YellowTaxi
Well-known member
- Joined
- 9 Jan 2018
- Messages
- 1,239
meanwhile this is what a Black woman MP has had to face
I continue to receive a torrent of horrendous abuse on an almost daily basis and it is sadly on the rise. Especially so when speaking out on issues such as the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter it has increased exponentially.
There have been many deeply concerning incidents over the years, some I have talked about publicly before and others I haven’t.
Last year a solid granite rock was thrown through my high street office window, leaving a gaping hole. On another occasion, my staff arrived at work one morning to find the entire shop front had been smashed in.
We’ve had someone arrested for making a bomb threat, with a member of my team providing a witness statement. Another woman was also arrested and went to court for threatening to ‘smash the office up’.
I was physically assaulted on the underground by a woman I had met at my office surgery and had been trying to help find a home. Travelling alone from Parliament, often late at night on quiet tube carriages, is really scary. I often try to disguise my appearance through fear of being recognised. The person who attacked me went to prison and I would like to thank the members of the public that came to my aid that day.
A member of my team has been verbally threatened with violence, for which the person was again arrested. Another, when standing at the door of my office last year, was told ‘I will smash your head in’ by a stranger. This was reported to the police too.
One of the worst incidents occurred when I was in the office and an aggressive man armed with a golf club knocked on the door wanting to ‘speak’ to me. A member of my staff – not realising what the man was carrying – answered the door and soon became engaged in a physical tussle with him to protect me and remove him from the office.
A staff member was so traumatised by one violent incident that he bought a stab vest to wear discreetly under his clothes during my advice surgery. Thinking back, that is the moment that I probably should have closed the office. But I tried to keep it open for as long as I could, for my constituents.