West Lothian Council awards £1,000 grant to new Jo Cox Foundation

West Lothian Council has agreed to donate £1,000 to a charity set up in the name of Jo Cox, the MP murdered by an extremist.

The charity aims to highlight the need for good citizenship in public life and to promote measures to protect those elected to public office from abuse, intimidation and violence.

Linlithgow Lib Dem councilor Sally Pattle praised the council for its support of the charity and called for the suggested donation of £500 to be doubled.

Councilor Pattle told his fellow council executive members they must do everything they can to tackle growing intolerance in public life.

All local authorities have been asked to contribute to the new charity which has been set up thanks to Jo Cox’s Civil Commission, set up earlier this year to tackle abuse and intimidation of elected officials.

Councilor Pattle told the meeting she was pleased to see the document presented to councilors and added: “We have all taken responsibility to represent our communities. This gives us the responsibility to use our language well.

“We should make reference to the fact that if people hear us use derogatory or inflammatory language in this chamber, those terms will become normalized and we will hear them in our communities.

“We also run the risk of becoming targets of abuse both online and offline. No one can deny the fact that the temperature is rising, both in political discourse and beyond. The UK had riots this summer and we can see what is happening in the US now.”

Councilor Pattle added: “I have received letters accusing me of being a Quisling (a term of abuse taken from the name of a Nazi collaborator in the Norwegian government from the 1940s) or a traitor. »

She said the growth of social media meant everyone was safe from violent remarks, threats or intimidation, and said the days of contacting the editor of the local newspaper and him demands to “reduce” the inflammatory coverage had disappeared because of social media. This represents a threat to local democracy

The councilor told members: “I think if we want to attract good candidates to represent us in public life, particularly women, then we need to hold ourselves to higher standards.

“I think we should give more money because the work they do is very important and beneficial to our political discourse.”

Council leader Lawrence Fitzpatrick said all Scottish local authorities had been asked to make a contribution to the charity of between £500 and £1,000. CoSLA, the umbrella organization for local authorities, had also agreed to support the Foundation. He proposed adding a further £500 to the suggested donation, which was seconded by Councilor Pattle.

Jo Cox. was Labor MP for Batley and Spen in Yorkshire when she was murdered by a white supremacist outside a building where she was about to carry out surgery in her constituency in 2016.

In a letter to the council, Su Moore of the Jo Cox Foundation said: “In January 2024, we launched our call to action with 28 recommendations on how to respond to this growing threat to our democracy.

“Since then, we have worked tirelessly with key partners, including the Electoral Commission, COSLA and the police, to ensure our recommendations were adopted.

“In particular, the commitment of the Ministry of the Interior to expand the resources dedicated in each police force to support elected officials, and to include, for the first time, in this provision local councilors, responds directly to the one of our recommendations.

“We are a small charity, so anything you can pledge in terms of financial support will make a real difference in ensuring that we at the Jo Cox Foundation can build on our work to date and make a lasting difference in the fight against abuse and intimidation of people. elected officials. »

By Stuart Sommerville, local democracy reporter

The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) is a public service news agency. It is funded by the BBC, delivered by the local news sector (in Edinburgh this is Reach plc (the publisher behind Edinburgh Live and The Daily Record) and used by many eligible partners. Local Democracy Reporters cover news from leading local authorities and other public service organisations.

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