The appalling abuse of Dawn Butler is a severe breakdown of civic norms
The Labour MP Dawn Butler has shut down her constituency office in Brent. Her main reasons are cost and the difficulty of making the cramped office safe from Covid. But there is another motive, too: the highly visible high street premises had become a target for abuse; especially for vile, racist abuse.
Ms Butler, who is black, has reported having bricks thrown through the windows, having her office frontage smashed and regular harassment of her staff as they come and go. Most of the time, she hasn’t even been able to talk about the problem for fear of encouraging “copycat attacks”. Since the Black Lives Matter protests, she has been receiving threats of violence and death almost daily.
Whatever the problems of Black Lives Matter, which I suspect is mostly a movement of justifiably fed-up black people unfortunately spoken for by radicalised cryptomarxists, it is appalling that a black British MP
Since the BLM protests, she has been receiving death threats almost daily
cannot maintain a prominent constituency office without attracting a tide of racist abuse.
That a lawfully elected politician finds herself retreating from her own constituency high street points to a severe breakdown of civic norms.
My politics have very little in common with Ms Butler’s, who was happily a frontbencher under the anti-semitism-tolerating regime of Jeremy Corbyn.
But the ability to organise visibly without constant threats and aggravation is a basic political freedom. She deserves to enjoy it as much as anyone else.
Beauty salons are allowed to reopen next week. I recently passed one with a sandwich board outside that advertised something called a “hydrafacial”.
With no explanation proffered, I can only assume this is a procedure whereby as soon as they have done one face, three more suddenly sprout up in its place, and so on, until all of the faces are cauterised with a flaming torch.
It’s not for me.