Breda O'Brien: Widdecombe defended free speech. But there’s no defending some reactions to her death

Ann Widdecombe was a resolute champion of free speech. It is even possible she would have defended the right of people to post gleeful, malicious comments on social media rejoicing at the violent death inflicted on the 78-year-old veteran politician.AI-generated memes were posted of her in her famous yellow Strictly Come Dancing costume, being dragged into hell by the devil. Others rejoiced publicly that “another hateful bigot had been consigned to the dustbin of history”. Some used language too foul to be repeated.Bluesky, an allegedly kinder alternative to the nastiness of X.com, hosted some particularly cruel examples. An Aberdeen University employee, Heather Herbert, was arrested and charged over social media comments about Widdecombe’s death after allegedly saying she hoped it had been “an extremely painful death. I hope she was handcuffed to the bed as she screamed in agony.”This was a reference to the lie that Widdecombe approved of women being handcuffed in labour, which she had not said. Incidentally, as prisons minister, she visited every prison, a record held by no other minister.READ MOREAdam Boulton, former Sky News presenter, apologised for using terms such as “spinster”, “old maid” and “claimed to be a virgin” about her. No man is described in equivalent terms. Peter Tatchell apologised for calling her a bigot, which he posted before it was clear she had been murdered, but is calling someone a bigot ever a good response to a death?Daze Aghaji, an environmental activist, was asked for her views on Widdecombe on BBC Two’s Politics Live. While acknowledging that it was awful she had been murdered and that it was “a sad way to go out”, she felt it necessary to list all the harm she felt Widdecombe had done to people in her communities – Aghaji is a queer Christian of colour. “It would be [remiss] to not mention the fact that she pushed against LGBTQ+ rights throughout all of her career,” she said, later adding: “so I feel like even though what’s happened is absolutely awful, there are a lot of people who won’t be grieving this.”Fellow panellists Conservative shadow culture secretary Nigel Huddleston and Labour MP Jess Asato immediately challenged her. Asato, in a dignified intervention, said it was neither the time nor the place for such comments. Arguably, enumerating a victim’s perceived shortcomings within days of a murder allows the focus to drift from the brutal crime and the threat to democracy. Given the murders of Labour MP Jo Cox and Conservative MP David Amess, a close friend of Widdecombe’s, it is unsurprising the MPs were shocked.Although women politicians have to cope with particularly egregious abuse, including sexualised commentary, ugly rhetoric comes from all parts of the political spectrum and is not confined to politicians. Some vile comments have been posted about American Jamey Carney, who was also recently murdered. People on the right of the political spectrum used the toxic phrase coined by Gad Saad “suicidal empathy”, as if Carney were partly responsible for her own dreadful death. Widdecombe was a supporter of free speech, but common decency should prevent malicious rejoicing in someone’s brutal death. Rev Richard Coles, a gay Anglican clergyman with an improbable previous incarnation as half of the 1980s band The Communards, described Widdecombe as an adversary and “inconveniently congenial” acquaintance. Human beings, when you get to know them, can rarely be reduced to a caricature.[ Richard Coles: ‘Do you know who Shane MacGowan reminded me of? Maria Callas’Opens in new window ]Widdecombe had close gay friends, including broadcaster Iain Dale, and declared she could not care less what consenting adults did in the bedroom. In a 2019 Oxford Union debate, Widdecombe helped defeat the motion “This House Supports No Platforming” by a vote of 224 to 49. In her usual humorous fashion, she claimed to be “offended, upset, insulted at least 30 times a day” but “nobody has the right to live their lives being protected from offence, or from insult, or from hurt feelings”.She said “we should also remember that today’s heresy can become tomorrow’s credo. How fortunate we were that the Wilberforces of this world, the Pankhursts, the Martin Luther Kings, and everybody else who has, over time and with massive effort, changed society, how grateful we may be that they were not no-platformed because it offended the society of their time”.While I did not share some of Widdecombe’s views, especially on Brexit and Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, I am grateful for her courage and many kindnesses to opponents. As a tireless free speech advocate, Widdecombe would probably have robustly defended Herbert’s right to be tasteless and nasty, and would likely have opposed criminal charges. Nonetheless, it says something bleak about us that even tragic, violent death no longer guarantees basic decency.