How CAN this be happening here?

TORY MP Sheryll Murray remembers an era when politics was genuinely kinder and gentler; when even passionate adversaries abandoned their differences when they left the debating chamber. ‘I’ve always believed you don’t need to be aggressive to win your cause,’ she says. ‘Right from the days when I served on our local council, I’d disagree vehemently with the leader of the labour group, who used to play football with my dad, and he would disagree vociferously with me.

‘But as soon as we got outside we’d shake hands. We’d say: “What happens in the chamber stays in the chamber.” Just because two people sit on opposite sides of the political divide, it doesn’t mean they need to be fighting all the time.’

Echoing the words of the murdered labour MP Jo Cox, who was shot and stabbed to death in her Yorkshire constituency a year ago by Nazi sympathiser Thomas Mair, Mrs Murray says: ‘ I’ve always agreed with her that we have more in common than that which divides us.’

No one can deny that Mrs Murray, 61, holds strong views that she is not shy of voicing in her gorgeous Cornish accent as rich as clotted cream. A supporter of Brexit, she campaigns effectively on behalf of the fishermen in her constituency of South East Cornwall, which she won last month with a majority of almost 17,500.

Her roots are deeply embedded in the community she serves. She was born and raised in a council house in Millbrook, the Cornish village where she still lives in a modest home.

Her husband Neil, a trawlerman, died tragically in a horrendous fishing accident six years ago.

She has endured the shock of sudden bereavement and the grief of widowhood. She also understands, at first hand, the dangers and privations endured by her constituents who make their living on the sea.

All of which, you might imagine, would endear her to Cornish voters of all political stripes — even those who disagree with her views.

ACTUALLY, you would be wrong. Because during the last general election campaign, Mrs Murray was subjected to an unparalleled outpouring of sheer vitriol and exceptionally vile personal abuse.

It would be unbelievable if you didn’t see it with your own eyes. Venomous posts on social media incited people to ‘burn the witch’ and ‘stab the c***’.

And it didn’t stop there. Facebook refused to remove a satirical page devoted to vilifying her, which features her photo next to a tick, a flea and a leech under the headline: ‘Know your parasites’.

Mrs Murray’s election posters were defiled with swastikas and her home was covered in labour Party posters.

Worse still, a man urinated in the doorway of her office — an act caught on the cameras installed to step up security after Jo Cox’s murder — before shouting: ‘ F*** you Sheryll Murray, you’re a f****** pr***.’

This week at Prime Minister’s Questions, she raised the issue of the levels of aggression that characterised the last election campaign. listing the catalogue of attacks, she paraphrased labour leader Jeremy Corbyn when she said: ‘ Hardly kinder, gentler politics. Can you suggest what can be done to stop this intimidation, which may well be putting off good people from serving in this place?’

Prime Minister Theresa May agreed she was right to raise the issue, adding that others — particularly women — had been intimidated.

‘This sort of behaviour has no place in our democracy,’ she said.

But in truth, it is becoming one of the defining features of politics today.

‘ There is a group generating hatred,’ says Mrs Murray. ‘ It wasn’t the first time I’d stood for election, but it was the first time I’d experienced this level of aggression and it needs tackling. It is unacceptable in a civilised society.

‘I’d like to see the labour Party condemn it, as the Prime Minister has, and say: “If you want to support us, do so in a reasonable way.”

‘ These people hide behind anonymity on group social media pages, and because you don’t know who the author is, you can’t take civil action.

‘ But I believe that just as politicians have to print their addresses and their agents’ names on their election leaflets, the users of Facebook and Twitter should also be identified so we know who is responsible for posting these cowardly posts.

‘When someone writes: “Stab the c***’, it is an incitement to violence and a deeply personal attack on me.’

Mrs Murray, a member of the group Conservative Friends of Israel, says the person who defaced her posters with swastikas — trespassing on private land to do so and damaging livestock fencing — carved out the Nazi emblem with a blade.

‘This act showed disrespect for me, my party and a group in society [the Jewish community] who have suffered grievously,’ she says.

‘I found it deeply abhorrent and it was doubly worrying because the swastikas were cut out of the plastic posters with an offensive weapon, which raises the question of what would have happened if the person doing this had been approached or challenged? Would there have been violence?’

Mrs Murray, who for the past four years has lived with her partner Bob Davidson, 46, also her agent and campaign manager, has two grown- up children from her marriage to Neil: Sally, 41, a commander in the Royal Navy, and Andrew, 29, a marine engineer.

All, she says, are understandably ‘appalled’ by the attacks, but none has tried to persuade her to give up her job.

Neither will she be cowed by the threat of violence.

‘I have security cameras at my home and office — no one knows when someone is going to make some sort of attack,’ she says.

Her experiences have sometimes bordered on the ridiculous. At a hustings in the town of Callington last month, she was covertly filmed as a discussion about food banks grew increasingly heated.

Then a woman appeared to lunge at her while reaching into her bag. Naturally, Mrs Murray was frightened. ‘She could have had a gun or a knife,’ she says.

Actually, the woman was brandishing a large pair of pink knickers for reasons that are not entirely clear. ‘They were intended to be an affront to me and it was offensive.’

