Transgender debate in Scotland: Disagree with Joanna Cherry if you like, but cancelling her and others is an undemocratic affront to free speech – Susan Dalgety

Cancellation of Joanna Cherry’s Fringe show has emboldened trans activists to try to shut down more events

When she was an energetic young parliamentary researcher, the former Scottish Labour leader and now professor Kezia Dugdale hung a large poster on the front of her boss’s Holyrood office. “Some people are gay, get over it,” proudly proclaimed the Stonewall banner. No one batted an eyelid at Kezia’s display of solidarity with the LGB community. No one questioned her right to display her beliefs. I know, because I worked in the office next door.

And I wasn’t surprised that a few years later when she left party politics, she went to head up the John Smith Centre, a think tank that promotes trust in politics and public service and whose mission includes the “promotion of civilised debate”. As a politician, Dugdale was always open to new ideas, and believed in the power of debate to change the world for the better.

I was shocked, therefore, when earlier this week, she wrote a snarky newspaper article mocking Edinburgh MP Joanna Cherry for speaking out about being banned by the Stand comedy club because some of the staff were uncomfortable about her gender-critical views. It seems the staff – who are apparently happy to work with some of the UK’s most challenging comics – couldn’t bear to listen to a feminist talk about the facts of life.

“Increasingly, I find her tactics… to be cynical and manipulative,” wrote Dugdale, who went on to argue, disingenuously, that if she was due to speak at a venue on same-sex marriage – Dugdale is married to the Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth – and the staff were offended by her views, she wouldn’t complain. “I’d understand that I had made a poor venue choice and make another,” she wrote.

Nonsense. If Dugdale was ever stopped from speaking out about her sincerely held beliefs, she would, rightly, use her considerable social capital to make a huge stink about censorship and discrimination. And she would be perfectly entitled, as Cherry is, to go to court. As leading legal academic Michael Foran argued in Holyrood magazine this week, the Stand’s objection to Cherry’s gender-critical feminism “is direct discrimination on the basis of a protected belief” and the event cancellation is “almost certainly” unlawful discrimination.

Sadly for Scotland, Dugdale wasn’t the only public figure to mock Cherry for speaking out about her ban. Two government ministers revealed their easy contempt for free speech. “I can absolutely see why employees, they say, you know what, there are certain functions I am not comfortable participating in. This is absolutely not a question of free speech,” Green MSP Lorna Slater told BBC Scotland’s Debate Night.

And the new equalities minister, Emma Roddick, joined in with the manager of the Equality Network to mock Cherry on social media. It seems the minister, who is very big on “lived experience” influencing policy, draws the line at respecting Cherry’s first-hand testimony of discrimination on the basis of her beliefs. Would Roddick be so cavalier if her SNP colleague had been banned because she is a lesbian?

SNP MP Joanna Cherry had been due to take part in an event at the Stand comedy club until staff objected (Picture: Russell Cheyne/WPA pool/Getty Images)

The cancellation of Cherry further emboldened some of those who recently closed down free speech at Edinburgh University when they stopped the screening of Adult Human Female, a documentary about gender-critical feminism. And the Cabaret Against Hate Speech has publicly challenged Glasgow venue, the Blackfriars Bar, for daring to host a show by three of Scotland’s most talented women: poets Magi Gibson and Jenny Lindsay and comic and women’s health campaigner Elaine Miller. The group tweeted the bar: “Why is this being allowed in your venue? The Stand comedy club protects the trans community. Do you?”

Jenny Lindsay, who three years ago wrote a searing essay about her experience of being ostracised for her views, hit back. “I have had enough of this. Scotland has allowed itself to become a toddler playpen for these fragile thugs,” she wrote. “And they are thugs. No amount of glitter and talks of ‘joy’ can hide the insidious censorship, the cultural authoritarianism and the blatant misogyny on display.”

But despite the clumsy, ill-thought-through rhetoric of Dugdale, Slater and Roddick and the threatening behaviour of their fan boys and girls, Scotland has not yet turned into an authoritarian state. The First Minister, displaying signs of leadership, said on Wednesday that he hoped there was a way Cherry’s event could still happen. “Jo and I have a disagreement around the GRR Bill, for example, but at the same time, I do hope there’s a way that her show can go ahead,” he said, while stressing that it was not for him to tell comedy clubs what events they should put on.

But he does have responsibility for members of his government. Perhaps a quiet word with Slater and Roddick about the first principles of democracy is in order, First Minister? And a session on how the Equality Act protects people from discrimination on the basis of, among other things, race, sex, religion or belief, wouldn’t go amiss either.

As for Dugdale, may I be so bold as to point her to a wide-ranging lecture by the late John Smith on the quality of our democratic life? He argued that in a mature democracy, openness is a principle that should be applied “as much as possible to all institutions, whether publicly or privately owned”.

He was right. Transparency, freedom of speech, and the right to stand up for one’s beliefs without fear or favour are central to a mature democracy. Disagree with Cherry on her gender-critical views. Argue with her on her support for independence. Press her on the economy. But if leading voices in our society deny her right to free speech, we are all diminished.