Councillor Bradley says it's a 'gloves-off moment' to end intimidatory behaviour

An Inishowen county councillor, who has witnessed and suffered abuse as a candidate and canvasser, is calling for tougher legislation to deal with intimidatory behaviour - especially around election times.

A recent study carried out by UCD has revealed that 94 per cent of politicians and 72 per cent of political staff have encountered abuse during their work.

Councillor Fionán Bradley, who has been on the receiving end of intimidatory behaviour, says “lines have been crossed” recently.

He says there is a perception that candidates, staff, canvassers, supporters, family and friends are fair game and should be expected to take abuse from people who are aggrieved with them.

“I accept that as a politician you must be held to public scrutiny and explain decisions you make, but I do feel in the recent past that lines have been crossed on a number of occasions.”

Running as a candidate at the Local Elections last year, Councillor Bradley and his family were targeted in an incident that left him feeling “anxious and nervous.” 

The first-time candidate had one of his campaign posters pulled down off a pole in Lisfannon. It was cut in half with "surgical precision as a fine straight line was cut across the neck of the poster." The eyes of the Buncrana councillor were also cut out of the poster. A number of footprints were also visible on the sign as if someone had walked all over it. 

The scariest part of the intimidatory incident for the Buncrana man was that the two halves of the poster were brought a distance to Councillor Bradley's mother's house and dumped in her front garden, where she lives on her own.

"It was a concerted effort to do what they did and dump it where they did. They were obviously trying to send me some message." 

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"It was intimidating because I don't expect everyone who goes out to vote will vote for me, and not everyone is going to like me. That is fine, but go about your business and vote for someone else, but leave me and my property alone."

The Fianna Fail Councillor fears if this type of behaviour isn't nipped in the bud, then it will deter people from entering politics.

“Where I live, I have a wife and a young child. For a while after the incident, it made me nervous and anxious even when out canvassing. I didn't want to panic my wife, but I thought to myself, if this individual has gone to all this effort just to do that to my poster, what else are they capable of doing?”

“I think as politicians, we expect to receive some level of abuse. The line is crossed when you start to worry about your family or are dragged into it."

The Buncrana councillor isn’t the only Inishowen politician or candidate to suffer abuse in the run-up to elections. South Inishowen local election candidate Adrian McMyler had a poster set on fire on an ESB pole; that incident "was borderline insanity,” adds Mr Bradley. 

The then Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConologue, had dozens of posters defaced with markers, paint, and stickers with really crude messages written on them in the lead-up to the General Election last year. The outside of his constituency office was also vandalised.

The UCD survey indicated that politicians were inclined to not report abuse in case it discouraged voters come election time, and this was one of the reasons Mr Bradley didn’t report his own personal experience to the authorities. 

“I didn't want the negative publicity or legitimacy of what the person had done, I had no proof of anything, as no one had seen anything taking place or could prove who it was, but in hindsight, it wasn't the right course of action.” 

After the General Election and witnessing what the new Minister of State at the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media had to endure, Councillor Bradley says it has really changed his perception of what has to be a “watershed moment.” 

“I feel like it's a gloves-off moment now. We can't stand idly by anymore. The lines were more than crossed during that General Election campaign with everything Charlie McConologue went through. If anything were to happen to me again, then I would refer it to the guards because we are in a dangerous place now.”

In the last nine years, two MPs have been murdered in England, and the Inishowen Councillor says that a similar incident can't be ruled out here, “If we don't have a change in what is acceptable and what isn't, then it's possibly inevitable it could happen.”

Councillor Bradley would like to see legislation introduced to discourage abusers from intimidating politicians and put forward a motion at the recent DCC meeting calling on abusive behaviour to be stamped out.

"I don't know what the wording of the legislation would exactly look like, but it would be an offence to be personally abusive towards anyone involved in political life. Whether that's a politician or their staff." 

The South Inishowen councillor would also like to see people call out the abuse collectively.

"Some of these people that are hurling abuse are very good at getting backing online. If all of us who are involved in political life were to back each other together when instances like this happen, it would be a positive aspect."

Councillor Bradley says social media has a big part to play in the abuse politicians suffer. "Of all the instances that were reported to the guards during the General Election, which were 55 incidents, 93 per cent of those had a connection to social media."

"One example Roderic O'Gorman had a clipboard pushed out of his hand and when the story broke on news websites the commentary under the articles condoning, praising and encouraging other instances like it was shocking. There is this perception that the online world is a totally different parallel to the real." 

It's not just members of the public and online trolls, politicians face unsavoury behaviour from their colleagues as well, says Councillor Bradley, and until that is stamped out, then it is very difficult to face the problem head-on on he argues.

Verona Murphy, on the first day as Ceann Comhairle, suffered "a form of abuse by her own colleagues in Dail Eireann. Shocking scenes in national parliament by parliamentarians roaring and shouting in an intimidating manner towards the speaker. It sets a very bad example; if we are doing it towards our own colleagues."