Still, she says, other MPs have it worse. Indeed, Dr Sarah Wollaston, a friend and fellow West Country Conservative MP ( for Totnes, Devon), was subjected to similar vilification and threats.

The walls of her constituency office were defaced with anti-Tory messages — both during the election campaign and again last week — by a masked man.

DR WOLLASTON says: ‘He gesticulates nastily at the CCTV cameras. It feels intimidating; as if he’s trying to kick me out of town.

‘He has climbed on the roof and is deliberately targeting my office.

‘Somebody is spraying the whole town with messages. Stuff like: “Tory greed” and “Vote for the Tories and get five more years of torment”.’

like Mrs Murray, she thinks the last general election campaign felt ‘more aggressive’.

‘As you drive into Totnes, a bridge over the road has been graffitied: “Tory scum”,’ she says. ‘It’s what

people say on social media the whole time. It’s a hard-Left thing.

‘ These people are trying to create a climate of hate and intimidation. It won’t stop me doing what I’m doing or thinking it’s a wonderful, worthwhile job, but it’s so relentless.

‘In my whole career as a doctor nobody ever called me a “traitorous Tory c***”, or said: “Come up here and you’ll get what’s coming to you”, as they have on social media.

‘ You don’t know when you read it whether you are at risk, but it feels increasingly like a personal threat.

‘Momentum and that hard-Left movement are personalising it. I genuinely feel there’s a small step from normalising violent language to normalising actual violence.

‘If you tolerate this, you start to feel other things are acceptable. It moves from damaging buildings to damaging people.

‘During the election campaign, I knocked on a lot of doors. I got the feeling the real British public are not like that. If they want to have a robust disagreement with you face to face, they will.

‘An overwhelming number of people I meet in my job are wonderful. This is a tiny, intolerant and cowardly minority.

‘Jeremy Corbyn says he wants to see kinder politics, but I would like him to acknowledge that these people are linked to the hard Left of the Labour Party. He should try to do something about it.’

In another case, the Conservative MP for Romford in east London, Andrew Rosindell, saw the windows of his car smashed by a man on a moped.

Mr Rosindell was campaigning with a loudspeaker when he heard the sound of shattering glass and turned to see a man smashing the windows of his Land Rover with his moped helmet.

‘I chased him, my staff chased him and neighbours came out and tried to grab him,’ says Mr Rosindell, 51. ‘He was chased for about ten minutes before escaping in a car.’

Police are investigating this crime and another in which Mr Rosindell was hectored outside a railway station.

‘A man approached me and started shouting. I tried to talk to him sensibly, but when he started getting aggressive I refused to talk to him. A member of the public had to restrain him.’

The MP is in no doubt the abuse was politically motivated.

‘I had “Tory scum” shouted at me by others during the election campaign,’ says Mr Rosindell. ‘Some people are indoctrinated to hate the Conservatives.

‘I don’t think you see the same the other way round. You don’t see Conservative followers shouting “Labour scum”.’

All three MPs agree that politically driven vandalism and intimidation is sadly becoming more widespread.

‘ It’s the sense that this bad behaviour is becoming more acceptable now that worries me,’ says Mrs Murray.

‘The message I always take to schools in my constituency is that you don’t have to be rich, extremely clever or privileged to become an MP. Anyone can actually do the job.’

What concerns her is whether anyone will want to.

‘Our open democracy has to be valued. I’d hate to see politics become the preserve of those who can afford to barricade themselves behind the gates of mansions for protection. I like to go and meet my constituents.’

Mrs Murray wants to see an allparty parliamentary group for women to address the issue of threats and verbal intimidation of female MPs.

But she says that despite everything, she still intends to work for the good of the people she represents.

‘The fact that I have a majority of more than 17,000 shows there are an awful lot of people who do Defiant: Conservative MPs (from left) Sheryll Murray, Sarah Wollaston and Andrew Rosindell. Far left: Swastikas deface Sheryll Murray’s campaign poster appreciate what I do,’ she says. ‘And the message to those who don’t is: challenge me by standing for election, not by aggression and intimidation.’

However, by and large, she says, the people she represents — both those who support her and her detractors — are honest and law-abiding.

SHE tells the heartwarming story of the goodwill that surrounded her after her husband died. Mr Murray was pulled into machinery on his fishing boat when a toggle on his coat became caught in the hydraulic drum used for hauling in the nets.

‘His injuries were horrific but death would have been instantaneous,’ says Mrs Murray, who was in Parliament piloting the Marine Navigation Bill through the House — and making a speech on safety at sea — the day her husband died.

‘ I remember getting into Plymouth on the train that evening and they told me Neil had died,’ she says. ‘ People said afterwards they didn’t know how I held it together.

‘ It was shock, more than anything. But my staff were incredible, as were my family and the local community.

‘I still get parcels of fish given to me. One fisherman who knew Neil very well always says: “Are you on recess? I’ll pass you a bit of fish then”, and we get it in a carrier bag — enough usually to feed the whole street.

‘I would like to think most of my constituents are like that fisherman: good and warmhearted people.

‘It doesn’t matter whether they voted for me or not. Despite everything, I still intend to represent them.’