EVENT TRANSCRIPT: From the Ballot to the Bullet: The Rise of Political Violence in the West
DATE: 6pm – 7pm, 19 June 2024
VENUE: Online
SPEAKERS: Dr Theo Zenou, Sam Bidwell, Conleth Burns
CHAIR: Dr Theo Zenou
Dr Theo Zenou 00:04
So, thank you for joining us online and in person for this event at the Henry Jackson society on political violence. And it’s here to launch a new report, which we wrote, called from the ballot to the bullet, which looks at the rise of political violence across western democracies over the last few years. This project came about because a while back, I studied American history. And I noticed that in the 1960s, in the US, they had a string of high-profile political assassinations, right, John F. Kennedy was killed, Malcolm X was killed, Martin Luther King was killed, Bobby Kennedy was killed, always in the space of five years, so, a crazy whirlwind of a decade, and along side there were a lot of attacks against politicians. And obviously, in the UK, in 2016, we had a Labour MP, Jo Cox was murdered by a white supremacist. And ever since then we’ve had attacks and violence against politicians. Another MP, David Amess, was killed in 2022. And I started to notice these patterns, and I noticed that in the UK, and I noticed them in the US, I noticed them in France, Germany, in Italy, the Netherlands, and I kept thinking back about this crazy decade in the US and I saw, okay, this phenomenon really takes hold, since how bad it could get, you could have a head of state getting killed, you could have any number of horrific events that could shatter nations, divide societies, fracture us. And so, we got together we Sam Bidwell, a young researcher at the Adam Smith Institute, parliamentarian as well, and we put together this report. And really the first goal is to say, look, political violence is not just the politician getting murdered in the street, that the most dramatic consequence of it starts off with online abuse, threats, right, somebody making a call at a MPs office, or tagging a door or something like that. Then verbal threats, and it escalates into actual physical contact, violence, and the most dramatic, final conclusion, pain, death. And as we said, we noticed this in the UK and every new political issue, whatever it was, led to a rise in political violence. So, when you add the pandemic, Covid pandemic, and the vaccines being rolled out, you had anti vaxxers that started to target politicians, right? Obviously, since October 7th, there have been a war in the Middle East, and that also has led to a rise in political violence in our streets. Now, whatever the next issue is, pretty sure the same phenomenon will happen. In the US, really, ever since Donald Trump’s arrival into power, the political climate has been going up and up and up. And you see politicians being threatened all the time. And now that’s happening in Europe as well, even in countries like Germany, which have had very civilised political discourse, clearly, because of their history, they’re very aware of the dangers of these forms of political extremism, its happening now, you’ve had a politician getting stabbed last month during the EU election, you’ve had someone getting pelted with stones, this is coming from the far right, coming from Islamists, coming from desperate types, and this is a very important point to make that political violence is not limited to anyone, it can come from any number of sources and political ideology. And the real dangers of it is that if you, say, really dislike Trump’s politics, then some voters in America, I think about 20 to 30%, according to polling data would condone using political violence to advance a political agenda. So if Democrats say condone political violence against Trump and his people, or vice versa, you start doing that, then you leave the realm of civilised democratic discourse and you enter tribal politics, right. And there is no end to that, and if there is an end its not a pretty one, so we wanted to raise awareness of this issue and look at it not just in the UK, but across western democracies. And we also wanted to come up with potential policy prescription which is why we are working with more in common a very important organisation that does a lot of work on this issue, and also why Sam is now going to tell us about some of the policy prescriptions we are trying to suggest.
Sam Bidwell 05:09
Sure well, as he said, The I think there’s no better time to be talking about this issue than right now. This is 2024, the year of elections, 1.5 billion people across the world will be going to the polls; India just had their election, in South Africa similarly. Here, as you might have noticed, there is an election on, and our cousins across the English Channel, following us, as they often do, have decided to call their own snap election. See how that goes. So, across the world, we’ve got tonnes of elections going on, and what’s what’s clear is certainly in the Western world, political violence is becoming a really big feature of those elections, and that’s a problem for two key reasons. So, you know, political violence, in of itself, has two main causes. Two main impacts. One is the short-term impact on the lives of politicians, that’s, you know, your harassed families, your bodily harm, your assassinations, etc, and that in itself is bad. But the second and sort of bigger impact that political violence has on our political culture, is that it turns A) politics into a zero sum game in which parties rather than cooperating decide to fight one another, or for quite literally, devolve political discourse to the level of physical fights, you make it harder for voters to act as politicians because we put that security block in front of politicians, I mean, we in this country take for granted the absurd levels of access that we have to our elected representatives, you can go to your constituency surgery, you can meet them in Parliament, see them walking down the streets without security, you know, some of you may have had an MP come to your door. In lots of countries, democratic countries like South Africa, like Israel, that’s not the norm. Because there are those credible threats to the lives of political actors, we take that for granted at our peril, because you lose that access, and all of a sudden, that growing gap between politicians and the people, which we’re already seeing take shape at this election, breeds all sorts of nasty, unpleasant political outcomes will get even bigger and it becomes even harder for compromise minded politicians to put in place the kinds of compromises and reforms needed to really take the country on the journey that needs to take in the next few decades. So, I worry about the degradation of our democratic culture, I worry about the physical threat to MPs and losing lots of privileges that people have fought so long to uphold and maintain. And so, what do we do about it? Right? It’s not, this is not a report to just sit here and complain about the issue, plenty of people can do that, like, it’s all very easily done. We take both a short term view and a long term view, the short term view is that you’ve got to take no prisoners, pun intended, very much so, when it comes to the issue of political violence, there can be no room for equivocation, where people threaten Members of Parliament, they’ve got to be hit with the full force of law, we recommend that protests outside the