Dear Catherine,
You probably haven’t heard of me. I’m a notoriously “vile” political blogger who’s said a few pretty mean things on social media about politicians in the last eight years. But perhaps that’s partly because I’m a grumpy old white guy who hasn’t had the benefit of your commendable programme aimed at “building the fairer, kinder & more tolerant world the late Jo Cox MP believed in”.
I note also your pinned tweet expressing concern at women being driven out of public life, something which has been in the news very recently and which I presume includes people like Joanna Cherry MP, who has received death threats and been required to have police protection to carry out her constituency surgeries.
So I hope you’ll understand my alarm over what happened today.
Frances Hoole is the Scottish Labour candidate for the seat of Edinburgh South West in the upcoming UK parliamentary general election. She is a – would the proper word be “graduate”? – of your Jo Cox Women In Leadership Programme, which apparently seeks to “support women with the training and mentoring needed to make their voices heard and become future leaders”.
Yet today she tweeted a picture – accompanied by a “crying with laughter” emoji – depicting herself holding a bottle of Cillit bleach pointed at the head of Joanna Cherry, alongside a play on the product’s advertising slogan: “BANG! And the terf is gone”.
“TERF”, as I’m sure you’re aware, is an abusive term used to pejoratively describe feminist women who are “gender-critical” and defend women’s rights to single-sex spaces free of male-bodied people, regardless of how those people might identify themselves. Whether you agree with that point of view or not, I feel certain – or at least hopeful – that you would regard it as a valid political opinion which people should be able to express freely without threats or abuse from electoral opponents.
I would also hope, given the tragic death by gunshot of the woman who gives your foundation its name, that you would be as appalled as I am at the imagery of pointing an object with a trigger at a woman’s head and making a sneering joke of the words “BANG! And [that woman] is gone”.
Ms Hoole has subsequently, with considerable ill grace, removed the offending tweet, grudgingly faux-apologised (claiming not to have understood that spraying bleach at someone and saying “BANG! and they’re gone” could have been construed as any sort of condoning or encouragement of violence) and promptly attempted to portray herself as the victim in the situation, demanding that Joanna Cherry act to save Ms Hoole from the public’s justifiably angry reaction to her tweets, all while reiterating Ms Hoole’s attack on gender-critical women in general and Joanna Cherry in particular.
I would be most grateful for your comments on this matter, to which I would hope you would not simply turn a deaf ear, a blind eye and a mute voice. Do you consider this the sort of politician you set out to shape? Are you happy for such a person, carrying your name and implied endorsement, to be elected to Parliament in a few weeks, replacing the woman she so shamefully abused today?
If not, I would – in the gentlest manner of which I am capable – seek to advise you that if this is the sort of candidate your Women In Leadership Programme is unleashing on the electorate in pursuit of a fairer and kinder world, it might be in need of at least a modest degree of reflection and revision.
Yours sincerely,
Rev. Stuart Campbell.
