Monday, July 15, 2024
Dark Underbelly
I was on a plane coming back from New York when a gunman tried to take out Donald Trump, so it was a shock when I switched my phone back on and saw the news.
It is not as if American politics is a stranger to violence. As one blogger wrote shorty afterwards, they have experienced one founding father killing another in a duel, four U.S. presidents were assassinated while in office; another 13 were the targets of unsuccessful plots.
In the past few years alone Gabby Giffords, Steve Scalise, and Paul Pelosi were the targets of politically-motivated attacks. Three years ago Vice President Mike Pence and the entire U.S. Congress were the target of a violent mob assault on the U.S. Capitol. There were 656 mass shootings in the United States in 2023 and another 261 in the first half of 2024.
However, this is not an entirely American phenomenon. The Independent reports that the government’s adviser on political violence has called on the home secretary to investigate a “dark underbelly” of abuse and intimidation of candidates during the general election:
John Woodcock, a former Labour MP, who now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Walney, also suggested there could have been a “concerted campaign by extremists”.
He has urged Yvette Cooper to commission an inquiry.
His call comes just days after the Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle said: “If there is something that keeps me awake at night, it is the safety of MPs.”
Two MPs have been murdered in the UK in the last eight years. The security of MPs was tightened after David Amess was stabbed more than 20 times during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex on 15 October 2021.
Ali Harbi Ali was later convicted of his murder. At the trial it emerged that he had also planned attacks on other MPs, including cabinet minister Michael Gove, who he believed posed “a harm to Muslims”.
Amess’s murder was the second in recent years, after Jo Cox was killed in her constituency in 2016.
A number of MPs had to have police protection because of the threats they received during this election campaign.
Labour MPs Jess Phillips and Shabana Mahmood have highlighted the intimidation and threats they suffered, which they described as an “assault on democracy”.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage had a milkshake and other objects thrown at him while he was on the campaign trail.
And Reform UK’s candidate for Truro and Falmouth, Steve Rubidge, suffered severe injuries during an alleged assault.
In a letter reported by the BBC, Lord Walney said evidence pointed to a “concerted campaign by extremists to create a hostile atmosphere for MPs within their constituencies to compel them to cave in to political demands”.
He wrote: “The conduct of the election campaign in many communities has underlined the gravity of the threat to our democracy”.
Lord Walney added: “I am increasingly concerned about the scale of intimidation against candidates in the general election.
“I believe there is now a need for a focused piece of work on the scale and drivers of this intimidation so that it cannot continue to mar our democratic processes and put candidates at risk.”
Politics certainly arouses passions in people, but there is no excuse for it degenerating into violence. The future of democracy is at stake.
In the past few years alone Gabby Giffords, Steve Scalise, and Paul Pelosi were the targets of politically-motivated attacks. Three years ago Vice President Mike Pence and the entire U.S. Congress were the target of a violent mob assault on the U.S. Capitol. There were 656 mass shootings in the United States in 2023 and another 261 in the first half of 2024.
However, this is not an entirely American phenomenon. The Independent reports that the government’s adviser on political violence has called on the home secretary to investigate a “dark underbelly” of abuse and intimidation of candidates during the general election:
John Woodcock, a former Labour MP, who now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Walney, also suggested there could have been a “concerted campaign by extremists”.
He has urged Yvette Cooper to commission an inquiry.
His call comes just days after the Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle said: “If there is something that keeps me awake at night, it is the safety of MPs.”
Two MPs have been murdered in the UK in the last eight years. The security of MPs was tightened after David Amess was stabbed more than 20 times during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex on 15 October 2021.
Ali Harbi Ali was later convicted of his murder. At the trial it emerged that he had also planned attacks on other MPs, including cabinet minister Michael Gove, who he believed posed “a harm to Muslims”.
Amess’s murder was the second in recent years, after Jo Cox was killed in her constituency in 2016.
A number of MPs had to have police protection because of the threats they received during this election campaign.
Labour MPs Jess Phillips and Shabana Mahmood have highlighted the intimidation and threats they suffered, which they described as an “assault on democracy”.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage had a milkshake and other objects thrown at him while he was on the campaign trail.
And Reform UK’s candidate for Truro and Falmouth, Steve Rubidge, suffered severe injuries during an alleged assault.
In a letter reported by the BBC, Lord Walney said evidence pointed to a “concerted campaign by extremists to create a hostile atmosphere for MPs within their constituencies to compel them to cave in to political demands”.
He wrote: “The conduct of the election campaign in many communities has underlined the gravity of the threat to our democracy”.
Lord Walney added: “I am increasingly concerned about the scale of intimidation against candidates in the general election.
“I believe there is now a need for a focused piece of work on the scale and drivers of this intimidation so that it cannot continue to mar our democratic processes and put candidates at risk.”
Politics certainly arouses passions in people, but there is no excuse for it degenerating into violence. The future of democracy is at stake.
