Councillors are at the centre of local democracy. Elected from amongst their local community, it is a privilege and responsibility to be elected to public office at the local and national levels.
It is a key principle of democracy that government should be open and transparent and that decisions made by elected members at any level of government should be open to scrutiny and challenge. The ability to debate and disagree well is also vital to when there are significant division in viewpoints, to take into account varying experiences and when politicians grapple with difficult decision about complex issues. However, increasing levels of abuse and intimidation in political and public discourse are negatively impacting politicians and democracy at local and national levels. Communities rightly have high expectations of those in public office, both in terms of their decision-making and their conduct and behaviour while fulfilling their public role. In addition, the right to object and constructively challenge are both key components to our democratic system, but abuse and intimidation cross the line into unacceptable behaviour, serve to silence democratic voices and deter people from engaging with politics.
There is evidence that increasing levels of toxicity of debate and abuse against public figures are having an impact on our country’s democratic processes at a national and local level. In 2017, the Committee for Standards in Public Life published a report on Intimidation in public life in which the Committee suggested that “the scale and intensity of intimidation is now shaping public life”. Since then, research into abuse toward parliamentary candidates has supported anecdotal concerns that levels of abuse are increasing and that women, ethnic minority and LGBTQIA+ politicians receive more discriminatory abuse related to their personal characteristics. During the general election in 2019, concerns were raised over a number of female MPs who retired from politics and cited abuse they faced as a key factor in their decision-making.
Beyond abuse that may dissuade prospective politicians from standing for election, there are significant concerns about the risks to politicians’ personal safety. Although rare, serious incidents do occur as shown by the murder of Jo Cox MP in 2016 and Sir David Amess MP in 2021.
Growing concerns about abuse and councillor safety
Data collected by the LGA in 2021-2022 showed that seven in 10 councillors experienced abuse or intimidation in the previous twelve months, with 10 per cent saying they experienced it frequently. A similar proportion had felt personally at risk while fulfilling their councillor role. Refreshes to this dataset in June 2023 showed an increase in both these measures to eight in 10 councillors saying they’d experienced abuse or intimidation and felt personally at risk during the last year. Half of respondents to our survey in 2023 said the amount of abuse and intimidation they received had increased since they first served as a councillor.
The abuse described by respondents to LGA surveys took place both online and in person, although many said the high volumes of abuse received online were particularly challenging. Death threats, abusive and discriminatory language, character assassination and intimidatory behaviour, such as encroaching on personal spaces, were common forms of abuse. Destruction of property, physical assault, and serious ongoing harassment like stalking or sexual harassment were rarer but not unheard of.
Both persistent “low-level” abuse and single incidents of threat or aggression had a dramatic impact on victims and their families. Some reported feeling very vulnerable in their local communities, with their personal information very accessible to the public, from when and where their ward surgeries will be held to their home addresses. Many suggested that significant levels of abuse experienced by local councillors and the requirement to publish home addresses on the public register of interests puts prospective councillors off from standing for election.
As with parliamentarians, there are a wide range of contentious issues that have been seen to lead to abuse, harassment and intimidation of councillors, arising from heated debate and sometimes from deliberate mis or disinformation. These can include purely local issues, such as planning decisions, parking policies or traffic management schemes; policy areas where national government decisions or choices impact a local area, such as the housing of asylum seekers in hotels or on sites such as former airfields; but also national or international issues unrelated to council functions – most recently, some councillors have reported an upsurge in harassment and intimidation in relation to the conflict in the Middle East. Other abuse or harassment is purely personally focused against a particular individual councillor, based on personal fixations, disagreements or prejudice.