In times of trouble, history is always a comfort and sometimes a warning. While our air is thick with polarised opinions, intimidation of MPs, imaginary conspiracies and all-too-real prejudice, it is worth knowing that we’ve been here many times before. The Gordon Riots of 1780 were inspired by a small parliamentary concession to the rights of Roman Catholics at a time when fears of “popery” were extreme. Large areas of London were set ablaze and hundreds of people killed, with churches and great houses destroyed in a week of uncontrollable violence. Order was only restored after King George III personally took charge and troops fired on the crowds.
A few decades later, the huge economic changes brought by the Industrial Revolution and the end of the Napoleonic Wars led to the intense political struggle that culminated in the Great Reform Act of 1832. Along the way came the Peterloo massacre in 1819, a plot to kill the entire cabinet in 1820, and huge crowds threatening parliament in later years — the Duke of Wellington sometimes made his way to the Lords with stones hurled at him and protesters trying to pull him off his horse.
Even in our own time, MPs and the public have endured the threat of murderous violence. Every leading Conservative in the 1980s knew someone killed or badly injured in the Brighton bombing. As a new MP, I benefited from the guidance of Ian Gow, a wise and principled man who was murdered by the IRA. And I will never forget sitting in my Westminster office in 1991 and hearing the thud of the mortars that were intended to destroy Downing Street.
Now we have entered a new period in which polarisation and hatred have re-emerged. In recent years two MPs have been murdered by extremists in the course of their constituency work. Intimidation of MPs appears to be rife and abusing them has become a norm. Huge crowds march in protest at the Gaza war. This week might bring, after a by-election campaign dominated by these developments, a victory for George Galloway — whose appeal is entirely based on the exploitation of division.
From our history we can draw hope: we have often overcome deeper polarisation in the past. Furthermore, we have regularly emerged from it to enjoy marked periods of social peace and national success. It is important not to become apocalyptic, thinking the situation beyond hope or improvement, which only drives people further apart. But it is also vital to learn from the past, and to take active steps to prevent more extreme differences undermining society and democracy in the future.
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Fundamental to that is the freedom of elected representatives from intimidation and threats. In all those dark historical episodes, parliamentarians refused to bow to violence, whether real or promised. That is why it was such a terrible mistake last week for the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, to depart from long-established procedure precisely on the grounds that MPs were being threatened. The right response to that error is not to eject this fair-minded man from his office, but for him and the whole House of Commons to resolve that no threats will ever change their vote.
Such resolve will need support, from the law and the police. More use could be made of the Public Order Act, which is designed to outlaw the stirring up of racial hatred. But there is clearly a need for strengthened laws on extremism. Three years ago, a report by Sir Mark Rowley, now the Met Police commissioner, and Dame Sara Khan, called for a new definition of extremism to deal with activities that seek to “erode and destroy the democratic rights and freedoms of society”. Michael Gove has been working on a new counter-extremism strategy, and the opposition calling for one: the coming weeks would be the right time to present that.
But reversing polarisation will take more than addressing its symptoms. Political leaders at all levels have to stop indulging the fantasies that feed division. The Labour candidate in Rochdale was disowned by his party because he repeated the ludicrous idea that Israel deliberately allowed the October 7 attacks in order to assault Gaza. He was not only antisemitic, which should be a sufficient disqualification from being an MP, but unhinged from reality. On the Conservative side, Lee Anderson could have found plenty of reasonable attacks to make on Sadiq Khan without alleging that he is “controlled by Islamists”, an obviously ridiculous thing to say that could not possibly be substantiated.
Public figures must expose conspiracy theories for what they are, not lend them credence to please an audience. On this side of the Atlantic we have to resist at all costs the bizarre accusations of sinister plots that have become the currency of American discourse. Last week’s statements in Washington by the former prime minister Liz Truss, attributing her problems in office to the “deep state” — which apparently included the very dangerous Economist magazine — were so delusional as to be hilarious. But the entry of conspiracy-driven nonsense into our public debate, whether it be antisemitic, Islamophobic, or just an excuse, must be squashed.
A firm rejection of extremist ideas and of unfounded paranoia is certainly supported by the lessons of history. Yet we are going to need something more: the positive promotion of reason, truth, free debate and shared identity — everything that helps us to listen to the arguments of others and find agreement with them. The reason the British state survived the disorders of past centuries is that it found ways to heal divisions in spite of the violence it endured along the way.
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How can we do that? My own belief, often advanced in this column, is that it has become vital to create new ways to forge a collective sense of belonging to the same country. Volunteering, mandatory civic duty, selective national service: all these have a role in ensuring that young people — Muslim, Jewish, Christian, atheist, northern, southern, rich, poor — spend time together in person. Neither fractured identity politics nor the current cult of individualism, without any sense of responsibility or community, is compatible with a thriving society.
And for that to have a chance of working, social media would have to be transformed. Action is needed against sites like Telegram, used by jihadists, neo-Nazis and extremists of many kinds to spread hate to hundreds of millions of users and on to other social platforms. More fundamentally, the addictive and sensational model of social media that feeds so much uninformed opinion needs to be replaced with one that requires civil deliberation and seeing another point of view.
Neither Britain nor the western world are doomed: we have been through worse before. But the latest upsurge of intolerance and hatred requires a firm response today, and some bold ideas for tomorrow.