houses of politicians be outlawed, so we introduced buffer zones outside the house of politicians, this is something that other organisations and individuals have called for in the past, this will basically mean that we take protest into the public square rather than allowing it to permeate people’s private lives, which is a totally inappropriate application of that hard fought right. It’s not appropriate that protesters of any cause intimidate the families of politicians, damage the private property of politicians, that doesn’t constitute legitimate protests as far as we’re concerned, and so that’s one of our short-term recommendations, and in the longer term, unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Getting out of that cycle of violence requires us to take a conciliatory approach to politics, to listen to create a democratic culture in which your vote actually matters, so some of those things don’t double up on politicians; people turn to violence when they feel that democracy doesn’t work, when they feel that the outcomes that they vote for are not delivered upon, when they feel that politicians are not beholden to them, they, you know, why would they listen to my vote? Why would they listen to my voice? And they turn to violence. This is unfortunately what happens, and it’s a very difficult cycle to break out of, so perhaps we’ll talk a little bit more about political culture and the importance of culture and of one’s approach to politics, because ultimately, as important as those short-term steps are, what we really need is to rethink how politics works if you want to step beyond our cycle of violence.
Dr Theo Zenou 09:39
And I would add that actually, when you look at the polling data, whether in France, the UK, or the US, the segment that appears most of frightening politicians or insulting them or ultimately being violent towards them, is usually younger people, people like 18 to 30 or 18 to 24. That’s a scary prospect; it’s also the people that have the biggest stake into the future of our societies and of our democracies. And they’re the ones who for a reasonable or sometimes scary number, are willing to forsake the rules of engagement, essentially. So Conleth, you work for an organisation called More in Common, which I believe was founded in the wake of the tragic murder of Jo Cox. And you do a lot of work there about the public’s value and public opinion and how to change these things. So, I think your perspective on this topic is crucial, because you can bring in actual insights from society.
Conleth Burns 10:46
Thank you very much. And thanks for the report, I’ve read it cover to cover, I’m happy to say, and there’s a lot in that, both in the kind of simple reflection, again, some state of political violence in this country and in Europe, and in America and elsewhere, but also in the doing something about it bit, which is the most important part, that’s the kind of showing up a mirror to the political violence that we have in society is one thing but actually suggesting, as your short term and long term recommendations do is really very, very welcome. At More in Common, we were founded in the wake of the murder of Jo Cox, and our name comes from Jo’s maiden speech in Parliament, and our kind of view on, our kind of approach to these issues is to take a very broad view and to think about how this affects the public at large, so we’re not specialists in understanding why extremists take part in political violence, but more in understanding how a broader political culture or broader public opinion kind of create the conditions for that happens, because it’s the kind of 80% that people that were interested in, not the 20%, on fringes, whether that’s on the far left, or the far right. And I think the way that we approach a challenge, like political violence is one which affects all of us, and it’s a challenge for political society and political culture more broadly, and one that we all have a stake in grappling with, it’s not someone else’s problem, and it’s also not the other side’s problem, because there is a danger in politics to see this through a partisan lens; it’s always the other side, there’s always young people, or it’s always somebody else, and actually, it’s all of our problems, and we create a culture, where this is allowed to happen, and I think the nature of the campaign, and over the last four weeks, we’ve seen the ugliness of political violence, not on the scale, where we’re talking about assassinations, or very severe kind of assaults on candidates for election, but what you are seeing is kind of just being attacked, Nigel Farage has been attacked, other candidates have been attacked as well, you’ve got party candidates for parliament, who are withdrawing from husting events for security reasons, and that’s in a variety of contexts where there’s a specific threat from a specific type of issue, whether that’s Rosie Duffield in Canterbury, for holding gender critical views and really being attacked on that case, or Robert Largan, yesterday was what had to withdraw from a hustings event. Jess Phillips is facing an awful lot of intimidation and harassment in Yardley and the list can go on and security becomes a really key part of how candidates get through the election, and that’s not an easy and healthy political culture where our candidates face those threats. I think it was, I made the point that we have a huge amount of access and very little security for MPs, and in the short term, as you suggest, in the report, there is a need to think more seriously about that and whether that is acceptable, I don’t think it is acceptable for a long period of time in the short term. But the solution to this is not a kind of politics or policymakers who are further away from the public. The solution to this is for them to be closer to the public to create, you know, MPs surgeries are fundamental kind of building block for British democracy and we need to fight hard to protect them and to find ways of both making sure that MPs are safe, but also not creating barriers where politicians may be further and further away in a democracy that is relatively responsive to the needs of the electorate, so the challenge is this kind of weird paradox that you get when you’re thinking about political violence where we are moral and a more accessible democracy is actually the solution. The challenge is how do we get there and that’s a really difficult one. The two things I would like to talk about here today is firstly how the public thinks a bit about political violence, we’ve done a fair bit of work over the last few years in trying to understand how the public thinks about these things and and have done some recent polling in this campaign after a particular incident, I want to share some of the insights from that, and what it might tell us about how more politically engaged people think about this problem and how the public actually think about. In my job often, whether we’re advising people, who are our clients, or stakeholders in politics, with the media, often listening to the public is actually a very good way to start, whether it’s public, political, violence, or any other sort of problem, starting where the public are at is a good place to start. