An attack on the essence of our democracy

After conducting the country’s affairs at Westminster, MPS return every week to the modest committee rooms and church halls in their constituencies to deal with the worries and problems of their voters. These sessions are the very essence of British democracy.

There, rather than in the grandiose surroundings of the House of Commons, they can take soundings and judge the temperature of the nation – a vital task, one that is a cornerstone of our way of life. And these meetings have taken on the aspect and the name of doctors’ surgeries because of the fact that voters, like patients, wait in line for a consultation with the man, or woman, who represents them in Parliament and who they hope may make their lives better, whether they voted for them or not, by securing that council house, or fixing the potholes in their street, or helping to get their child into the school of their choice. To perform that solemn duty, our tribunes and their constituents must be free to come and go as they please, to speak plainly to each other and, as is the British way, to exchange insults as well as pleasantries without let or hindrance.

That almost sacred bond between MP and voter was shattered in the most brutal fashion yesterday at a constituency surgery in, of all places, a church – Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-sea. There Sir David Amess, the MP for Southend West for the past 24 years, was stabbed several times as he dealt with constituency problems. The 69-year-old Conservative, who was a well-liked and respected politician with a wide variety of interests, including the plight of refugees, had advertised the “surgery”, with its full postal address, on Twitter three days ago and invited constituents to book an appointment by phone.

He was regarded as one of the most influential of backbench MPS, well-known for his championing of

Southend, including a lengthy campaign to win city status for the town, which many are suggesting would now be a fitting posthumous tribute. Raised as a Roman Catholic he was a prominent campaigner against abortion as well as on animal welfare issues. In essence, through his campaigning zeal, he embodied just about everything the ordinary British voter could wish for in an MP.

Amid the tributes to Sir David’s character and career last night, a deeper worry was being expressed; namely that our politicians, of all people, are no longer safe and that, in our determination not to be knocked off our stride by the threat of violence, we are now failing in the duty of care we owe to our representatives.

Sir David was stabbed to death in surroundings that are entirely normal in what is, after all, the world’s oldest and most mature democracy. But that world has now become a different entity – a place where all too often politicians appear to have become as much targets as our trusted representatives. That much seemed apparent five years ago when the Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death in the street outside her constituency office, where she, too, had been about to hold a surgery.

The killings of Ms Cox and now Sir David were exceptional in their brutality, but violence against politicians is far from unknown in Britain. One of the most infamous incidents was, of course, the IRA bomb attack on the Conservative Party conference hotel at Brighton in 1984. Five people, including an MP, were killed and 31 injured, including Norman Tebbit and his wife Margaret. The main target, prime minister Margaret Thatcher, escaped injury.

Five years earlier one of her closest friends and confidantes, Airey Neave, died when a bomb planted by another group of Irish Republican terrorists exploded in his car as he was leaving the House of Commons. And in 1990 another close Thatcher aide, Ian Gow, died when an IRA bomb exploded in his car. In 2010, East Ham Labour MP Stephen Timms was stabbed twice in the abdomen by an Islamic extremist and 10 years earlier Nigel Jones, the MP for Cheltenham, was attacked by a man with a sword. A local county councillor, Andrew Pennington, was killed in the same attack while trying to defend the MP. He was posthumously awarded the George Medal for bravery.

Faced now with the tragic death of Sir David, there are already calls for a thorough-going review of the security of our politicians and there is, frankly, nothing to be gained by denying such an investigation. A study published earlier this year revealed that 43 MPS had been subjected to an attack or attempted attack. Social media is increasingly used as a vicious tool with which to berate politicians in a manner unknown only a few years ago. This has gone hand in hand with a broader coarsening of Britain’s political debate which even saw the deputy leader of the Labour Party brand Tories “scum”. Meanwhile, MPS have suffered abuse ranging from graffiti to the physical intimidation of the former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith during the party’s recent conference in Manchester.

Armed policemen or security guards being stationed in those village and church halls while MPS talk to their constituents is a truly dreadful prospect, but it is one that we will now have to consider urgently. Just five years after the murder of Jo Cox, it is shocking that democracy again finds itself in this situation. While it would be an appalling departure from the way politics has always been conducted in this country to introduce yet more barriers between the elected and the electorate, the savage killing of Sir David Amess has given us cause to reassess old certainties.