Diane Abbott alone received almost half of all the abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the run-up to the general election, research by Amnesty International has revealed.
The shadow home secretary, who temporarily stood aside during the election campaign for health reasons, came under a relentless campaign of racist and sexist abuse in the weeks before the 8 June poll. The abuse directed at her amounted to 10 times as much as was received by any other female MP, according to the Amnesty study.
Amnesty researchers found Abbott received 45% of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the six weeks before election day. In the previous six months, she received just under a third of all abuse sent to the same group.
The report, authored by Amnesty technology and human rights researcher Azmina Dhrodia, looked at a sample of 900,223 tweets between 1 January and 8 June, drawn from social media analysis tool Crimson Hexagon.
However, deleted tweets or those whose accounts had been suspended could not be counted, which Dhrodia said could indicate the true scale of abuse was higher than could be accurately recorded.
Black and Asian female MPs received 35% more abusive tweets than their white colleagues, even when Abbott was excluded from the total, the research found.
Of the 140,000 tweets mentioning the shadow home secretary’s Twitter handle, @HackneyAbbott, one in 20 were classified as abusive. During the six months the tweets were monitored, Abbott received more abuse than all female MPs from the Conservative and Scottish National parties combined.
Abbott told the study her experience as an MP had gone from receiving one racist letter a week to hundreds every day, including letters covered in swastikas and pictures of monkeys and chimpanzees. “It’s the volume of it which makes it so debilitating, so corrosive, and so upsetting. It’s the sheer volume. And the sheer level of hatred that people are showing,” she told researchers.
Abbott said she was “not entirely surprised” she was the main target for abuse but added it was “sickening to see it in figures”.
“It’s highly racialised and it’s also gendered because people talk about rape and they talk about my physical appearance in a way they wouldn’t talk about a man. I’m abused as a female politician and I’m abused as a black politician.”
Other female parliamentarians who received a high volume of abuse include Abbott’s shadow cabinet colleagues Emily Thornberry and Angela Rayner. The SNP’s Joanna Cherry and the home secretary, Amber Rudd, were also in the top five targets for abuse in the six weeks prior to the snap election.
Labour MP Jess Philips and outspoken remain-supporter Anna Soubry, a Conservative MP, were also on the receiving end of the most consistent abuse during the wider period of analysis between January and June.
Thornberry said she believed the level of abuse had risen because of the number of high-profile media appearances she had done throughout the election campaign.
“On a practical level, the violent stuff and the death threats are just very time-consuming,” she told the report. “There’s a big process to go through on each occasion with the police and the House authorities, there’s obviously extra security measures you have to put in place each time.”
The volume of abuse received by Abbott alone meant Labour received by far the most abusive tweets per MP among the women in the study, though when the shadow home secretary was excluded it was SNP MPs who received almost half of all the abusive tweets sent to female representatives.
Asian women received the most abuse, despite making up just under 9% of female MPs in Westminster, with an average of 132 abusive tweets per MP, 30% higher than white women.
Former SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, who lost her seat at the June election, told the report the abuse had made her family question why she was putting herself in the spotlight. “Internally, it hurts a lot. It really, really hurts a lot. It’s personal,” she said.