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is just thinking about this problem a bit more broadly. I think part of the solution to tackling the political violence that parliamentarians or elected representatives face starts from looking at this problem a bit more broadly. On the 1st, Nigel Farage was attacked in Clacton, a few weeks ago, after he announced he was taking over the leadership of the Reform Party and looking to be candidate in the election in Clacton, and there was an attack, where a milkshake was thrown at him. And there are some challenges when you’re pulling on these kind of questions about how to set up the question, and one very robust way of doing it is basically looking at what’s called a conjoint experiment where you give thousands of options to the 2000 people that we are polling, and you see what shifts their view in terms of what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable, so you put in basically two options, and you change these things a few times in the five criteria that we’ve used, and we test them against each other, and you basically say, do you find this one or this one more unacceptable. So, you get a sense of what actually shifts public opinion on this. The public to have a clear view that violence and whether that’s punching or worse, or throwing a milkshake is an unacceptable attack on an MP or on candidate to be an MP, and that’s very clear in the in the data that you can see, there’s just a very, very unacceptable and on all of those times, when you see thousands of options that go in front of these survey respondents, they’re way more likely to say that that is unacceptable, they’ve all got that very clear line, but they do think that playing live music, or holding posters, and in the presence of an MP is acceptable. But there’s this balance to get on political violence between what is legitimate protests and what is illegitimate, political violence and the public take a relatively clear line on that punching or milkshakes or throwing things, or, or being aggressive, is unacceptable, and, you know, playing loud music, or some things like that, those things are legitimate forms of protest. When you, when you ask, when you present a kind of female MP or female candidate, or male candidates, the public are more concerned about the political violence towards women and that’s partly because they think women are more subjected to political violence, which we know is true, from some of the evidence anyway, that suggests that’s true, and that’s a general kind of threat perception piece. The other thing is that they’re much less likely to think that protesting outside of MPs homes is acceptable, or whether it’s in their free time, or when their family are present. So, they take a kind of clear view that, generally speaking, some of these protests aren’t acceptable, but it’s even more unacceptable if your family are present or even more unacceptable, if it’s in their free time. What’s interesting is that there’s no real difference at all between political parties; you can put a hypothetical Conservative MP, a hypothetical Liberal Democrat MP, a Labor MP and the public don’t take a different view depending on the person who’s the victim of political violence in those cases, and that I think, tells a broader lesson for us that this is something that affects all of us as Democrats, this is everybody’s problem, it’s not one side or the other, and if we were to reflect the public’s view on this, we have to be consistent in how we respond to different examples of political violence, so whether that is Nigel Farage, or Jeremy Corbyn, them being a victim of political Violence is something that concerns all of us as Democrats, and that’s something that we need to kind of think about. I think that the practical challenge and recommendation is that it is much easier to call out political violence when it’s someone on the other side and much more difficult to call out political violence when it is someone on your own side, and holding people to account on your own side is the part of politics which is a hard move. It is easy within politics to call out your political opponents for doing something which the public don’t find acceptable, It’s hard to do that when its on your own side and, you know, there is examples in the response to the Nigel Farage milkshake incident last week where people weren’t it calling out, there are some people, Owen Jones called it an art form on Twitter, someone who himself has faced an awful lot of political violence being in the public eye and being politically engaged, and for a very, very long time so, if we want to solve this problem, we have to realise that the other side’s problem is our problem, and we need to really commit to that, so that’s the first point. The second thing that I want to think about here is that it’s a broader challenge than just dividence between parliamentarians or candidates, and we did some work for Dame Saira Khan, she was doing a report commissioned by the government on social cohesion and democratic resilience is what the report was called. And it gives a very worrying picture about the level of the harassment and intimidation that is affecting people’s participation in politics, so it’s not just about what we can count in terms of attacks, in terms of the deaths of Parliamentarians as tragic as they are, and as unimaginable as they would have been a few years ago, those are really important for us to consider seriously and to deal with them appropriately. But we mustn’t, say, also the fact that there are other effects of political violence in terms of intimidation and harassment, that are driving people out of politics, and attacks like the milkshake attack on Nigel Farage will undoubtedly drive people out of politics. The danger of that is that we have a much less representative politics, it’s much less able to respond to the needs of the public and is actually, we get caught in this vicious cycle that makes political violence more likely, if politics is not responsive, if it’s not open, it creates a context where extremists become more convoyed to take part and in political violence, and Dame Saira Khan’s report talked about this idea of freedom restricting harassment, which I think was an interesting concept to do more, it’s kind of an interesting concept to think about a bit more, and also to develop further by what does that mean, in practice, but effectively, her comment or her analysis is that the levels of harassment and intimidation in British public life and in British society today are pushing people to withdraw from public life, whether, that’s in debates on social media, whether it’s in communities, and she gives a very stark example of a teacher in Batley and Spen, who is currently in hiding and protection by the police, as a result of showing a picture of the Prophet Muhammad in that school, and she outlines in the report how public services, the schools and department of education and others failed to support that person in that kind of, who was the subject of very intense harassment and intimidation, in the formal public services being a teacher in a school in this country. So that I think is something that we need to think about as well; this is not just the dynamic that exists at the top, it’s not just a dynamic that exists in parliamentary democracy, but it’s a dynamic that affects broader society, and if we get there, I think if we approach it from that lens, then I think that we have a better chance of actually doing something about that and potentially shifting the dial on some of this.
