The food writer and campaigner Jack Monroe has begun libel proceedings against Katie Hopkins, in a row over tweets which allegedly imply Monroe defaced or condoned the damage of a war memorial.

Monroe, who is suing the controversial Mail Online columnist over the posts from May 2015, told the high court in London that the messages from Hopkins had led to death threats, and said their legal dispute had been an “unproductive, devastating nightmare”. The food blogger’s lawyers argue the tweets were defamatory and caused “serious harm” to Monroe’s reputation.



The case, which opened on Monday, centres on public Twitter messages sent by Hopkins to Monroe – apparently in a case of mistaken identity – after a memorial to the women of the second world war in Whitehall was vandalised with the words “Fuck Tory scum” during an anti-austerity demonstration.



Commenting on the graffiti, Laurie Penny, a columnist for the New Statesman, tweeted from her account @PennyRed that she “[didn’t] have a problem” with the vandalism as a form of protest, as “the bravery of past generations does not oblige us to be cowed today”.



Shortly afterwards, in a tweet directed to Monroe’s then account @MsJackMonroe, Hopkins wrote: “Scrawled on any memorials recently? Vandalised the memory of those who fought for your freedom. Grandma got any more medals?”



The court was told that Hopkins had mistaken Monroe for Penny. Both writers have been outspoken anti-austerity critics.



Lawyers for Monroe, a contributor to the Guardian, argue that the tweet suggested that the food writer had either vandalised a war memorial, and “thereby desecrated the memory of those who fought for [Monroe’s] freedom and had committed a criminal act”, or had “condoned or approved” of the criminal vandalisation of a war memorial.



William Bennett, acting for Monroe, told the judge, Mr Justice Warby, that the tweet was “a particular affront” because part of Monroe’s identity “is as a member of a family closely involved with the armed forces”.



Shortly after Hopkins’s original message, Monroe tweeted in response: “I have NEVER ‘scrawled on a memorial’. Brother in the RAF. Dad was a Para in the Falklands. You’re a piece of shit.”



Monroe later sent a second message asking Hopkins to apologise: “Dear @KTHopkins, public apology + £5K to migrant rescue and I won’t sue. It’ll be cheaper for you and v satisfying for me.”



Hopkins deleted the first tweet but, said Bennett, “she did not apologise or retract the allegation even though she knew it was false”. Shortly afterwards, the Mail columnist tweeted: “Can someone explain to me – in 10 words or less – the difference between irritant @PennyRed and social anthrax @MsJackMonroe.”



Monroe’s lawyers claim that this second tweet bore a “defamatory innuendo meaning” that Monroe “approved or condoned the criminal vandalisation of the women’s war memorial during an anti-government protest”.



Bennett told the court: “The claimant’s primary case is that by reason of the seriousness of the allegations and the scale of publication, serious harm to reputation has been caused.



“A widely published allegation that someone has either vandalised a war memorial or approved of such an act will inevitably cause serious damage to reputation.”



Jonathan Price, for Hopkins, told the judge in written argument that the columnist’s case was that “this relatively trivial dispute arose and was resolved on Twitter in a period of several hours”.



He argued that “no lasting harm, and certainly no serious harm”, to Monroe’s reputation resulted from it. Price said Hopkins’s case was that “these proceedings are an unnecessary and disproportionate epilogue to the parties’ otherwise forgotten Twitter row”.



But Monroe rejected Price’s suggestion that rather than the row being the worst thing the blogger had experienced on Twitter, it had in fact been the best thing because it had offered an opportunity to bring the proceedings.



“These proceedings have been a nightmare,” Monroe told the court. “It has been an 18-month, unproductive, devastating nightmare.



“I did not want to be here today. I have offered several times though my lawyer to settle these proceedings outside court. This is the last thing that I wanted to be doing.” The blogger, who is understood to be seeking £50,000 in damages plus costs, told the court that Hopkins’s messages had led to abuse from others on Twitter, including death threats.



Monroe came to prominence through a blog, A Girl Called Jack, which shared affordable recipes the writer had devised as a single parent of a young child, and led to regular columns in the Guardian, Huffington Post and elsewhere. The blog was later renamed Cooking on a Bootstrap. The writer also became an outspoken campaigner on issues of poverty and social justice.



In December, Mail Online was forced to pay £150,000 to a British Muslim family over a column by Hopkins which falsely accused them of extremism after they were stopped by US immigration officials en route to Disneyland. Hopkins had suggested that two brothers travelling with their extended family were extremists with links to al-Qaida, and said it was right that they were stopped. The website published an apology.



Hopkins, who first found fame as a contestant on The Apprentice, left the Sun in 2015 after writing a column that compared migrants to cockroaches and becoming the target of a petition calling for her to be sacked.



The columnist was not in court and is not expected to give evidence during the two-day hearing.



The case continues.







