This June marks the 10th anniversary of the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by white supremacist Thomas Mair, and the foundation created in her memory is encouraging community groups and local authorities to organise activities commemorating her legacy under the banner of The Great Get Together. Jo was a passionate advocate of unity over division, of celebrating the ties that bind diverse communities, of kindness over hate.
In 2026 there is more reason than ever to recognise the need to confront the torrents of online abuse that many public figures face, and which seem recently to have spread to the streets, with immigrants and asylum seekers being a particular target.
One East Sussex community that has experienced months of demonstrations and weekly marches through the town protesting the housing of asylum seekers in a nearby military training camp is Crowborough – and so it’s particularly apt that Wealden District Council voted unanimously at their recent annual meeting to promote events linked to The Great Get Together.
Remembering Jo Cox
The decision came as part of a motion tabled by Labour councillor Daniel Manvell. He described his reaction to the news of Jo Cox’s death: “I remember the moment really well, because when I heard that she had been killed I was just on my way to an EU referendum campaign meeting at Uckfield Civic Centre. I think it was in the last week of the referendum campaign, so it was quite a fraught, busy time.
“I can just remember the shock of the news; it was visceral. It just completely floored me that an MP had been killed in the UK. That something like that could happen. Everyone there was similarly subdued.
“But what is even more sad, is that I actually can’t remember where I was or what I was doing when I heard that Southend MP David Ames was murdered in 2021. I think that shows the level of political violence in the UK and around the world’s democracies between 2016 when Jo was murdered and 2021 when David was.
“We’ve become desensitised to just how ugly democratic politics have become.”
Abuse and intimidation rising significantly
A number of national surveys bear out Manvell’s claim. Online abuse of local councillors and MPs has risen significantly over the past decade, with women and those from ethnic minorities being particularly targeted. According to a Local Government Association report “Debate Not Hate”, 73% of councillors reported experiencing abuse or intimidation in 2024 and 22% said that they had received death threats or threats of violence linked to their public role. The majority of the abuse occurred online.
Other Wealden councillors recounted their own experiences which reflect this trend. Labour councillor Ben Cox told the meeting that a local volunteer involved in his party’s last general election campaign had had their address spread online in an attempt to intimidate. He said he had no “door knockers” out for the recent local election campaign as a direct result of this incident. Shockingly, he also revealed that he receives death threats quite regularly.
Conservative councillor Johanna Howell said that she had been asked by her children to withdraw from politics entirely following the murder of David Ames, and the Green leader of the council, Rachel Millward, regularly has police involved in considering her safety. As leader of Wealden District Council, she has been the target of a torrent of online and face-to-face abuse, much of it linked to the Home Office plan to house asylum seekers in the Crowborough military camp. A decision that the local council has virtually no power to combat.
Councillor Howell expressed the fear that this level of abuse threatens the very basis of our democracy in the UK. “It would seem a great shame that those of us who put our heads above the parapet and often get them shot down — and it is deeply, deeply unpleasant, we all know that — should be shut up.
“Because if we are all shut up, what happens then? We become a dictatorship.”
Keep being brave
Locally, the fight-back has begun against the divisions stirred up by the Crowborough weekly protest marches. It started with just one brave man standing silently holding up a placard promoting kindness and unity as the marchers passed by. Over the weeks he has been joined by a growing group of locals whose values reflect the aims of the Great Get Together, and the need to build bridges between different views and sections of our local communities.
Councillor Millward expressed it well in her closing words to the council meeting in May:
“Wherever we come from, however we got here, whatever our faith, whatever our gender, whatever our status in society or otherwise, whether we are here temporarily or in families that have been here for generations — abuse is never okay and all that we can do is keep being brave and keep committing to that.”
(This article draws on a piece by Huw Oxburgh published on May 13th and made available via the Local Democracy Reporting Service, with many thanks)
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