Dr Theo Zenou 23:30
Absolutely. And not only does it affect private society, but you also see it with councillors; people will not call representatives, it dissuades a lot of people from getting involved in politics, and it dissuades minorities, and women the most, because as you said, they tend to face the brunt of the abuse. And I wanted to share a few words from Martin Luther King, actually, so a victim of political violence, who in the 60s, obviously in fight for civil rights was a major challenge. And there was some civil rights movement. Malcolm X, ironically, also a victim of political violence, who was advocating for violence to push democratic change, and MLK was always a democrat in his heart. And he wrote a piece when he won the Nobel Peace Prize, explaining why violence never achieves political change in any way. And what he wrote is violence has a way of achieving racial justice, but you can replace any kind of cause here, it is both impractical and immoral. He says I’m not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings momentary results, but in spite of temporary victories, it never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all it is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding. It thrives on hatred rather than love. And he says a beautiful sentence, it leaves society in monologue, rather than dialogue, it ends up defeating itself, it creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyer. And this is really the end point, where if we don’t get a grip on this issue, as you mentioned, people’s freedom will be restricted, and society will end up being a monologue.
Sam Bidwell 25:39
I think, you know, struck by some what you are saying, Conleth, and also in that quote, in the report, we don’t just talk about the UK, we also talked about the broader context of what’s going on in Europe and in America, and I’m struck by parallels in some of what we’re saying with the peace process in Northern Ireland. And the the kind of conciliatory approach that was ultimately successful there in ending that cycle of violence, and I wonder, I sort of throw this open to the pair of you, whether there are lessons to be learned in that process, about how, albeit at a far lower level, how we can come to heal some of those divisions that are starting to emerge before we get to that kind of cycle of violence, which characterised Northern Ireland for decades.
Conleth Burns 26:27
Yeah, I’m from northern Ireland, it wouldn’t surprise anyone who can identify accents, but I think there are lessons to be learned in Northern Ireland, partly in how you recover from a position where there was a huge amount of political violence to a position where there was very little political violence, actually, there is still political violence, those journalists, Lyra Mckee, who was murdered several years ago doing her democratic duty as a journalist to report on a riot in Derry. And there’s other examples of the threat from Republicans and all the rest of it, but broadly speaking, there’s been a huge change in the levels of political violence in Northern Ireland. And I think one thing it requires a huge amount of leadership, and the parties, whether that is the Good Friday agreement, parties, and the people it took that through over a period of a lot of political violence are those who turned away from the violence as well, because there is a challenge and a need to incentivize those who were committed to political violence. Previously the IRA who were committed to using political ends as a means for political ends, their commitment turned away from that, it was a long journey, but they committed to do that and that required all sorts of difficult compromises and difficult positions, but it does deliver, you know, future rewards in the end. I think, what are the reflections on the last decade or so with Northern Ireland, it’s how we use political violence and legitimise political violence as part of our, kind of, broader political debates on Brexit. There was a real challenge that policymakers face that government faced as well, and I know that was something that least in the memoirs on Brexit, something that weighed heavily on the then Prime Minister Theresa May, about the threats of political violence as a result of the various, you know, potential arrangements when it came to Brexit. And one of the challenges there is that you’re in this situation of, do you legitimise political violence? Or are you reckless in some of the challenges that may happen as a result of your political decision making? But it’s a real challenge that political leaders have to face it’s because some of those, you know, as a result of some of your decisions, violence may have and that doesn’t legitimise that, but it’s also like, are you willing to take that risk and own the responsibility of that? Or are there other options that are perfectly legitimate for other reasons, not just political violence, or the extent to which political violence, kind of gets you in there. I think the nicest part is Northern Ireland, and some of the other more pro remain parties instrumentalized political violence, but much in that process, I think there’s a balance that you can take between accepting that there is a risk of political violence as illegitimate to make your decisions as the democratically elected government based on a potential threat political violence, but that is a threat you can’t ignore either, so a sensible government won’t do that, but you also shouldn’t use that as a campaigning tool, and the danger of legitimising political violence as has happened in some cases, not in all cases, but in some cases, is something that I think they reflect on now, when, where we are with the Windsor framework and the protocols and various bits and pieces on the other side, loyalists are talking up the threat of physical violence as a way of doing that, so once you legitimise physical violence on one side, your opponents could do it, and so one of the challenges that faces any Democrat is that the minute that you legitimise political violence for your ends, you legitimise it for your opponents to do that as well and is a test in politics of whether something is a good decision or not is how good your opponent use this against you, and political violence is one of those things that just like for no one it makes a good political sense, nevermind all of the other reasons why you shouldn’t do, it that doesn’t make good political sense to legitimise that because it will come back to be used against you. And it puts you in a tricky situation where you say, oh, it’s okay for me to legitimise political violence, but it’s not okay for you to legitimise political violence. So, it’s challenging situation.
