Luciana Berger Says “Democracy Is Diminished” When MPs Are Made To Feel Unsafe
Luciana Berger re-joined Labour earlier this year after quitting in 2019 (Alamy)
7 min read
The former Labour MP Luciana Berger has said “our democracy is diminished” when people in politics are made to feel unsafe due to the online abuse that she and others have suffered.
Berger quit the party in 2019 after years of continued harassment, often from individuals who supported its then-leader Jeremy Corbyn, saying her local constituency party had become a “really ugly, ugly place to be in”.
Speaking to The Rundown podcast from PoliticsHome, she said there is still “limited understanding” of the abuse MPs face, despite multiple convictions for people over threats and harassment towards politicians in recent years.
Having represented Liverpool Wavertree for Labour from 2010, Berger joined several others in a short-lived breakaway group of MPs, but re-joined the party earlier this year, saying Keir Starmer had begun to turn things round.
Calling the decision to leave “horrific”, she said the party had been her home for two decades, and part of her heritage too, as her great-uncle was the MP Manny Shinwell, infamous for being the last person to throw a punch in the House of Commons. He struck the Conservative MP Commander Robert Tatton Bower in the face during a debate in 1938 after he told him to “go back to Poland”, which he took to be an anti-Semitic heckle.
Anti-Semitism was something his grand-niece would become all-too-accustomed to during her own spell as an MP, and she explained how his career in Parliament - serving as a minister under both Ramsay MacDonald and Clement Attlee either side of World War Two before moving into the House of Lords - inspired her.
“I obviously don't condone physical violence, but certainly I was inspired by his fight, if we can call it that, against racism and anti-Semitism, which I ended up taking forward myself,” Berger said.
Having been involved in student politics at university she credits the Labour Women's Network with providing the training and support for her to try and stand in 2010, winning her seat aged just 28.
But even before she entered the Commons she became the subject of abusive commentary, with criticism over a young Londoner being selected for a safe seat 200 miles away in Liverpool. This got steadily worse over her nine years as an MP.
Describing a “particularly acute challenge within my constituency Labour party”, she explained how local members who “had previously been consigned to the history books, because they'd be members of the Militant tendency” were “welcomed back with open arms” under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and “created a really unpleasant, nasty environment”.
“Which was one of the reasons that led me to make the decision that I could no longer be part of a party that, at the time, was betraying the very values that led me to join it in the first place,” Berger added.
“I had the most incredible constituency party, people that we would socialise [with] and have such a lovely time”, she said. “All the lovely people left, because they wouldn't be a part of it, it became a really ugly, ugly place to be in, it was devoid of any sort of human emotion, it was just awful.”
She faced abuse beyond the constituency level, regularly bearing the brunt of an avalanche of anti-Semitic attacks online, which progressed to real-world harassment, with six people convicted of offences against her, four of them ending up in jail.
She revealed she once had to give evidence in the Old Bailey while seven months pregnant “against someone who then went on to do a Nazi salute and who was sent to prison”.
But Berger adds there was “limited understanding” of what she and those close to her had to face, adding: “I was always struck by the colleagues, I remember one in particular, it was a male colleague who was doing a vote in the lobbies, and he came up to me saying 'I’ve just been copied into this thing, and it seems like it's just so horrific, this thing is awful - it was anti-Semitic, and it was misogynistic and it was violent, it was horrific’, and I was like, 'Yes, and I think that's one of 50 or 100 I've had today.'"
"This stuff's really serious and just because it happens online - not all of it, but the majority of it happened online - doesn’t mean that its impact isn't any diminished, and so I think for everyone, including politicians, more has to be done to protect people, to create spaces where people can enter into and engage in debate, even when we disagree with each other, and maintain some sort of civility,” she said.
“I say that because I care about our democracy, and I feel that our democracy is diminished by the unsafe feelings that people experience.”
Eventually the level of abuse against her became too much, and feeling that it was coming mainly from within her own party, she left Labour for the newly-formed The Independent Group, which later became ChangeUK, and then stood for the Liberal Democrats at the 2019 general election.
Luciana Berger campaigning with ChangeUK
Asked how hard it was to come to that decision, Berger replied: “It was horrific. There is no word for it.
"It was never a decision I thought I'd even have to consider, let alone make, to leave what had been my political home for 20 years, the place that I had dedicated essentially my working life to, I lived and breathed the Labour Party, and was part of my heritage.”
She said it took several months before she left, and pregnant with her second child she feared what the “extraordinary levels of stress” she was experiencing was having on her and her unborn baby.
“This is a party that is vociferously anti-racist, so to then be part of a party that was betraying these values,” Berger added.
“Obviously my experience was particularly distinct from most other people's and acute because I faced it on many different fronts.
“But to have that experience where in my mind it was just the party in name only, it was not living out its values, it was betraying its values. I just could not be a part of it anymore.”
Despite all of this she said would “do it all again”, and has no regrets about any of the decisions she made, while earlier this year she re-joined Labour, saying the party had now "turned a significant corner" under Starmer's leadership.
“I don't think anyone's pretending that the challenge has been completely fixed,” she added.
“But I do wholly acknowledge the progress that has been made, and that has required oversight, that has required leadership and involvement, I don't think there's been many public speeches that Keir’s made that related to party matters when he hasn't talked about this issue."
Since re-joining the party she has been seen alongside senior party figures, including Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves on an event at a holiday park last month, so is she planning a return to frontline politics?
“People can make contributions in lots of different ways, I have touched on what was a privilege to be able to do what I did for almost 10 years during my time in the House of Commons,” Berger replied, before adding: “I haven't ruled it out.”
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