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| Deference in public life had to go. But courtesy is indispensable Deference in public life had to go. But courtesy is indispensable | |
| (6 months later) | |
| Truly shocking events, such as the killing of Jo Cox, produce a freeze-frame in time. The shutter falls. The Earth hesitates in its orbit. Normal business is suspended. Events, habits, small decisions so familiar they were reduced to little more than a reflex are stripped of their ordinariness and assume a new significance. We recover, for a moment, a little of the sensitivity that has been calloused over by life. | Truly shocking events, such as the killing of Jo Cox, produce a freeze-frame in time. The shutter falls. The Earth hesitates in its orbit. Normal business is suspended. Events, habits, small decisions so familiar they were reduced to little more than a reflex are stripped of their ordinariness and assume a new significance. We recover, for a moment, a little of the sensitivity that has been calloused over by life. |
| That may be why #thankyourMP, while not quite trending on Twitter, is doing brisk business. The death of a young mother while she was doing her job of being available to help her constituents is, among all the many other things that have been written about so well already, a reminder of what a hard and usually thankless job it is to be an MP; and of how precious are the people prepared to give up all the prospect of a normal life in order to do it. | That may be why #thankyourMP, while not quite trending on Twitter, is doing brisk business. The death of a young mother while she was doing her job of being available to help her constituents is, among all the many other things that have been written about so well already, a reminder of what a hard and usually thankless job it is to be an MP; and of how precious are the people prepared to give up all the prospect of a normal life in order to do it. |
| This very public public service imposes an extra burden on young women. That is particularly true of those who, like Jo Cox, have small children. But there is much more than motherhood to manage. | This very public public service imposes an extra burden on young women. That is particularly true of those who, like Jo Cox, have small children. But there is much more than motherhood to manage. |
| As the Guardian’s exploration of online debate, the web we want, has shown, women, and particularly younger women in positions of power and responsibility, are the target for peculiarly nasty and sometimes downright frightening attacks threatening violence, rape and even murder. Earlier this year, Cox herself had to go to the police to stop one man harassing her. | As the Guardian’s exploration of online debate, the web we want, has shown, women, and particularly younger women in positions of power and responsibility, are the target for peculiarly nasty and sometimes downright frightening attacks threatening violence, rape and even murder. Earlier this year, Cox herself had to go to the police to stop one man harassing her. |
| The more that voters feel MPs are cut off from them and their experiences, the more damaging it is that such relentless and threatening attempts are made to intimidate them into silence. | The more that voters feel MPs are cut off from them and their experiences, the more damaging it is that such relentless and threatening attempts are made to intimidate them into silence. |
| MPs are required by the nature of their job to be visible, easy to trace, always available. But they make this choice to step into public life. That’s not true of most of the other jobs that involve contact with the public. Doctors and teachers, bus drivers and hospital receptionists: these are not people who chose to expose themselves to other people’s anger and impatience as a core duty at work. Yet people doing the kind of job that was once treated with respect and sometimes real admiration are now confronted with offhand rudeness. Appointments are missed, advice not followed, ordinary human tolerance disregarded. | MPs are required by the nature of their job to be visible, easy to trace, always available. But they make this choice to step into public life. That’s not true of most of the other jobs that involve contact with the public. Doctors and teachers, bus drivers and hospital receptionists: these are not people who chose to expose themselves to other people’s anger and impatience as a core duty at work. Yet people doing the kind of job that was once treated with respect and sometimes real admiration are now confronted with offhand rudeness. Appointments are missed, advice not followed, ordinary human tolerance disregarded. |
| There is almost no place where a worker who provides some kind of service can feel entirely safe from verbal assault and sometimes worse. The signs in public places demanding courtesy now come as standard. There is a sense of entitlement that allows too many people to interpret the concept of “public” and “servant” as if it applied in an entirely personal way. | There is almost no place where a worker who provides some kind of service can feel entirely safe from verbal assault and sometimes worse. The signs in public places demanding courtesy now come as standard. There is a sense of entitlement that allows too many people to interpret the concept of “public” and “servant” as if it applied in an entirely personal way. |
| That’s not to say that anyone wants to go back to forelock-tugging subservience. The end of the age of deference was a prerequisite to a properly functioning democracy. Politics and politicians have always attracted the most scabrous of attacks. What has changed is the capacity to deliver abuse directly into the private life of the target of your criticism. There is a gulf between publishing a cartoon, or making a critical speech, and tweeting a threat of violence to someone’s smartphone. | That’s not to say that anyone wants to go back to forelock-tugging subservience. The end of the age of deference was a prerequisite to a properly functioning democracy. Politics and politicians have always attracted the most scabrous of attacks. What has changed is the capacity to deliver abuse directly into the private life of the target of your criticism. There is a gulf between publishing a cartoon, or making a critical speech, and tweeting a threat of violence to someone’s smartphone. |
| The right – the duty – to challenge established power is not the same as a freedom to make personal threats, nor to respond to every attempt to advance a careful argument with unsupported scorn. Unless we break the slide into a coarse and uninhibited public discourse we threaten the very foundations of the kind of exchange that opens minds and shifts opinion. | The right – the duty – to challenge established power is not the same as a freedom to make personal threats, nor to respond to every attempt to advance a careful argument with unsupported scorn. Unless we break the slide into a coarse and uninhibited public discourse we threaten the very foundations of the kind of exchange that opens minds and shifts opinion. |
| It is not as if pointless and personal rudeness was a universal phenomenon. People aren’t often rude to each other waiting for the bus, even if they feel quite free to be rude to the driver when the bus arrives. They queue for tickets, they wait their turn in shops. The kindness of strangers can still be taken for granted. It is not as if humanity itself has been corrupted. | It is not as if pointless and personal rudeness was a universal phenomenon. People aren’t often rude to each other waiting for the bus, even if they feel quite free to be rude to the driver when the bus arrives. They queue for tickets, they wait their turn in shops. The kindness of strangers can still be taken for granted. It is not as if humanity itself has been corrupted. |
| Jo Cox’s husband Brendan is right to insist that love must replace the hate that may have been the motivation for her otherwise inexplicable killing. But she was a seeker of truth, too. And to put truth as well as love back into public debate would be a worthy memorial indeed. | Jo Cox’s husband Brendan is right to insist that love must replace the hate that may have been the motivation for her otherwise inexplicable killing. But she was a seeker of truth, too. And to put truth as well as love back into public debate would be a worthy memorial indeed. |