Sam Bidwell 30:37
It’s that zero sum game. It’s both parties, or all parties involved in any given political system, engage in it, and then if you’re the only party or the any political faction not engaging in it, you actually put yourself at a huge disadvantage. And so, I think, yeah, there’s plenty to reflect on that.
Dr Theo Zenou 30:55
And the rule of leadership, to highlight it is very important, because right now, this is true, I think across most western democracies, we can gain a lot of points by dividing and by having very polarising opinions, right? I mean, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, basically, the masters of that, you know, you inflame your own base, you create a reaction on the other side, and then you repeat the cycle, and you divide the world basically. And that only amps up the temperature and politicians do that, a lot of the press does that, especially the most sensationalist outlets, people on social media do that. What you need is, you need to have a leader who can hold that central ground and can hold the voice of reason, basically, when it’s so much easier to win votes by pointing, dividing, enflaming, enticing, threatening, and so on. And you see politicians on both the far left and the far right, who’ve developed a healthy, sizable following by doing that, in France, you have someone like Jean-Luc Melenchon, for instance who is a master at stalking divisions, right? And never really outrightly calling for violence, but for France, during the EU election, we had a centre left candidate called Raphaël Glucksmann, who was hounded out of a May Day Rally by far left agitators and may not show the non-state budget at the same time, maybe not, maybe I don’t like the fact that Glucksmann said that I was partly responsible for this, he is lying. And so then is added on to it saying you were a victim of political violence. Yeah, it’s bad, but at the same time, like you’re lying about me, right? Sort of saying you deserve it, actually. We got to be very careful with this politician. That’s why you really need leaders like Jo Cox was, and we can really stand up to this phenomenon and create a new narrative. I wonder whether perhaps we could hear some questions, because I see some people nodding their heads.
Question 1 33:02
Hello, Simon Anglin, Kings, war studies, what can we do about politicians who do openly advocate violence or who speak in a way that could be construed as provoking violence, E.g, John Mcdonnell, talking about Esther Mcvey.
Dr Theo Zenou 33:23
Im not familiar with..
Question 1 33:24
The shadow Chancellor under the Jeremy Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party fundamentally had been caught for, made comments where he implies saying that he would like to see a Conservative MP physically harmed by his followers.
Dr Theo Zenou 33:43
Did you know about that? Did he?
Sam Bidwell 33:49
Yes, I am familiar with the case.
Question 1 33:49
Yep.
Dr Theo Zenou 33:49
So, what do you think of this case?
Sam Bidwell 33:51
So, I think this is this is a, this is an interesting subject. So, as we try and make clear on the report, all political violence, including violent language is a sliding scale, so on one end you have what is very obvious threatening language, direct death threats, calls for violence, that stuff is already a criminal offence. And actually, fact it’s conducted during an election is an agitating factor, so you’d get a longer sentence, because it’s considered to be sort of threatening for democracy, and there are very good reasons for stricter sentences when it comes to kind of threats made in an election campaign. When it becomes harder, is when people talk in terms of opaque or metaphorical language, so-
Question 1 34:35
It wasn’t very metaphorical
Sam Bidwell 34:36
Well, but it wasn’t a direct death threat, either. And, you know, there was, there were reports made, there was an investigation carried out and it was found that at the time, agree or disagree that it didn’t constitute a serious or credible threat. Now. I think what becomes difficult when we try and impose legal sanctions is the lines got to be drawn somewhere. So, somebody who drew a very broad boundary around this would say, well, okay, Nigel Farage says well, as he did, if they blocked Brexit I will pick up the gun and storm out of the trenches. Now that to me is very clearly a rhetorical tool, there’s no risk that Nigel Farage, I think it’s going to take up a gun start shooting at remainers, for now, I certainly hope not. But somebody who is acting in very, very poor faith, might say, well, that, you know, used violent language, you legitimise political violence. Absolutely. But as we’ve explored, right, when when one uses a political tool against their opponents, they soon find it turned against themselves. And when we when we come to speech restrictions this is exactly what happens, and it’s a tit for tat game, and people acting poor faith, and they make bad faith allegations. I think, unfortunately, where speech doesn’t constitute direct threat, we have to have a much stronger political culture of condemnation on all sides, calling it out, making sure that we don’t vote for candidates who issue threats against people. I think, you know, broadcasters should perhaps consider whether or not they choose to give airtime to politicians who’ve got a record of threatening their political opponents, I think there are very firm positions we can take from a political cultural perspective, I worry about the implications of legal restrictions on political speech where it isn’t a clear-cut case.
