When I was elected to parliament, I had been inside the building maybe two or three times before. My husband had only been to London once before. My politics comes from exposure to the worst of people’s lives. Communities ravaged by arson attacks, so scared of their neighbours that they turn on each other. Children growing up in care who are left at the mercy of organised crime. Women brutally abused so many times that you have to arrange for a third time for children’s services to remove the new baby. I once had to hold the neck of a woman who had slashed it in front of me while I was sitting at my desk, desperately trying to stem the flow. I have held the hands of children as they waved off their sibling who had been adopted while they had not. I have seen things, heard stories and intervened in the kind of dangerous environments that would make the toughest men cry.
In fact, since becoming an MP, I have been the only person in a group otherwise consisting of men to take charge when someone was suffering an angry psychotic episode. When I was asked to take part in a TV fly-on-the-wall programme inside a prison, I concluded that I would not make good telly as I have worked in prisons and would be largely unflappable, and would most likely within minutes be able to get the inmates on my side.
I am currently owed two amounts of compensation, which will never come, from violent men whom I put myself in front of in order to protect the woman they were attacking. When those women felt they couldn’t go through with the process of bringing charges, I did instead. Fancy being so unlucky that you decided to headbutt your girlfriend in broad daylight on a street in Tamworth when I was driving past. Not to put too fine a point on it, by most people’s standards I am nails.
I have always been tough. I grew up with three older brothers and feminist parents who never for a second allowed me to think that toughness or conflict were the preserve of men. Add to that the years of working in institutions where instantaneous risk assessments have taught me to intervene safely in a dangerous situation. Mix all that up with the privilege of knowing you will get a better police response because of your position, and what you get is someone with the courage and knowledge to stop a fight.
On the night of the 2019 general election, I had a camera crew from a documentary production company following me. I was driving home at 11pm from my office, where I had been campaigning for a solid 15 hours, with the crew all cramped in the back of my car with their equipment. I was heading home to change before I was due at the election count in Birmingham city centre to find out if I had won. It was by no means a done deal and there was a very real chance I was about to lose my job.
On the drive home from my office, I saw a woman struggling to get away from a man. So, I stopped my car and approached them. No one else in my car joined me. They sat in the back, terrified by the situation. I managed to get the woman into my car and told the man that if he didn’t leave her alone, I was calling the police who would, because it was me, come quick smart. I copped an earful from him but, whatever, mate, I’d heard worse – after all, I’d been trying to get people to vote all day. My tolerance level for people annoyed at my presence is pretty high. After some negotiations with the woman, we agreed that I would take her to her mother’s and from there she would call the police if she felt she wanted to. I knew and she knew that this would probably lead to no action, even though I had been witness to her perpetrator’s behaviour, but she told me she would. So off we went, me expected at my own election count ceremony, to take a woman to a place of safety. I called my mate Alex, who was due to join me at the count, and asked her to stay with the woman for a while, because I was anxious I might miss my declaration. I am not sure there are many members of parliament who would do this.
I don’t say this to blow my own trumpet … well, not entirely. I say it because I think it speaks to the kind of politician I am. The roll-up-your-sleeves, get-your-hands-dirty, get-dug-in kind of person. I was a senior manager at the organisation where I worked before I was an MP. I was called on to advise secretaries of state, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t also co-opted to build bunk beds for arriving families, butter baps for celebration buffets or sew curtains long after my shift had finished because the previous tenant had set fire to the last pair.
I had no expectations of parliament when I was elected – I really had no idea what I was entering into –but I assumed that anyone who was frankly mad enough to get themselves elected would be brave if nothing else. It is a fundamentally brave thing to do: to put yourself up for intense levels of personal scrutiny and vitriol for the sake of ideals you hold is, I think, the very definition of courage. Yes, it more than doubled my salary when I was elected so, for me, it was a smart career move as well, but fundamentally it is an incredibly tough gig in personal terms for that professional boost. I have written extensively about this: whether you like them or not, 90% of MPs take on the job because they are driven by the desire to improve things, either generally or specifically.
Yes, I think elected office is noble and only something the brave can do. This, of course, before you factor in what is now a quite dangerous environment of hatred and violence aimed at politicians. If police officers or social workers were murdered at the relative rate that MPs have been in the last decade, hundreds of them would be dead. I was elected in 2015 and two of those elected that day, out of a total of 650, have been murdered, another only narrowly avoiding a genuine plot to behead her. For comparison, the only police officer who was murdered in this time period was Keith Palmer, who was killed by a terrorist in parliament seeking to kill MPs. There are 170,000 police officers and only 650 MPs. Our murder rate is pretty high.
I cannot remember how many cases I have taken to court because of the threat to me, but two men have served years in prison for threatening to rape and/or kill me. One remains in my local prison today. So, yes, I think it is brave to be an MP. It is for this reason that one of the things that I noticed about parliamentary politics when I was elected, something that I truly hadn’t expected, was how this courage evaporates in the face of political party machines and the pursuit of power. It is not that individuals are not personally courageous, most are. I say most – about half would absolutely stick their necks out for a cause that wasn’t universally popular. Almost all are courageous in the face of injustices that have befallen their constituents; what is less common is those who are courageous in the face of their own political party or when in opposition to their constituents.
• This is an edited extract from Let’s Be Honest by Jess Phillips, which is published by Gallery Books on 8 August, at £20. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
