Half Bricks and Abuse of MPs

by Les May

HARRIET Harman has been at it again.  In last Saturday’s Times she was reported to have said that some MPs had changed their stance, presumably on Brexit, because of threats and abuse they had received.   But as is often the case with Harriet the story she is telling is a bit lacking in detail. Or to put it another way we have only Harriet’s say so for it.

As I pointed out recently, Luciana Berger has been repeatedly verbally abused and physically threatened, but the people doing it are not connected with the Labour party.  It’s not good enough for her to say that she believes that the abuse she received after the incident with the mural in 2018 came from ‘left wing individuals’.  Without some firm evidence I am not willing to believe claims of this kind.

This is a re-run of what we saw in July 2016 when The Guardian ran a story about a brick being thrown through the window of Angela Eagle’s constituency office after she declared her intention to challenge Corbyn for the Labour leadership.

According to the paper, ‘Eagle called on Corbyn to rein in his supporters, saying attacks such as the vandalising of her office were “being done in his name, and he needs to get control of the people who are supporting him and make certain that this behaviour stops and stops now.  It is bullying.  It has absolutely no place in politics in the UK and it needs to end”.'

What’s interesting about the Berger and Eagle cases is the lazy assumption that it is supporters of Jeremy Corbyn who were responsible and that he should somehow or other ‘control’ them. I’m a supporter of Corbyn, but if I write something to which you take exception, take it up with me, don’t try to blame Corbyn.

If you make lazy assumptions like this and are not meticulous in finding out the facts before rushing into print it’s easy to give the impression that Labour is a hotbed of bullying and anti-semitism.  Just because they print it does not mean we have to believe it. 

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