Question 1 35:54
Somebody who’s got a bit of sense
Dr Theo Zenou 36:20
There is a law, the law already exists against ..
Sam Bidwell 36:33
Yeah, you can’t threaten people, you can’t, yeah
Dr Theo Zenou 36:36
So if an investigation is carried out by the police, or by the justice system, and they come to the conclusion, we have to accept that conclusion. What matters is that investigation was carried out in this case, because this was brought in front of the law in front of the relevant authorities. Do you have any other questions?
Question 2 36:56
Aminshe Bannen, civil society. Which is the lesser evil and simplify it to say that if the crime, the political crime is performed by a foreign state actor, by privacy, for example, India is assassinating activists in Canada that want independence for Kashmir, or Putin, using some kind of radioactive material to neutralise journalist forming this criminal political climate on British soil. Why you have ordinary people who might be brainwashed by certain ideology, sadly, some of it is existing online, and they will perform crimes here, who is more of a guilty or a party that should be put to the core processes to stop this foreign state? Or a local person who’s acting on impulse?
Dr Theo Zenou 38:04
I think both of them all of them should be tried and prosecuted, and both of them are as guilty. To answer your question. What I think is very interesting is that this phenomenon of political violence is organic to Western democracies, right? You have a lot of discontent. You have a lot of disinformation, you have a lot of very polarising political figures in the US in the UK, France and Germany and so on, that are stalking the file of political violence. What is also true is that there are most likely, disinformation campaigns waged by foreign states who are belligerent or hostile to Western democracies through China, Russia, Iran, to name them, who are probably looking at this and saying, great, is there any way we can amplify that? Is there any way we can add to that division? Sometimes some commentators want to make you believe that this is all they are doing, that this is all China, Russia, Iran, it’s not true. This is a Western problem to begin with. We don’t need for them to intervene online or to come into it. But to them, this is great, and they can make, they can worsen it. So, the two problems do meet to an extent.
Sam Bidwell 39:25
Could I add on that actually, one of the one of the worrying trends that I think is arisen in this election campaign has been sectarian political campaigning in parts of England; we’ve seen that with organisations like the Muslim Vote they’ve attempted to pressure politicians into taking a particular position on Gaza and they copied it from Gaza. It’s not just organisations like the Muslim Vote. We’ve also seen, I’ve written a piece recently about the Hindu Manifesto published by a group called Hindus For Democracy, which seeks to make a number of restrictions on speech that is seemed to be critical of Hindus, which seeks to make it easier for dependents of existing residents of the UK to migrate here, so there’s pretty big political objectives. And those organisations who, again, pressure politicians through organisations like the UK branch of the BJP to take a particular position on certain foreign policy issues. In Dudley, Marco Longley, the Conservative candidate there took a very particular position on Kashmir attempting to appeal to Stanley constituents, so everywhere you look, there is this problem with greying, sectarian campaigning, and fear is that that sits very nicely alongside physical violence as a trend, those two things go hand in hand, and what we see is in countries where sectarianism becomes a part and parcel of the political culture, it will fit alongside a trend of violence very easily, and lots of the violence that we’d see the threats and intimidation over the past year, as we saw outside parliament, when the speaker was pressured into changing procedure, in order to protect the interests of members of parliament, their safety, a lot of those protests and a lot of those threats had been levied by people who feel very, very strongly one way or the other, about the ongoing situation in Gaza, so, I think when we’re thinking about foreign influence directly by governments with the influence of broader foreign geopolitical contexts, we should think about A) the fact that our sectarianism problem is homegrown; this is not something that they’re Narendra Modi, or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping is sending over to the UK, this is because we’ve got problems in the way that we’ve dealt with integration, problems in the data in the way that we’ve dealt with community cohesion. And secondly, we should worry about the fact that that sits very nicely along a rising current of political violence.
Dr Theo Zenou 41:54
So there is also a question online. Conleth, you’ll have an interesting perspective, so this question is: Are our economic circumstances in part responsible for the rise in political violence, ie people becoming more radical in worse economic condition? This is from Charlie. Now, what do you think, what can make political violence more likely? Any factors?
