Let Janey Godley die in peace, you monsters, show some humanity

As a writer I’m always reluctant to deploy words like ‘evil’ or ‘monster’. The crudity of the language strips away all humanity from the target. 

Yet sometimes, we must ask ourselves if there are not those amongst us who through their words and deeds surrender their own humanity. 

By discarding the most important attributes of human nature – empathy, compassion, respect – they reduce themselves to the status of a modern monster.

And it is with that in mind that we must turn to those who are today hounding and harassing the Scottish comedian Janey Godley as she faces her own death.

I will dispense with the newspaper convention of using the surname of the individual under discussion as I know Janey. I like her, I find her an admirable woman.

Yet even if I did not know Janey, what is being done to her would still consume me with the rage I now feel, simply because Janey is a human being and I too am a human being.

As the poet John Donne wrote: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

Earlier this week, Janey, who has been fighting cancer for years, explained that treatment options were now exhausted. “I’m facing end of life,” she said on Twitter, now known as X under the rule of Elon Musk. She is currently receiving palliative care and will be entering a hospice.

She made her statement with grace, thanking every member of the NHS who had cared for her “right down to the wee woman who holds my hand and makes me tea”.

The manner with which Janey carries herself as she faces the end is both inspirational and moving. Who would not feel a rush of emotion at her courage and dignity?

Yet there are some – many indeed – who have taken this as an opportunity for one final insult, one last cruel chance to gang up on Janey. She is a woman endlessly abused on Twitter for the stands she has taken in life.

She’s an outspoken defender of trans people. She’s never hidden her support for Scottish independence. And she has turned her humour against some of the biggest bullies on this planet – specifically Donald Trump.

For daring to have an opinion, Janey has endured years of the most brutal misogyny online. The cruelty of the insults and threats knew no boundary, there was no level to which these people weren’t prepared to stoop.

Read more:

Janey Godley: 'I got to do everything I wanted to do'

The rise and fall and rise again of Janey Godley

Yet you’d think there would be one line in the sand, one boundary they wouldn’t cross: death itself. You’d think that even the worst of us would allow a woman to die in peace, without hurling hate and contempt at her, without wishing her last moments more painful than they already are.

But you’d be wrong. For some, there is no boundary, no level, no line, no point at which they will stop. Janey holds opinions which they hate and so they must destroy her, even at the end, for pity’s sake.

How must her family feel? How must Janey feel? How would you feel? How would your family feel? How would the families of those who are doing this to Janey feel?

It’s clear that something has gone very wrong with very many people over recent years. The online world has perverted them, debased them, hollowed them out. 

A screen does not separate you from your victim. The victim still suffers. It’s just a cowardly curtain for tormentors to hide behind.

Look at who is abusing and hounding Janey as she dies and you won’t see names or faces, you’ll see flags and football badges mostly. 

The people who do such things are craven. They don’t have the courage to show their face or use their name. They’re anonymous, soulless, characterless, nonentities.

There’s more bravery in one of Janey’s nail clippings than in their entire, sorry excuse for a life.

What is wrong with such people that they would behave like this to a dying woman? How broken inside must they be? How friendless? How alone in their squalor? How without love?

For who could love such people? That’s surely the problem that festers inside them. To reach these depths – act this way – they must have been starved of love. 

A psychologist would say that it’s the absence of parental love which turns a child into such an adult. Though the irony is this: by becoming the person they are today, they’ve rendered themselves so beyond the boundary of human behaviour that even a mother or father could not love them.

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So after they have spent their lives, at their computers, alone, hating the world so much that they’d attack a dying woman, who – once it is all over for them – will come to mourn?

There will be plenty who mourn Janey Godley. Not just here, but around the world. News of Janey approaching the end of her life was greeted with upset by famous faces in Hollywood.

For those who hound her, there’s unlikely to be any tears spilt when they die. If you render yourself beyond the limits of humanity in your life, why would other human beings commemorate you at your death? If you hate the world, the world will hate you.

So, sometimes, I revisit my strictures as a writer and find myself left with no other language to reach for except words like ‘monster’ and ‘evil’. For that’s the truth when it comes to these people. What they’re doing is evil; they have made themselves monsters.

As such, they are beyond reach. There are no words – especially from those who like or admire Janey – which will divert them from their hellish path. What they do only leads inevitably to their further emotional destruction, to their further alienation from the moral world the rest of us inhabit.

However, although I know there is no reaching these people, I must send them one final message: leave this woman alone, you bastards, you are not fit to clean her shoes.

Neil Mackay is The Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs and foreign and domestic politics.