The brutal killing of Ann Widdecombe earlier this year has given us all cause to pause about the state of our politics. We do not yet know why she was killed, and it would be wrong to speculate. But Britain already knows where political violence can lead: Jo Cox. David Amess. Still others whose plots were mercifully foiled by the police.
In a previous era of political murder and intimidation, Margaret Thatcher said after the Brighton bombing:
“We must never never never be stopped; never be stopped from going among the people by a few men of violence, because that is what they want, and if they stop us democracy would not be able to continue.”
As Caron Lindsay pointed out on this site two years ago, political violence is nothing new. Yet today the danger is not merely that violence happens. It is that we are starting to accept it.
The rot starts with smaller acts. Intimidation becomes ordinary; violence becomes accepted, even mocked. What was forbidden becomes normal.
My withdrawal from restanding as Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Kettering in 2024 was never just about the treatment of my stammer. It was about intimidation, threats and the fear that the next angry encounter might not remain verbal. A fear that too many candidates and councillors have come to expect.
Nine years ago, during a council by-election in Barton Seagrave, a man squared up to me on the doorstep, so angry that his own wife had to hold him back. The cause? My opposition to a Parish Council tax rise to fund a village hall.
Seven years ago, during the 2019 General Election, I was called a “traitor” online and at least one local man fantasised about hanging me from a lamppost. I stopped feeling safe alone in my own hometown. I went to the count in a Christmas jumper, but did my Christmas shopping elsewhere.
Five years ago, while delivering leaflets during the local elections, a man recognised me and chased me down the street. I ran and hid. By then there were places I would not canvass alone, fearing verbal abuse might become physical — as later happened to our own Kevin Lang.
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