Stephen Glover

Many of us look back at our childhoods through rose-coloured spectacles, remembering the best bits and forgetting the worst. So I accept that the small corner of Shropshire in which I grew up was not heaven.

But the little market town of Shifnal, just a few miles from where I was born and bred, was a quiet place full of solid and fair-minded people. There were no lynch mobs in Shifnal 40 or 50 years ago. Just decent folk. no longer. For the past few days, hatred has poisoned the town. There have been menaces of violence, death threats and talk of lawsuits. and why? Because a chef put mozzarella on a vegan’s pizza. Laura Goodman had spent hours cooking dishes free from any taint of eggs, meat or dairy for a party of vegans visiting Carlini’s Italian restaurant in Market Place, where she is ( or, it now seems, was) a partner.

In my youth most restaurants in that part of Shropshire were pretty basic, with meat and two veg being unceremoniously slammed down in front of you. In more ways than one, it would appear times have changed.

Possibly Miss Goodman, 47, is a bit of a prima donna. She may have been reared watching too many highly strung and foul-mouthed chefs on television. Besides, she was born in Rome.

In any event, whether rightly or wrongly, she took umbrage when one of the guests rejected her elaborate and carefully prepared cuisine, and instead chose a pizza topped with mozzarella — which being milk-based is not vegan-friendly.

So far as I can see, Miss Goodman’s sin was one of omission. She did not draw attention to the cheese (though surely a vegan should have spotted it). Her mistake was to crow later on Facebook, when she was a little tired and emotional, that she had ‘spiked’ a meal.

ALL hell broke loose. Social media seethed with death threats. The police came round. There have been calls for Miss Goodman to be prosecuted for assault, and for the restaurant to be shut down.

yesterday, the poor woman resigned from Carlini’s and its nearby sister establishment, having been described by her business partner and fiance, Michael Gale, as ‘ almost suicidal’. according to a friend: ‘Laura is in a bad way. She is too scared to leave the house. The police are taking the threats against her very seriously.’

Much of the furore has been whipped up by a local group called Telford Vegan. a tweet calling for people to email, call or leave negative messages has racked up hundreds of retweets and likes. The Tripadvisor and Google pages of the restaurant have been bombarded with bad reviews, dragging it down from five stars to one.

I wonder what my parents and their friends would have said half a century ago if someone with the gift of prophecy had told them this story. Of course, the phenomenon of social media would have taken some explaining, but once that fence had been cleared they would have been aghast to hear what has happened.

Shifnal was not rich or grand. Travellers did not often linger to sample its charms. It was a little dull — and honest. a deep part of England. and in those days the English prided themselves on their level-headedness and sense of proportion.

What has happened in the space of 50 years to turn a decent, self- effacing sort of place into an intolerant and cruel madhouse in which a woman who has put some cheese on a vegan’s pizza is literally run out of town?

We could — and we will — blame social media. But there is something else at work — the tyranny of minorities which angrily and loudly insist on their rights, and threaten anyone they believe is interfering with them.

Half a century ago, I don’t suppose there were many vegans in that part of Shropshire. If there had been, they would have been wellmannered and considerate. ‘Sorry. I prefer to keep away from meat and dairy products if I can. Doubtless very tiresome of me.’

and meeting a vegan in those circumstances, a polite nonvegan might have replied: ‘not at all. Very sensible of you. I wish I had the strength of mind to give eggs a miss and stop eating beef.’

Somewhere along the line veganism became a cause, with some vegans — not all, I’m sure — becoming ideological warriors convinced of their own moral superiority, and determined to assert it as loudly and frequently as possible.

as far as I am concerned, people are perfectly free to be vegans. Who cares? It’s their choice. But why the aggressive proselytising? Why the torrent of abuse and death threats when a tipsy chef unwisely boasts in the early hours of the morning about having put some cheese ona pizza?

THE moral error of some minority groupings, it seems to me, is to define themselves wholly in terms of their particular affiliation or proclivity while forgetting that we are all fellow members of the same nation. That is why some neighbours end up fighting like ferrets in a sack.

It goes without saying that these entrenched new social divisions could scarcely be expressed without social media. If there were no Twitter or Instagram or What’sapp, offended vegans would be reduced to grumbling down at the Dog and Duck, or pinning bilious notes on the noticeboard outside the town hall.

The crucial point about social media is that they make people much more aggressive than they would otherwise be, partly because rudeness is the expected mode of expression, and partly because threats can be delivered anonymously.

One of Miss Goodman’s tormentors calls himself Les Taylor. Is that a real name? He wrote on Facebook: ‘Hope she goes bankrupt and living on the streets vile worthless human being.’ What a charming fellow.

It’s conceivable that some of those who bayed for the closure of Laura Goodman’s restaurant, and even called for her death, are normally decent enough people who are members of the local bowls club and worship at St andrew’s Parish Church.

Others are simply plain nasty, whether they hail from my old part of Shropshire or further afield. needless to say, whoever makes death threats against Miss Goodman should be prosecuted — if only the police are able or willing to find them, which I doubt.

Looking back, I suppose it’s possible that the Shifnal of half a century ago, which I remember as so sensible and moderate and lawabiding, was something of a mirage, concealing lots of twisted and bitter people who had no means of expressing their malice.

Social media have released and propagated pitiless demons. If only they could be put back in the dark box they came from, but they can’t. In the case of Laura Goodman, they are making her life a misery over a misplaced dollop of cheese.