her experiences. She said:

“When I was elected in 2015 and even during my election campaign, I found myself at the other end of horrific levels of abuse. And the question is: why might that be? Is everyone receiving the same levels of abuse? Is it women? Is it because I’m Black Asian Minority Ethnic?”

She cited examples of people tweeting her home address and postcode—we heard about home addresses earlier—which led to the police having to patrol outside her house. She was advised to set up a safe room in her house. Surely all our houses should be safe from abuse and intimidation.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

I echo the hon. Gentleman’s comments about Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, what she did about this issue, and the horrific abuse that she had to put up with. I have experienced it myself, as a candidate and as a woman in the House of Commons. I also vividly recall going on television at the time of the EU referendum and disagreeing with Nigel Farage’s comments about whether voting for Brexit would mean women were more likely to be raped. Suddenly, on my Twitter timeline, I gained a horrifying insight into the Islamophobic abuse that other people receive. I sometimes thank my lucky stars that I receive the misogyny but am generally spared the racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism that I know other Members have to deal with. Is not part of the difficulty the fact that abuse is so often targeted and therefore invisible to the groups who are not receiving it?

[Patrick Grady]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. That is why it is important to call out abuse in such circumstances, and to have debates of this kind. I congratulate the Government again on making available the time for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

I thank the hon. Lady for her thoughtful intervention. The Front Benchers made the views of the two main parties clear, and I am sure that the Scottish National party agrees that the intimidation of councillors on any level absolutely cannot be right. I agree with what she says. One problem in rural areas—possibly not so much in urban ones—is that a lot of the people who want to stand for local councils are retired. I think that that puts an added pressure on women in rural areas. I am desperately trying to think of the breakdown of my two district councils, but I suspect that we are under-represented. She is absolutely right that her very good point needs to be considered in this debate, and the Front Benchers have done us proud in that regard. I am sure that the Minister who winds up for the Government will also deal with this point clearly. I would, however, like to continue to talk about rotten boroughs, because this is quite exciting.

The rotten borough that I have been talking about is already packed with new estates and urban extensions, with many more to follow. Most of them are pushed through with reckless disregard for local people. Let us take as an example the plans for a lovely area called Staplegrove, a comfortable, leafy corner of the rotten borough that is soon to be bulldozed to make way for 1,700 brand new brick boxes. The residents are rightly furious, and I am not surprised—that is the way it is. When the planning committee meets next week, it will hear directly from the developers, but anyone with an objection will be locked out. That is intimidation. As Mr Spock would probably have said, “It’s democracy, Jim, but not as we know it!”

Left to his own devices, the leader—let us call him Mr Rotten—would much prefer to concrete over most of the wide-open spaces and watch his pals get rich quick. Come to think of it, his own building firm seems to be thriving. I have alarming evidence of highly profitable land deals and the relaxation of planning rules—shoddy! Some senior officials were so concerned about the leader’s direct involvement in one application that they took legal advice to cover their own backs. I have said it before and I will say it again: this is a rotten borough.

The council has secretly squirrelled away large sums of money from the housing revenue account, which is meant to be ring-fenced for vital maintenance, in order to buy new computer equipment. That is immoral and, I suspect, illegal. It has been reported to the fraud squad by one of its own for miscalculating council tax. It is squandering £11 million to do up its HQ, and I am sure that Mr Summerfield and Mr Haldon, the tame stool pigeons, are getting excited. I wonder where the sub-contracts will go—a local building company, no doubt. It is a mad, vain project, with money meant for the electorate that the town, district and county councils should be looking after going down the drain. The building will never be worth more than what has been spent to tart it up. It is the action of a council that has totally lost the plot.

I fear that there is worse to come. The plan to annex West Somerset Council should have been properly placed before the people—35,000 people. All they actually got was a cheapskate online survey organised by the rotten borough. People saw it for what it was: a pathetic excuse for a public consultation. Most of those who took part disagreed with the idea anyway, but the subtle game of intimidation never mentioned that fact. When the rotten borough presented the survey to Ministers, it did not even bother to break it down. Instead, endless pages of raw material without any explanation at all were submitted. It is no wonder that the civil servants did not read it; it was deliberately designed to mislead the Government.

Last week, “Johnny Rotten’s” chief executive—let us call her Cruella de Vil—gave an extraordinary interview to a specialist local government magazine called The Municipal Journal, a good publication that many here will know about. She said that she was trying to turn the screw on the Secretary of State—I am sure that he is frightfully excited—and threatened that if the rotten borough did not get the green light to take over West Somerset, she would sail away and let my district council drown. Intimidation! What is going on here?

[Jo Swinson]

I am not entirely sure of the ins and outs of the particular issue with the district council or, indeed, its relevance to this debate, but does the hon. Gentleman think it appropriate to use the “Cruella de Vil” reference about a female civil servant in a debate about the intimidation of candidates?

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

I thank the hon. Lady. I realise that she does not understand the issue, but if she appreciated the civil servant involved, she would probably join me. We have a major problem in our area.

There is no way that West Somerset is doomed—that is a complete and utter lie—and it is a disgrace that a jumped-up chief executive should ever use blackmail. I have seen the intimidation from the rotten borough of Taunton in action. If one reads the County Gazette, the extremely good local Taunton paper, one will see that it is certainly not just me speaking. The good people of un-precepted Taunton are being lead over a cliff, and that must be stopped before the intimidation gets worse.