The Speaker of the House of Commons has made an unprecedented intervention over the security of politicians after a female MP was forced to pull out of the Labour Party conference later this week after receiving online threats from militant transgender activists.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle said elected representatives should be able to appear publicly “without fear of harm” after Rosie Duffield revealed she would miss the conference, which begins in Brighton on Saturday.
The MP, who won Canterbury for Labour in 2017, ending its century-long run as a Tory seat, has decided to stay away after receiving advice that her safety and security could be at risk if she chose to attend. Duffield, 50, claims she has been branded transphobic for “knowing that only women have a cervix”. She has also pointed out that it might not be appropriate for people with male bodies who identify as women to enter female-only spaces.
“LGBT+ Labour now seem to hate my guts and I feared they’d have a massive go at me at conference,” Duffield said. “The people who threaten me I don’t think are actually likely to harm me. They just say it often and very loudly.”
Duffield won support from Hoyle, who spoke out yesterday during a conference of heads of parliament from the G7 nations being held in Chorley, Lancashire. They met to discuss the increasingly disturbing threat posed to democratically elected politicians, including the attack on America’s Capitol Hill earlier this year and the murder of the MP Jo Cox during the Brexit campaign in 2016.
It is understood the speakers at the conference will sign a pledge today to try to ensure the safety of elected politicians and crack down on social media trolling.
Hoyle said: “Parliamentarians, who have been elected to speak up for their constituents, should be able to attend their own party conference without fear of harm. Too many people have been targeted for their opinion or the office they hold. In order to protect democracy, we need to ensure those participating can do so without threats of intimidation.”
Duffield believes some of those who attack her for her views are “straight white men”. She said: “There are some women who get involved and want to be seen to be very woke ... but mostly it is men, and the same men that have trolled me ever since I got elected.
“So it looks like, feels like and smells like misogyny, and this is just the latest cause they have latched on to ... The fact that I am blonde — they call me a bimbo. The fact that I don’t like antisemitism. There is always something, but it is always the same people who attack me.”
Duffield, who has two sons, admits being “exhausted” and on occasion “frightened” by the abuse. She has been forced to discuss her security with Hoyle, the chief whip and Kent police.
“For the first time in my life, having been an ambassador for a gender-balanced 50:50 parliament, I would hesitate to encourage other women to come into politics,” she said. “I would have to really think about what I was asking them to do, and putting people into this position when they are going to be on the front line of some pretty shitty abuse.”
Duffield, who chairs the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party, took the decision not to attend conference after being advised it was “not a good idea”. She said: “I mainly took the decision not because I really thought I was going to be attacked, but because I did not want to be the centre of attention.
“We have had Labour MPs who have had to have security at conference over the past few years, and I didn’t want that sort of attention or to become the story. I just thought it was better for everyone if I quietly stayed away.”
It is not the first time that Labour MPs have felt at risk at their own conference from elements on the far left. In 2018 Luciana Berger, then MP for Liverpool Wavertree, was given police protection at conference after months of antisemitic abuse.
The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tried to downplay the risk, but his successor, Sir Keir Starmer, is taking the Duffield case more seriously. He has recently texted her to check on her welfare, but others within the party have been less supportive.
After Duffield’s second electoral victory in 2019, the Labour-supporting pundit Owen Jones shared a snap of himself proudly standing alongside her at a constituency rally he had organised. Less than a year later Jones dug out the picture once more, this time to “apologise publicly” for his actions and to say that he was “genuinely mortified” about having ever shared a platform with Duffield.
Duffield, who has spoken out about suffering domestic abuse from a former fiancé, argues that her interest in the debate stems from her desire to want women to feel safe. “Women have to feel safe in their own single-sex services and spaces like loos,” she said. “I have plenty of transgender friends who are completely OK with everything I say and we are able to have a completely civil dialogue about it.”
She added: “The more abuse you get, the more nervous you are. I find myself doing live television or speaking events and really carefully reframing what I want to say. That can make me quite angry, because it means I am not being myself, so it does really affect you.”
Duffield is not alone. Just last week she spoke to a cross-party group of MPs who had suffered similar online trolling and abuse.
“Almost everyone in the room had had some kind of court incident against a stalker or an obsessed person,” she said. “I would be surprised if there is a female MP who hasn’t had loads of abuse or some kind of stalking and police and/or court involvement.”
But Duffield is not going to stop speaking out on the issue despite the threat to her safety. She believes we should be worried that so many young females are turning their backs on being a woman to become non-binary.
“Why are women so desperate to divorce themselves from everything they associate with being female?” she said. “Why are they so uncomfortable? Why is it such a terrible place to be? These are questions that need answering and need to be discussed sensibly. It certainly rings massive alarm bells for people like me, of my generation, who have been feminists their entire lives.”
She added: “There have still only been 500 women who have been through the doors of the House of Commons, compared with 5,000 men, and we are supposed to cover all the women’s issues and if we don’t then we are not doing our job. Thousands of women have contacted me who feel as concerned as I do, although we may not agree on everything. I am just sorry the debate has got so toxic.”
Last night senior Labour MPs rallied behind Duffield. Jess Phillips, the shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, said: “I am supportive of any woman who feels they face a security threat.” Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, said of Duffield: “She has been the victim of the most serious crime imaginable and must be treated with care and respect.”
The furore around Duffield first blew up in August last year after she was branded a “transphobe” on Twitter after liking a tweet by the broadcaster Piers Morgan. He had taken issue with a CNN post that referred to “individuals with a cervix” in a reminder about the importance of having regular screening tests for cervical cancer. Morgan replied: “Do you mean women?”