Conleth Burns 42:18
Yeah, so I think it’s, it’s true say that, you know, whenever you’re in situations of, like, the cost living crisis with a lot economic insecurity, that leads to societies that are more divided, and it leads to more zero-sum thinking, and it leads to a lot more political anger, I don’t think that there’s a direct link between political violence in terms of the instances of political violence that you talked about here, it potentially creates a culture where that becomes more legitimised by a larger minority of people, but it’s still a very small minority of people in this country, whether it’s a cost of living crisis, or not a cost of living crisis, who, who thinks that political violence is legitimate, very few people think, like that as a consistent belief that has been, you know, stay consistent, regardless of the economic picture. But it does create a sense of anger about politics, and about the sense that it’s not delivering, and so it can on the fringes, you know, affect the number of people who think that might be, may be legitimate. And I think one of the things, you know, in terms of the longer-term ways of dealing with political violence is you create a society and democracy that people think is being responsive to them, and the key test, the two key tests are that is do I feel safe, and do I feel better off on this? If there was question, if the answer to those questions is yes, then you’ve got a democracy, which fundamentally public figures are responding to their needs, and that makes that kind of context political violence breeds much, much less likely. But it also is right, that political piece of evidence is very strong, but you know, when there’s more prosperity, and that is shared more fairly across the country, and then those societies are more pleasant.
Dr Theo Zenou 44:04
That’s right. We also have a question from Max asking whether attacks against politicians are indiscriminate? Or do they tend to target one political group more than any other? And I think looking at this, really not just in the UK, but again, US and across Europe. It is fairly indiscriminate. I mean, you have politician on the left, or on the right, that are being attacked, you have politicians that are being attacked or being threatened for supporting Israel, you have some that are being threatened online for supporting Palestine and almost any issue you will find this; may be the one thing, the one common denominator is that the source of a lot of political violence is conspiratorial thinking and conspiracies. But conspiracies can target any number of political agents or political parties regardless of who’s in power or who’s out of power.
Sam Bidwell 45:00
Yeah, I think that’s right. That’s right. And as Conleth said, rightly said at the beginning, that one of the important things to do when we think about political violence is to not turn it into a question of sides. It’s to take responsibility as a broader democratic society, and to say, actually, this is all of our problem, because if it continues in the cycle of violence, it needs to descend, we’re all worse off for it. I wonder, actually, whether you’ve got any reflections about whether you see any common denominators in the kind of candidates who suffered political violence of this election?
Conleth Burns 45:30
I mean, you can see across the board that there’s candidates from different parties, different winds, and different parties who are discussing it, partly because the number of people who actively engage in political events is a very small number of people, and they’re not a homogenous group of people as well, the context for the political violence is, you know, as you mentioned, already, in terms of other broader geopolitics, there’s a series of instances on that, there’s a series of domestic issues where people are more, kind of, radicalised and extreme, but the thing that is fascinating and interesting here is that it’s something that affects all political parties. And it’s also something that actually a lot of MPs, and elected representatives across the board, kind of understand the burdens that that places on everybody in a weird way they can relate to one another in a deeper level, because they all know the pressures that all of them are facing, you know, you mentioned in the report about the 3000 legitimate threats that 650 people faced in 18 months, something like that.
Dr Theo Zenou 46:33
That’s right so over the last 18 months, according to security forces at police Westminster there were about 6000
Conleth Burns 46:35
3000 or something
Dr Theo Zenou 46:41
A huge number of legitimate active threats, meaning it’s not just somebody sending a tweet saying ‘I’m gonna get you’, it’s an actual threat that could become active, like, somebody could get killed.
Conleth Burns 46:56
And we know the impact that it has on MPs lives, their families and the way that people go about their jobs. So I think, well, you look at that, even just reading the news and over the last three or four weeks of the campaign, the act of political intimidation, harassment, and violence, in some cases have been across the board, from left to right and centre, and that is a nature of, the challenge is not a partisan challenge, but if it’s approached in a partisan way, it becomes a much, much more difficult challenge to actually solve.
Dr Theo Zenou 47:30
Sam, you have worked in Parliament so you know, politicians well, you know, their experiences are often well, what often gets lost in the discussion of political violence and democracy and threats and this and that is that there are actual live human beings being caught in the centre of this Well, More in Common, the Jo Cox Foundation have done as well, try to remind people that your elected leaders, are also individual, they’ve got their own lives, their families, their fears, dreams, whatever. And this is having a very negative impact on their mental health, and on the ability to make decisions. This is concrete. Right? It’s not just fights against politicians also changing the way some of them will vote on load, I believe.
48:21
I think that’s right. So, one of the worrying second order effects of political violence in our culture is the chilling effect it has on decision makers. So, if I fear that I’m going to face reprieved for a decision I’m gonna make, well I’m less likely to make it. I think you and I have spoken before about, for example, the impact that the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin has continued to have on the peace process in the Middle East. Oppositions fear that should they cause too much stir with moves towards a peaceful solution in the region the fear that they’ll suffer a similar fate, it’s a huge chilling effect, but as you say, it’s not just the effect it has on people’s legislative abilities and lawmaking instincts. It’s about the impact it has on their personal lives and on their families, and I think what worries me most is not just the impact it’s having on mental health of existing MPs, but it’s the effect it’s having on people who might otherwise not choose to go into politics, so there are lots of people out there who look at the world of politics, and they say, well, you know, it’s not as well paid as the private sector, I could earn more money doing something else, and actually, I’m not going to face all those terrible threats, I don’t have to have security outside my house, I don’t you know, my family won’t be at risk, but if you’ve got young kids coming into your 30s, your children, you’ve got a house, you’ve got a career. Do you necessarily want to tear all that up? Stand up for what you believe in? For a lot of people that’s not a calculation that works.
