Tony Eckersley sent a picture of Jo Cox along with the threat to ‘have you dealt with’ A white supremacist has been jailed for more than two years after sending hundreds of violent, misogynistic and racist messages to Labour MP Jess Phillips. Tony Eckersley, 52, from Salford, Greater Manchester, sent the Labour MP more than 300 threatening messages over a nine-month period. Within the emails, Eckersley sent Phillips, who is shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, a picture of Jo Cox, the Labour MP who was murdered in 2016, accompanied with the message: “I will have you dealt with.” In the emails, Eckersley called Phillips a “treasonous cow” and a “virtue signalling rape facilitator” and said that it would be “appropriate” for her and other MPs to be blown up during a terror attack at the House of Commons. Although police initially warned him about his conduct, Eckersley continued to message Phillips at her constituency office in Birmingham, accusing her of “abusing her authority and privilege to shut him down like so many British heroes”. His messages also contained extreme racist language, aimed predominantly towards those from an Asian or Muslim background. He was later arrested. Eckersley was sentenced to 28 months in prison at Manchester crown court on Friday, after pleading guilty to racially aggravated harassment of the MP between May 2019 and February 2020. He is also subject to a restraining order that bans him from being within 100 metres of Phillips’s home and workplace, and is prohibited from any kind of communication with her for 10 years. The court also heard that Eckersley has originally sent abusive emails to the Labour MP Graham Stringer in 2018, and that he targeted Phillips because of her views on issues relating to women’s rights and gendered violence.
via guardian: White supremacist who targeted Jess Phillips sentenced to two years in prison