A Labour MP has apologised for the social media abuse received by a Conservative supporter who criticised Jeremy Corbyn.



Young Conservative Alice Terry, 29, said she regularly receives hateful messages because of her views.

But the volume of abuse increased considerably this week, after she tweeted she was “genuinely embarrassed” that people in her generation supported the Labour leader.

The tweet had been retweeted directly more than 350 times and “liked” more than 1,600 times at 5.30pm on Thursday.

I’m genuinely embarrassed that there are people in my generation, and the one below, who support Corbyn. You are ruining this country, think about someone other than yourself. When you’re in full time employment paying tax, you might think differently 🤦🏼‍♀️ #corbyn — ✨Alice✨ (@aliceterry_) March 26, 2018

Dozens of people posted abusive replies to her tweet publicly and about 20 sent her private messages directly, she said.

Among the insults sent to her privately were some that called her a “cunt”, a “slag” and “Tory scum”.

When Terry highlighted the responses she had received, Labour’s Jess Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, replied saying: “So so sorry about this awful sewer of people.”

Asked by a Conservative councillor if she would raise the issue of this “childish but harmful” abuse, Phillips said: “Gladly.”

Terry said: “I’m not blaming Labour because I have no information on the people sending the tweets, but people need to be more aware of what they say to people on the internet.

“You could easily blame Jeremy Corbyn but the party are not very good … they don’t seem to comment on the abuse that goes on online.

“I’m not sure how many are actually interested in politics, I think some are quite bored or teenagers doing it for fun.”

In response to Terry’s claims, Labour said the party “does not tolerate online abuse of any kind”.

It added: “Any complaints received by the party about breaches of our rules are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures and any appropriate disciplinary action taken.”

In mid-2016, Labour introduced a social media policy for all members, prohibiting all forms of abuse.

The Conservative party brought in a similar policy for election candidates in January of this year, although it does not extend to members.

Politicians called the 2017 general election the worst ever for online abuse, with shadow home secretary Diane Abbott receiving 45% of all abusive tweets, according to Amnesty.

Twitter and other social networks including Facebook have faced repeated calls to deal with hate speech and abuse on their platforms in recent years.

Recent EU figures show social networks have accelerated their removal of hate speech and abuse, meeting targets to review more than two-thirds of complaints within 24 hours.