Politics

Jo Cox's murder was not just a coincidence

The coarsening of our political discourse might have played a part

June 17, 2016
People gather around a memorial to Labour MP Jo Cox in Parliament Square, Westminster, London, 17th June 2016 ©Yui Mok/PA Wire/Press Association Images
People gather around a memorial to Labour MP Jo Cox in Parliament Square, Westminster, London, 17th June 2016 ©Yui Mok/PA Wire/Press Association Images


People gather around a memorial to Labour MP Jo Cox in Parliament Square, Westminster, London, 17th June 2016 ©Yui Mok/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Killed in the line of duty.

There are public servants who know that there is risk—however small—when they go out to work. Soldiers. Police officers. Fire fighters.

But members of parliament?

The shock of the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox yesterday came from the sheer brutality of the attack. Then, like an aftershock, came the sense of outrage that she was killed at work, just doing her job. And that job—as friends, colleagues, journalists have attested to so well—was helping people with generosity, diligence and, so often, flair.

Senseless violence makes us mourn, and it freezes us in despair. But like a lightning bolt it doesn't just have destructive power; it sheds a fierce light. We suddenly see ourselves and our country illuminated starkly, and it is not a comfortable experience. We learn of the hate mail that Jo Cox had been receiving, though not connected to this attack, and not solely aimed at her: other female MPs are targets too. And if we think, we can recall the vile—and at times violent—misogynist abuse received previously by Jess Phillips, Luciana Berger and Stella Creasy.

Ask around and you will find that many staff who work with MPs and who handle surgeries know about FTAC—the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre. FTAC was set up in 2006 and is a joint police and mental health operation to deal with the threat to prominent public figures from the fixated. As it says in the FAQs section on the FTAC's website: "The fixated are those who have an obsessional pre-occupation (often delusional) with a person or a perceived grievance, which they pursue to an irrational degree."

"The intense preoccupation in many cases drives out everything else, alienating friends and relatives, undermining social networks, and dissipating financial resources. The fixated are, in consequence of their fixation, isolated individuals."

FTAC receive around a thousand referrals a year, and take up around 150 new cases a year. Again, if you talk to MPs or their staff you will learn that behaviour has to be very serious before it can be referred, well beyond what most of us would regard as unacceptable behaviour in a workplace. And, remember, MPs’ surgeries are as much their workplace as the chamber in the House of Commons.

The murder of Jo Cox was right outside one of her regular surgeries. Discussion, which has been started, about whether MPs need greater security from threats is beside the point—or, more accurately, the opposite of the point. Not a single MP I know wants barriers to be put in place to protect them from the public; the security measures taken against terrorism are greatly regretted in terms of fencing politicians off from the public. The deeper, and harder, question is whether we can identify what is the underlying cause.

We know that actions have consequences. Where we seem to hesitate is on the question of whether words, in themselves, are actions too. We try through new social norms to remove sexist, racist, homophobic and other forms of hate speech from public discourse. Not just because it is hurtful (which it is), nor just because it is wrong (which it is). We do it because we think consequences flow from unbridled freedom of speech. If you can say anything about someone then perhaps you will be willing to do anything to them.

So, we come to how politics is done today. What does it mean when Nigel Farage says, as he did on 17th May, that "It is legitimate to say that if people feel they’ve lost control completely, and we have lost control of our borders completely as members of the EU, and if people feel voting doesn’t change anything, then violence is the next step"?

This goes beyond describing and acknowledging public feelings to predicting them. Does Farage endorse violence? This one-off quote above seems to suggest that he is ok with creating an atmosphere of it. While Farage is of course not directly responsible for the brutal attack yesterday, words have consequences.

When those words can be repeated rapidly on social media and echoed—often magnified—anonymously, then we are in a world of demagoguery. Perhaps it is easier to identify it, and condemn it, when it is elsewhere. Say, in the rhetoric of Donald Trump as he seeks to stir ugly emotions with ugly words. But who has not felt queasy during the referendum debate as previously serious and intelligent politicians have lowered themselves through exaggeration to falsehood and outright lies. Members of Her Majesty’s Cabinet have behaved in ways that would have been inconceivable just months ago. And ways of speaking not only reflect ways of thinking, they also shape ways of acting.

Was Jo Cox’s murder a direct consequence of the coarsening of British political discourse? No, it wasn’t. But it wasn’t a coincidence either. There is a continuum of some form. We can either accept this or resist it.

In the words of WH Auden "We must love one another or die."