There's a bit of a debate going on around whether politics should be so prominent at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I have this fantasy of doing a stand-up comedy show myself. I admit my routine still needs a lot of work but I have an opening joke: Why do men go for the higher paid jobs like doctors and TV presenters while women settle for lower paid jobs like women doctors and women TV presenters?
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about SNP MP Mhairi Black announcing her retirement from Westminster. Here she is, back again, getting another mention, after her provocative outburst at the Fringe, dismissing feminists who criticise gender ideology as '50-year-old Karens'. Isn't it ironic that this would be champion of equality falls back on ageist and misogynistic tropes when abusing those she disagrees with. A further irony is that she wouldn't be where she is today but for the pioneering campaigning work of the generation of '50-year-old Karens' that she despises. Anyway, I promise never ever to mention her name again. After all, in a few years time she may have grown up into obscurity.
In the battle for equality, the story is always one of struggle, advancement, backlash and then struggle again. Unfortunately, there is a generation out there that hasn't the lived experience to understand that, nor, it seems, the historical insight. Being part of the backlash isn't always exclusive to the forces of conservative reaction.
I hope I am stating the obvious when I write that the Labour Party is the Party of Equality. The Wilson years saw great social advances including decriminalisation of homosexuality, abolition of capital punishment, the Abortion Act, divorce reform, legislation to outlaw racial discrimination and the Equal Pay Act. Back in government in 1997, Labour again took up the challenge with the introduction of the minimum wage, civil partnerships, the Human Rights Act, equality of opportunity, the Equality Act.
One of the first acts of the Labour-led devolved Scottish Parliament was to abolish Clause 2A, the controversial legislation that banned the promotion of the acceptability of homosexuality in schools. The Bill was passed at its final reading in the Scottish Parliament with cross-party support by 99 votes to 17. That vote doesn't begin to tell the story of the long bitter battle Communities Minister, Wendy Alexander, fought as she steered the legislation through parliament. I will never forget the nasty Keep the Clause Campaign, bankrolled by Stagecoach's Brian Souter, that dominated the Ayr by-election in 2000, and helped hand the seat to a Keep the Clause-supporting Tory candidate.
I have happier memories of the passing of the UK Equality Act (2010) which was a fantastic achievement. I remember the brilliant leadership of Harriet Harman and Vera Baird on this, and the stalwart work of the Labour members on the Bill's committee as they steered it through the Commons, clause by clause, line by line, in a race against time as the Labour Government came to an end. And what support did they have from the SNP for this radical progressive Bill? – their representative on the committee was a certain John Mason who manages to make Kate Forbes seem socially liberal. His role was to undermine and hinder progress at every opportunity, continually raising spurious irrelevant points.
I was responsible for coordinating equality policies at the local authority I worked for at the time public sector equality duties came into force. We particularly welcomed the socio-economic duty which linked equality to tackling poverty and discrimination. Before we had even finished the process, however, the new Home Secretary and Equalities Minister in the incoming Coalition Government, Theresa May, had dropped the requirement to show the socio-economic impact of policies.
She dismissed the Equality Act's socio-economic duty as 'socialism in one clause'. Not even the measure's author, Harriet Harman, would have claimed so much for it. It was a moderate and sensible effort to provide a framework for equality, backed up by a serious study demonstrating how imperfect it is to consider equality only in terms of race, gender or geography. Its conclusion was that class matters when promoting equality. The merit of the socio-economic duty was that it left it up to councils, schools and the NHS to decide how best to tackle poverty in their area.
All the clause required was that every new policy had to be considered through the filter of its impact on poverty. It was actually a small acknowledgment by the last Labour Government that, despite its best efforts, it had failed to make sufficient, lasting progress against inequality.
Unfortunately, there are always some on the left who cannot bring themselves to prioritise equality issues. They seem to see that as the hobby of middle-class liberals. They hold to the myth that when true red-blooded socialism is established things like sexism, racism, homophobia and prejudice will just melt away.
The truth is that equality issues have to stay high on the agenda. Advances have to be defended and the backlash has to be resisted. Equality issues are always interdependent and should be totally indivisible. My friend Karen was saying that to me only yesterday.
