Last week Shannon, a 21 year old female conservative, made her first trip to Parliament. Inspired by the visit she Tweeted ‘”All Tories are rich, older men” – Hi, my name is Shannon, I’m 21 nice to meet you’ along with the hashtag #Tory, a smiley face and a photo of herself with bunny ears (see below). All fairly innocuous you would think.

Unfortunately some on the hard-left disagreed, and abuse started flooding in. In particular a number of Twitter users suggested she commit suicide (see below – please note we’ve only reproduced a handful of the abusive messages).

In response to the abuse the young activist explained she had previously had problems with mental health, Tweeting ‘Suffered suicidal thoughts/attempts in the past. Receiving tweets telling me to commit today has been heartbreaking. It makes you think’. As you can see below this only seemed to make things worse and the sick abuse, and suggestions that she commit suicide, continued.

Just another example of the sick abuse some conservatives are subject to online by the hard-left. Kinder gentler politics indeed.

Speaking to The Backbencher Shannon explained that her original Tweet was ‘a light-hearted comment to just make a point about the stereotype of the Conservative party’ adding ‘I never expected it to get so many responses’. She added that in terms of her political engagement ‘It does make me question whether I should carry on but I always will because it’s my passion. I won’t let hatred rule my life’. Kudos to you Shannon!