Diane Abbott suffers most abuse of all female MPs, ethics watchdog finds
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott. Photograph: UK Parliament/3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
Hackney’s Diane Abbott receives more abuse than any other female MP, an investigation by parliament’s ethics watchdog has found.
The Committee for Standards in Public Life yesterday published a comprehensive review of intimidation suffered by parliamentary candidates during the 2017 General Election.
The report calls on the government to introduce an offence for intimidation under electoral law, and to make social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google liable for illegal content.
Abbott, who has served as MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington for three decades and is now Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, is mentioned ten times.
In July this year, she told fellow MPs: “Thirty years ago, when I first became an MP, if someone wanted to attack an MP, they had to write a letter – usually in green ink – put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and walk to the post box.
“Now, they press a button and we read vile abuse that, 30 years ago, people would have been frightened even to write down.”
The Committee interviewed staff at Abbott’s office, one of whom said: “The first thing we do in the morning is to block and delete online abuse, usually whilst having breakfast.
“Porridge with one hand, deleting abuse with the other.”
Committee chair Lord Paul Bew said: “The increasing prevalence of intimidation of parliamentary candidates, and others in public life, should concern everyone who cares about our democracy.
“This is not about defending elites from justified criticism or preventing the public from scrutinising those who represent them: it is about defending the fundamental structures of political freedom.
Lord Bew said a “significant proportion” of 2017 general election candidates suffered some form of abuse, adding: “There has been persistent, vile and shocking abuse, threatened violence including sexual violence, and damage to property.
“It is clear that much of this behaviour is targeted at certain groups. The widespread use of social media platforms is the most significant factor driving the behaviour we are seeing.”
The committee interviewed 11 MPs and former parliamentary candidates, and other individuals including BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg and Brendan Cox, the widower of murdered MP Jo Cox.
Lord Bew said: “Many of the recommendations we are making are not limited solely to election periods but will have wider relevance across our public life.”
Diane Abbott divided opinion in September when she repeated some of the racist abuse she’d received on live TV.
It followed a study by human rights charity Amnesty International which revealed that almost half of all abusive messages detected on Twitter in the six weeks leading up to the General Election were directed at Abbott.
You can read the Committee’s full report on the government’s website here
I have nothing against Ms Abbotts race or skin (my father was on the first Windrush) However as an MP supposedly representing the people of Hackney, she is not fit for purpose. I have had numerous correspondence with her involving council corruption and she has done nothing – She may as well have allowed the council to run their subsequent smear campaign which they “concocted” in order to subvert the truth). When the people of our neighbourhood wanted The Purple Palace closed because over the years there had been 25 or so deaths from gunshot – some of it innocents in the crossfire. Ms Abbott wasted 5 minutes of the 25 minutes we had to speak, by repeating a question that my neighbour had only just previously asked. I had to remind Ms Abbott that we only had 30 minutes to speak so repeating questions would be wasting our time. She was silent for about 5 minutes and the interrupted the person who was speaking (again) to let us all know that she repeated the previous question because she thought that some people hadn’t heard?? So she not only has worked tirelessly for young black people all her life (her son going to private school is a shining example of this). But she has some sort of super human ability to know that some people can’t hear what the person with the microphone is saying?
It’s a shame she could not hear anything at all when it came to confronting the criminal officers in her own council. Her assistants reply at the time was Diane doesn’t know who’s telling the truth – and so she did nothing – letting the bent officers get away with destroying the environment, peoples homes, lives and the subsequent coverup.
Ms Abbott knows she is safe – this will probably always be a Labour borough but we need an MP that represents all of us and not just herself. We also need an MP who doesn’t consistently make a fool of herself – making it look like all of us in Hackney are not so bright to have such bungling buffoonery representing us. Please note I am not having a personal dig at Ms Abbott here as most politicians should be considered as bungling buffoons – she just stands out in this area.