A man has been arrested after one of the UK’s most celebrated young food writers, Jack Monroe, was bombarded with homophobic abuse by someone claiming to be from the UK Independence party (Ukip).
The Guardian food writer, blogger and campaigner said she did not feel the microblogging site was a safe place to be after receiving messages of “hate” and “vitriol”, which she described as “suffocating”.
DI Phil Jones of Avon and Somerset police said they had arrested a 22-year-old man in connection with their investigation into homophobic messages posted on social media, believed to be the ones targeting Monroe.
Monroe, a 26-year-old mother of one, who became hugely popular thanks to her recipes for people like her struggling on tiny budgets, said the vitriol she had received was dreadful. “It’s all a bit exhausting, frightening and very deeply saddening,” she told the Observer on Saturday after posting a tweet entitled “final word” in which she begged people not to respond to the attacks on her behalf. “Please do not retaliate to the trolls and abusers with abuse. Not in my name. Please, not in my name,” she wrote.
A Ukip spokesman said police had been informed by Alex Wood, a former Ukip candidate in Somerset, that someone was using the account to send out homophobic and sexist abuse.
The abuse began after Monroe, a recent convert to the Green party, wrote a piece for the Guardian following Thursday’s election debate. In it she praised the Green leader Natalie Bennett’s stance on immigration and criticised Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s “circus act”.
The poster, writing under the handle @Alex_WoodUKIP, wrote to Monroe saying, among other messages: “Your sick form of Lesbianism and militant queerism is destroying this country. Get out and give us Britain back! #VoteUKIP.”
Monroe, who is gay and campaigns on food rights, at first responded, tweeting: “God it’s men like this that make me wish I wasn’t a lesbian. Be still my beating heart for the charm and intellect.”
Monroe is the latest in a long line of high-profile women to be targeted by vile online abuse. TV presenter Sue Perkins left Twitter this week when she received death threats after reports that she might replace Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear. Stella Creasy MP saw one of her trolls jailed last year, and Caroline Criado-Perez, who campaigned for equal representation of women on UK banknotes, was subjected to horrific messages which, at their peak, were running at around 50 an hour from multiple anonymous accounts.
In her “final word”, Monroe called upon her supporters to pray for peace or “meditate upon kindness”. “Wish them better – nobody who is whole and happy seeks out strangers to deliberately target hatred.
“Stay positive,” she added. “There are good people and strong voices here. Be one of them, and not one of the others. With love, because if I have not love I have nothing.”
It comes after Twitter’s top lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, admitted the site had been “inexcusably slow” in tackling abusers, and had let internet abuse go unchecked for too long.
Denouncing the @Alex_WoodUKIP Twitter account – which has also been used to direct abuse at another Guardian writer, Owen Jones – as fake, the Ukip spokesman said he hoped Twitter would act to delete the account as quickly as they could. He added: “To people like Jack Monroe and Owen Jones we can only feel sympathy. No matter our differences they do not deserve these coarse and unpleasant attacks.
“Political discourse can be robust but must keep within boundaries of decency. We are also concerned that a young man is having his own name and reputation dragged through the mud, again.”
The spokesman added that Wood left the party in January. Wood was the centre of an earlier Twitter storm when he was briefly suspended from the party in April last year. Pictures of him emerged from his Facebook account showing him posing with a knife between his teeth in front of a union jack and of making what looked like a Nazi salute. He said he was simply reaching out to take the camera when a misleading shot was taken [see footnote].
Wood declined to comment, saying the matter was being dealt with by the police.