The Daily Express and others claiming the reaction to Ann Widdecombe’s death has somehow “exposed the left” as hateful, is nonsense as usual.
There is hate on the left. Without question. There’s also hate on the right. There are totally extreme nut jobs on both sides, too. Neither side has a total monopoly on either. But I think it’s pretty lazy to not see past the noise and understand the origin of hatred on any side of conflict. Context is everything. And most can agree with that when it comes to certain situations. As a mother, I understand the hatred a mother would feel towards a drunk driver who ended their child’s life through one careless selfish decision to drive home from the pub intoxicated. Or for worse crimes we know exist. I’m using these examples simply to make the case that our value systems should be consistent. Not to imply the level of harm is the same in all cases. That would be an overreach.
Ann Widdecombe was a deeply controversial politician. She was unapologetic about her views on immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, welfare and poverty. I remember her response when challenged about people who couldn’t afford a cheese sandwich: her answer amounted to, “Don’t have a cheese sandwich then.” I’ve watched her for years as a speaker on right wing conservative talking points; she dedicated her life to politics, but very often in ways that supported the structural degradation of groups of already marginalised people in society. So I loathed what she stood for and I make no secret of that.
And why should others who were actually targeted or harmed by the spread of her views suddenly be expected to pretend she was a saint because of what happened to her? Or be quiet? Widdecombe was anything a saint and anything but quiet throughout her political career. Death doesn’t erase public record.
What I will say though, is this: what happened to her was awful. Abhorrent. What happened was utterly disgusting, AND so were her views on a lot of things. Views that had influence. That doesn’t mean she deserved what happened to her. I feel for her, and her family. She would have been scared. She has my empathy for that. In spades. But I certainly don’t think others who were the focus of her intolerance should be expected to rewrite history or suppress honest criticism of the suffering she supported within society, out of respect for some weird convention that says we should only speak well of the dead. I don’t buy into that.
I’m sure Ann loved her family, had close friends, and watered all her house plants. I don’t see the world in terms of heroes and villains. We can be either at any time under different circumstances. But for those who’ve maybe read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you may also find truth in the words of Covey who said “we are what we repeatedly do”. If you repeatedly lie, guess what? You’re a liar.
There’s truth in that, even though I mostly see people on a spectrum and not in the binary. I still see the small compounding decisions they repeatedly make, and more importantly how those decisions impact others. We can also accept conflicting ideas, where good people commit a bad act, for good reason. It’s complicated.
But overall, some people leave the world a tiny bit kinder, fairer and more compassionate as a result of those compounding decisions met with their sphere of influence. Others leave it more divided, more fearful or less equal. Most of us fall somewhere in between. And most have little influence outside our immediate circle.
Ann had more than the average bod, so I hold her and other public figures to a higher standard. She didn’t stack up, for me.
Ann Widdecombe accepted and even defended policy that saw totally unnecessary poverty and hunger (children included), in the 6th richest country in the world. She stood against abortion in cases of rape. And she consistently fought against gay rights. She repeatedly contributed to this. This is who she was. What she stood for. And what those who support her stand for.
So what the right read as hatred among the left today, in the wake of this awful event that brought her world views into sharp focus, I read as an intolerance not of her skin colour, or her sexual orientation, or her nationality, but of all she stood for and against; all she was intolerant of in people without choices.
Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance explains this best, I think. If you’ve not come across it, it’s essentially characterised by an intolerance of intolerance itself. The difference is this: to be intolerant of someone’s skin colour, ethnicity, or other things they cannot change, such as their sexual orientation, or even level of poverty, certainly if you’re still a child born into it, is not the same as having an intolerance of those who punch down at them from a place of privilege.
Ann Widdecombe was openly homophobic and believed science should one day cure it, as if being gay were a disease to be eradicated. That’s a profound intolerance of something people cannot change. The same cannot be said of a worldview built on prejudice, bigotry or theocratic ideology. Those are beliefs. They’re decisions. They can be questioned, challenged and changed. Even after death. And if she and others like her directed more of their intolerance towards harmful ideas, rather than towards people for who they are, and for that which they cannot change, we’d have less hatred on both sides. But the root of that hatred, is glaringly obvious when you actually take the time to analyse it. Spoiler alert: it’s not coming from the left.
So this headline can get in the bin.
Where it belongs.