Corbyn praised for slamming online abuse in conference speech

Jeremy Corbyn won a prolonged standing ovation from a packed conference hall in Brighton today for slamming the culture of online abuse – specifically misogynistic attacks.

Members queued for over two hours to get into the hall to witness Corbyn’s first conference speech as Labour leader, and he used the opportunity to appeal for a “kinder politics”. During the summer’s leadership election, some raised concerns over the level of abuse between supporters of different candidates. Liz Kendall used her Twitter account to highlight some of the sexist abuse directed her way, while Yvette Cooper called on the Government to do more to tackle misogynistic abuse online.

The packed conference hall in Brighton today rose to applaud new leader Corbyn as he slammed the “cyberbullying”:

“I want a kinder politics, a more caring society. Don’t let them reduce you to believing in anything less.

So I say to all activists, whether Labour or not, cut out the personal attacks. The cyberbullying. And especially the misogynistic abuse online. And let’s get on with bringing values back into politics.”

The hall laughed as Corbyn mocked recent media portrayals of him, noting that he had been criticised for wanting an asteroid to wipe out humanity, and accused of being a supporter of communism for riding a bicycle. He quoted an article that reported he is often seen “riding a Chairman Mao style bicycle”, and joked: “We have to conclude that whenever we see someone on a bicycle from now on, there goes another supporter of Chairman Mao.”

He finished by quoting Keir Hardie, the Labour Party’s first leader, as he made a rallying call to put “people’s values back into politics”.

“The last bearded man to lead the Labour Party was a wonderful great Scotsman, Keir Hardie who died about a century ago this weekend and we commemorated him with a book we launched on Sunday evening. Keir grew up in dreadful poverty and made so much of his life and founded our party.

Stood up to be counted on votes for women, stood up for social justice, stood up to develop our political party.

We own him and so many more so much. And he was asked once summaries what you are about, summarise what you really mean in your life. And he thought for a moment and he said this:

‘My work has consisted of trying to stir up a divine discontent with wrong.’

Don’t accept injustice, stand up against prejudice. Let us build a kinder politics, a more caring society together. Let us put our values, the people’s values, back into politics.”

You can read the full speech here, and see some instant reaction on our conference liveblog.