General Election Campaign: Abuse and Intimidation

Debate between Jo Swinson and Patrick Grady

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.