Online abusers are a disgrace toWales Unconscious mind is still a mystery

WHEN Virginia Crosbie won the Ynys Mon seat for the Conservatives in the General Election of 2019, she was hardly known on the island.

She had been a leading figure in Kensington Conservative Association, and was selected as the Tory candidate only a day or so before nominations for the election closed.

This week she has spoken about the horrendous abuse on social media to which she has been subjected ever since.

Some of the abusers live on Ynys Mon, while others live elsewhere in Wales or further afield.

Mrs Crosbie has made a video in which she explains the awful nature of the insults to which she has been subjected. While she speaks bravely of her ordeal, she has clearly been deeply upset.

We have no hesitation in saying that those responsible are a disgrace to Wales.

They may dislike the fact that a Conservative woman from London was elected as the MP for a Welsh constituency – but that’s the sort of thing that sometimes happens in a democracy.

In an election fought largely about Brexit, Mrs Crosbie benefitted from the fact the Remain vote was split between Labour and Plaid Cymru. She can hardly be blamed for that.

The vile abuse heaped upon her displays our politics at its very worst. No politician should have to put up with this.

Male MPs and MSs have also been the subject of online abuse, but the most obnoxious messages are usually aimed at women.

The degree of misogyny and hatred directed at Mrs Crosbie and others is absolutely inexcusable.

Sadly, we live in a society where those who are determined to engage in such conduct have been enabled by social media.

As Mrs Crosbie correctly observes, few would dare to say repellent things of the kind she has experienced to her face.

Yet for some people it has become perfectly normal to type tirades of abuse on their laptop or mobile device and send them to public figures against whom they have developed an animus.

If this continues, it will become increasingly difficult to attract women in particular into politics.

There is one good way to deal with it. Most of the abuse is coming from anonymised social media accounts. Those who run social media channels should insist that people who want the privilege of joining them must use their real names or face being banned.

THERE has been quite a bit in the Press recently about so-called “unconscious” discrimination. I won’t pretend that I have delved deeply into this topic but I did do some brief research on the internet before writing this letter.

To start off, straightforward discrimination against anyone on grounds of nationality, ethnicity, religion, sex or many other possible reasons is unfair and undesirable. I am old enough to remember decades ago when there was little legal protection for minority groups not to be discriminated against.

I almost became a victim of such discrimination in London’s Notting Hill Gate in 1961 when I was seeking rented accommodation and I overheard my future landlady, ironically a Polish lady, question my apparent Irish nationality (because of my name) in telephone conversation with a lady in the letting agency I was using. This letting agency reassured my future landlady that I was the “right type of Irish person” to become a tenant in her large house. Anti-Irish discrimination was not uncommon in Britain in those days. To clarify, I was not even of Irish nationality, although some of my relatives took Irish nationality much later in their lives as adults.

It is well known that, from the 1970s onwards, laws were introduced, mainly by the Labour Government between 1974 to 1979, to deal with these issues. In the first instance, it was overt behaviour, actions, opinions expressed in writing or in conversation which were covered not just in the field of letting property but, very importantly, job applications too.

When we bring in the unconscious, we are in possible difficulties. Someone like Sigmund Freud drew up a picture of human beings as being composed of id, ego and super-ego. And he investigated the unconscious mind in his writing about dreams. By definition, what goes on in the unconscious mind is not readily apparent, even to the individual concerned, let alone third