Michelle Maddox is a Scottish success story by anyone’s reckoning.
The Perthshire businesswoman started selling her home-made clootie dumplings at farmers markets a few years ago and found shoppers couldn’t get enough.
She now runs her own shop in Abernethy, where she employs nine people and produces 20,000 dumplings a year to customers including the John Lewis department store group.
So when she was invited to fly the flag for Scottish produce at a festive food and drink market at 10 Downing Street she jumped at the chance.
We're delighted to be part of Downing Street's wonderfully festive food market ahead of Small Business Saturday on December 4th. Michelle even hand-delivered Boris a clootie dumpling in time for Christmas! @10DowningStreet @BorisJohnson @LochFyneOysters @harrisdistiller pic.twitter.com/KvuUNjUSIm
— ClootieMcToot (@ClootieMcToot) December 3, 2021
Fast forward a few days and she’s says she’s been threatened with violence and labelled a traitor for attending the event.
Her “crime”?
She gave one of her dumplings, wrapped in Harris Tweed, to the Prime Minister and mentioned it on the Clootie McToot Facebook page.
Michelle says she was left in tears after she received a torrent of abuse in private messages.
Around a dozen orders have been cancelled. One man threatened to attack her van. Another told her not to walk down dark alleyways.
Abuse is a new low in the national debate
The political discourse in the UK has been growing increasingly febrile for some time. But this is a pathetic new low.
The independence referendum and Brexit have contributed to a mood of division and bitterness.
More recently, the ongoing culture wars over issues such as Covid and immigration have poured poison on the anger.
And all of this has festered in the worst corners of social media.
Some politicians have not been above stoking it for their own gain.
But Michelle Maddox is not a politician.
She is a businesswoman who was trying to open up new markets and protect the jobs of local people.
In attempting to showcase the best of Scotland, she has been exposed to some of the worst the country has to offer.
If we’ve reached the point where that is considered an offence perhaps it’s time for all of us to re-appraise how readily we hurl abuse, how much of it we’re prepared to tolerate and how far we intend to continue down this dark road.
