Sunday 21 October 2018

Suicide is no laughing matter


In life and politics I am far from a snowflake. I dish it out and I roll with the punches when they come my way. I don't think I have ever, in over 30 years, made an official complaint or demanded an apology. Politics is a rough business and if you cannot stand the heat get out of the kitchen. In Kent even my most hardened political opponents will begrudgingly admit that I always play the ball, never the man. 

But there are limits - and the poster which appeared at yesterday's People's Vote March simply crossed the line. 

In the late 1980s I lived in Southampton. My best friend at that time lived in a suburb called Woolston. There was nothing remarkable about Woolston, an average suburb on the edge of a city where old Victorian terraces jostled for space with post war estates and new build waterside properties. In the "postcode lottery" my friend had unknowingly drawn a dud. His waterside terrace was directly beneath the River Itchen Toll Bridge, which towered above. Twice in two years he was woken by the police and Health Service workers who had come to scrape the broken and twisted bodies of two poor wretched souls who, for whatever reason, decided death was easier than life, and had unwittingly selected the section of the bridge above my friends patio as their final cry for help. 

All along the handrails of the Itchen Bridge were posters from the Samaritans urging those looking into the face of their darkest demons to call for help. Another good friend Richard was one of those who answered the calls. He never spoke about his voluntary work, but occasionally he would miss our after-work pint as he has been up the night before until 6am listening to someone for whom a bottle of Nembutal and a razor blade seemed better companions than whatever came with the dawn. After three years he walked away, broken with emotion after someone he had spoken to for five hours committed suicide while he listened on the phone. 

I personally "came out" on this blog about five years ago. For me, the 'coming out' was not about coming to terms with my sexuality, I had done that thirty years earlier, but telling my own story about my battles with mental health, and in particular anxiety. But not even in my darkest hours did I consider suicide, though I know many who have, and two who actually did. 

The work the government is now doing to address mental health, loneliness, suicide and all the related issues is truly outstanding. I will always be hugely grateful to Greg Clark and Tracey Crouch for their support when I published my own personal story, as I will cherish the support I received from my husband Steve who stood with me unflinchingly throughout my ordeal, and ever since. 

Suicide, mental health and loneliness are human tragedies often beyond the understanding of those who have not themselves looked into the abyss. But just as you don't need to be Jewish to know anti-Semitism is wrong, so you don't need to have lived with mental health or considered suicide to know making them into jokes for cheap political gain is quite simply vulgar, hurtful and also wrong. 

I do not know who produced these posters, who paid for them or where they were displayed (I believe on a coach carrying People's Vote supporters from Chesterfield). However they came to be produced and displayed is now immaterial.

But whoever was responsible (and someone quite senior in that organisation must have signed them off) would do themselves and their campaign a lot of good if they had the courage and humanity to hold up their hand and say sorry for the hurt they have caused.

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