It is not the first time Fiona Bruce has been slated on social media. She has long been accused of being a Tory sympathiser and denounced for impartiality when it comes to party politics. She has also been accused, since Dimbleby’s departure, of being a dreadful chair of Question Time. I am genuinely impartial when it comes to Bruce and have no cause to defend her. But I do have skin in the game when it comes to violence against women. That’s why I think it is wrong that she has now had to stand down as an ambassador for the domestic abuse charity Refuge, after responding to allegations made about Stanley Johnson on Question Time.
When I heard the journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on Question Time raise the issue of Stanley Johnson being a ‘wife beater’ I was pleasantly surprised that it had made the cut at all (QT is pre-recorded). Fiona Bruce’s subsequent caveat that the assault was, according to Johnson’s friends, ‘a one off’ was likely pre-scripted (Bruce also said that she was ‘not disputing’ what Alibhai-Brown had stated). After all, Alibhai-Brown’s comments are a mere ‘allegation’ having not been tried and tested in a court of law – like most cases of domestic abuse, unfortunately – and could be subject to a complaint of defamation. Many media outlets would have edited Alibhai-Brown’s comments out entirely.
Soon though the keyboard warriors swooped on Bruce, to say that she shouldn’t have ‘defended’ Stanley Johnson, especially because she is the ambassador of the domestic abuse charity Refuge. The fact that Bruce had been in that role for a quarter of a century – and clearly cares for domestic abuse victims – didn’t seem to register with her critics.
Bruce subsequently had to stand down from her role at the charity as a result of this public hounding. Wouldn’t it be wiser for Bruce to remain ambassador at Refuge? She could, within that role, speak about the tropes and misunderstandings so prevalent when it comes to domestic violence and abuse.
This not to say that Stanley Johnson’s friend’s defence stands up. I am never happy with the phase ‘one off’ when it comes to domestic violence because it never is. In my 40-odd years of campaigning to end it, I have yet to hear of an isolated incident of domestic abuse. It is more often a pattern of behaviour. Stanley Johnson, not Bruce, is the villain here, along with the entire criminal justice system.
Who is the one person who has faced consequences for a man breaking a woman’s nose? Bruce. The stray bullet has hit her square in the head, whilst Ken Clarke, who presented Stanley Johnson as a good chap worthy of a knighthood, remains squeaky clean.
It’s quite incredible to me that there has been such a massive kerfuffle over someone apparently minimising domestic violence. If only this was the case across the board. Where is the outcry when arrest rates for domestic violence decline to almost nil? Instead, we have calls for a woman to be sacked from her BBC role and removed from being an unpaid ambassador for a domestic violence charity. Bruce has a long history of advocating for the rights of abused women, but despite this the blame has been deflected away from perpetrators and their supporters and on to a woman.
Bruce was legally obliged to give that clarification when the allegation was made, and although she could have refused to do so, making her a Lineker-style martyr, she didn’t. I am personally disappointed, but, as a campaigner against male violence, would rather blame the abuser than a woman being less than robust.
Yet again the wrong witch has been burned. It is always easier to go for women who either ‘put up with’ domestic abuse, or who fail to support other women. Bruce was not expressing her view but doing what she was mandated by BBC bosses to do. I would have loved Bruce to make a stand on this particular point and risk being fired. Many of us would have vehemently supported her. But female journalists are often silenced in a way that violent men and their apologists are not.
One unintended consequence of this whole sorry saga is that Fiona Bruce in inadvertently informed or reminded the public that Stanley Johnson broke a woman’s nose in a violent assault and is clearly not worthy of any respect, let alone a knighthood. I hope that those getting hot under the collar at Bruce will turn their anger instead towards the men that beat women and get away with it.
Comments