“I have a panic alarm in my bag”: the grim reality of life as a female politician in Britain

84 per cent of female councillors say they feel at risk doing their job – with online and in-person abuse becoming worryingly normalised.

“There have been periods where I’ve not wanted to be out in the town that I live in on my own,” Hannah Perkin, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Faversham, Kent, tells The Lead. “I’ve now got a panic alarm in my bag. I feel incredibly intimidated all the time. “I’ve had pretty constant abuse for the last year or so.”

Perkin first stood for election in 2019, when she – along with her campaign manager, and the Green Party candidate at that time – had arson threats on her home. “They were hand delivered, so they were taken very seriously by the police,” she says.

Since then, levels of abuse fluctuated, but in the past year, she has faced an onslaught, with the number of people sending her abuse seeming to have grown. “There seems to be deliberate collaboration between different groups of people to target and intimidate specific councillors, and I seem to have been one of them,” she says.

Hannah is a Liberal Democrat councillor in Faversham. Pic: Hannah Perkin

Her detractors have made personal videos about her, calling her “satanic”. She is often named personally in far-right gatherings – which she believes is because she is ardently “pro-refugee”. There have been real-life incidents at Council, too, such as when far-right activists threw eggs and spat at councillors after Perkin proposed a motion for Swale to become a Borough of Sanctuary. [A video online shows what happened].

‘It’s almost like the mask has been removed’

Councillors all over the country are facing an increasing level of hostility. According to research by the Local Government Association [LGA] published last year, eight in 10 councillors said they had been abused or intimidated in 2023, up 10 per cent from the year before.

As The Valleys Lead reported recently, women councillors are particularly likely to be targeted. The LGA research found that 84 per cent of female respondents felt at risk when fulfilling their role as a councillor, compared to 66 per cent of male councillors.

Samara Barnes, a Labour councillor in Lancashire, feels like attacks on local councillors have been seen as “fair game” – “especially being a woman, especially being a working class woman who lived on a council state with tattoos and piercings,” she tells The Lead. Barnes was elected in 2021 and notes that she and the other women councillors on Lancashire County Council face much more abuse than the men.

The police put a marker on Barnes’ home last year. Pic: Samara Barnes

“It’s almost like the mask has been removed, and everyone’s allowed to be racist, sexist and homophobic – and I am a white woman, so I only get one side of it,” she says. “There are people I know that get it a lot worse than me, because they have more protected characteristics, such as Muslim women and women of colour.”

‘A new way of working’

In the last year, Barnes says, “the level of toxicity, and the difficulty in being able to do our job without fear of threat and abuse, has risen incredibly – and while the public is turning on us more, the level of abuse we’re getting from Reform councillors and their activists is causing the most harm and damage.”

As the Lancashire Lead reported, the police put a marker on Barnes’ home last year – an internal police alert flagging the address as high-risk to allow officers to respond effectively – due to the heightened risk of violence towards her. A Reform councillor had shared a heavily edited video which accused her of being racist towards white men. Her intended point had been that an all-white cabinet was making decisions on diversity policy.

These incidents are part of a wider pattern. Last month, the Prime Minister called on Nigel Farage to sack Simon Evans, the second most senior Reform politician in Lancashire, after The Lancashire Lead reported he had shared content on social media calling for the Labour MP Natalie Fleet to be shot.

Perkin says; “I do think the way Reform councillors speak about other people is new. It seems to be if you disagree with them, you’re a disgrace, or a traitor, or all this really emotive language.”

That the abuse appears to be coming from all angles adds to the intimidation, says Perkin. “When you’ve also got like the far-right shouting at you, and [Britain First leader] Paul Golding shouting at you, and all of these other people, it adds up to feeling quite intimidating,” she says. “And when it’s not just the far-right, and Reform are kind of happily cheering them on as well, whilst being a national political party, it feels like that group of people is not so isolated, and it’s quite a large group of people.”

Democracy at risk

Matt Boughton, Chair of the LGA’s Safer and Stronger Communities Committee, tells The Lead: “While robust challenge, scrutiny and debate are essential to a healthy democracy, no one should have to accept intimidation, abuse or threats as part of public service.”

Both Perkin and Barnes believe the hostile atmosphere could push some women out of politics all together. “As someone who has always championed women getting into politics, this is a really uncomfortable place for me to be, because I struggle to encourage women to stand,” says Barnes. “This is what is going to stop democracy, ultimately, and make things worse for women and girls, because there won’t be the right women and girls at the table making decisions.”

But solutions to the issue are complex. “A multi-partner approach is needed to strengthen councillor support, from council safeguarding to robust policing responses. We are pleased to see government action on a long-term LGA ask to remove councillors’ home addresses [from public registers and council websites] and improve resourcing for policing and security measures,” Boughton tells The Lead.

“Moving forwards, the Government, councils, police, representative bodies and social media companies must work together to develop a national strategy to tackle the abuse of public figures, aligning existing initiatives, improving information sharing and providing practical resources to protect those in public life.”

Without a solution, women in politics will continue to be silenced, and democracy will be further watered down. “Politics needs people who are willing to be kind to minorities, and it needs people who are willing to bring their kind of lived experience to councils,” says Perkin.

“Because if women are put off becoming councillors in general, then we lose out on like voices that are necessary for good policymaking, and it feels like lots of very good people are going to be put off of going into politics because of the environment. That’s not acceptable. We need to work together to make sure that doesn’t happen.”■

About the author: Ella Glover is the audience engagement editor at The Lead. She is also a freelance journalist specialising in workers’ rights, housing, health, harm reduction and lifestyle. This story also draws on the reporting of our original, local, network of titles - from Luke Beardsworth at The Lancashire Lead and Lauren Crosby Medlicott at The Valleys Lead.

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