MPS WHO FELL VICTIM TO WEB-FUELLED HATRED
DRIVEN OFF TWITTER BY ONLINE TROLLS
MARIA Caulfield, the Tory MP for Lewes, was driven off Twitter and Facebook because of online abuse in the run-up to June’s general election.
‘It got so bad during the election that for much of the campaign I came off social media and didn’t post anything which impacted on my ability to campaign,’ she told the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
‘I now have video entry only into my constituency office. I have panic alarms installed. I only post on social media after I have attended events so people can’t track my movements, on the advice of local police. I no longer put anything personal on social media. ‘I no longer hold open surgeries, they are by appointment only and are not advertised in advance.’
Miss Caulfield had her car tyres slashed outside her family home and had reported three death threats.
HOME BROKEN INTO FOR WEARING TORY ROSETTE
A FEMALE Tory supporter in Ealing Central and Acton had her home broken into after she went out canvassing, the committee heard.
The local candidate, Joy Morrissey, said the woman’s ‘only crime was wearing a rosette of a colour that did not agree with the popular view at the time’.
Miss Morrissey told the committee: ‘Her house was broken into.
‘They wrote, “We know where you live”, “We’re going to kill you”, “You should die” and other very offensive things on her car and on her door.
‘On the doorstep while she was canvassing she was told that she should have her throat slit for supporting the political party that she did and that she should be in the ground.’
She added: ‘Social media is a powerful tool to bring people together in a very powerful way, but it can also bring a runaway mob mentality. In the case of our campaign, and in what I saw on the ground when our office was vandalised and Somali-owned businesses with posters of us in their window had their windows broken, social media were used as a platform to bring people together in a negative way that produced action on the ground.
‘By the end, we could not wear rosettes, we had to have the police with us and we had to always go in groups of two.’
SOCIAL MEDIA LIES RUINED REPUTATION
BYRON Davies lost his seat in Gower after social media campaign falsely claimed he faced a criminal investigation.
Tory MP Simon Hart told the committee: ‘Abuse is not always about death threats, rape threats and all the rest of it.
‘I use the example of Byron Davies, former MP for Gower, defending a majority of 26 at the election, who was subject to a social media campaign based on the dishonest assertion that he was subject to a criminal investigation.
‘It was not even an exaggeration of a story – it was completely invented.
‘He had to contend with that for four out of five weeks of an election campaign, with precious little help from his political party and absolutely no help from the police, who said it was all too complicated and would have to go to the complicated crime unit in York, which would report back in July.
‘It is the use of social media to completely invent a set of circumstances that they know will damage that candidate’s chances of election. In a sense, that is abuse every bit as bad as some of the other stuff that we have heard about.’