Dr Theo Zenou 49:49
And paradoxically, this environment is going to attract psychopaths that are extreme and divisive; they thrive in it, they love it, it will attract it. So that means that as political violence, if it does take hold, the good people are not going to get involved and increasingly bad actors will.
Sam Bidwell 50:12
Well, if politics becomes a combat sport, in literal terms, then those who get involved will be people who are inclined towards combat sports, there’ll be people who have got a bone to pick, who’ve got an axe to grind, who have got very strongly held convictions and who’ve got very little interest in compromise. Compromise minded people by their nature, tend to be scared off arenas in which they face threats in which you know, discourse breaks down, if you’re somebody who views politics as kind of careful administration and prudent management, you’re very unlikely to get into that game, if you know that your family is going to face threats, regardless of what you do. This is this is really scary, not just for existing politicians, but for the future of our politics more generally.
Dr Theo Zenou 50:59
And Conleth I wonder whether you could close by telling us a bit more about Joe Cox, and I think More in Common comes from a speech that she gave in the UK Parliament, right. And for a lot of people, their first exposure to political violence was the murder of Joe Cox. I think it’s fitting to to end on that note.
Conleth Burns 51:18
So, Jo Cox was the Member of Parliament for Batley and Spen, and she was elected in 2015. She was someone who worked in international development and humanitarian work for her career, and then she got elected in 2015. She’s from Batley and Spen, she was deeply proud of that place and had a really interesting perspective on the work of being both incredibly locally rooted in her place that she was from, but also had this dual perspective of working together on issues of international development on Syria, she worked very closely with Andrew Mitchell during her 18 months in Parliament, and it was a very short parliamentary career, but also something that was a very impactful one, and her vision was a one that, with her speech in Parliament she said they had more in common than what the what divides us. And it’s something that many organisations and movements and groups have taken up as a kind of creed after that, after her murder, and as an idea to say, you know, that’s a fundamental belief that should guide our politics, it doesn’t mean that we all sit around the table and sing Kumbaya and this kind of stuff, it’s a broader belief that actually we do have more in common and that should be a fact that we should acknowledge in our politics, and on challenges, like political violence is something that she, you get over those challenges of political violence by acknowledging that. Joe did a lot of work on loneliness, which is another one of these aggravating factors which creates the context where it political violence thrives. There’s the Joe Cox, loneliness commission, a lot of work that’s been done over the last years as a result of her initial piece on loneliness, and, you know, the man who killed her was also somebody who, you know, that those were the kind of people that Joe had in her mind, when she was worried about the threats facing society, and to try and think about, well, what can we do about that loneliness and hurt in that community, and in society more broadly. More in Common’s work is slightly different to the Jo Cox Foundation works on the, on the personal legacy of Jo Cox, and the work that her projects and humanitarianism in women’s leadership, on loneliness, and connectedness more broadly, and our works a bit more upstream, and so we focus in, we’re in six countries around the world, the US, UK, Germany, France, Poland and Brazil. In the US, we did a lot of work on election violence prevention. As you know, even before January 6th, we were doing a lot of work and trying to understand how do you deliver elections safely. That’s something that in terms of the broader public violence is something that’s very, very unlikely to happen in this country. Political violence towards candidates, it’s happening, but in terms of the broader post-election violence that’s something that doesn’t happen here, can’t be taken for granted in the US wasn’t the last time. And then more broadly, our colleagues in our various countries are looking at how can we strengthen democracies, and we do that by understanding the viewpoints and perspectives of the public more generally, so that’s our kind of first step towards strengthening political culture, democratic culture is understanding how do the public navigate some of these issues.
Dr Theo Zenou 54:51
It’s important stuff. Any final words Sam?
Sam Bidwell 54:54
Well look, I think we’ve got to reflect on both from the report and from the conversation, this evening. And I think what I would hope for as we look forward is we’ve got another two weeks to go on the campaign trail. What will be will be, the next parliament will be elected. What I would hope to see is that whatever happens on July the fourth, this is something that we continue to think about, It’s, as we’ve discussed, this isn’t just something that crops up at election time, this is an ongoing process, and something that we’ve got to be thinking about two to three days into a parliament, as well as to three years, and indeed the very, very end of the parliament. So, I hope that our policymakers and the broader Westminster world will reflect on some of what we’ve discussed this evening.
Dr Theo Zenou 55:44
Thank you. And thank you all for joining us in person and online, for the launch off from the ballot to the bullet, which is actually a quote by Abraham Lincoln. So, this thing has been going on for a long time, and I think we can learn from the insights of the past. Thank you again.