Part 22 – The Girls Hijack Stagecoach
Garry Otton
Inspired by what was happening in Scotland, organised opposition to the repeal of Section 28 across the border in England and Wales was growing. After the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey had described such plans as, “a matter for concern”, Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks and representatives from the Hindu and Muslim communities all agreed. Their opinions would not go unnoticed. More than 30 influential Labour figures were members of the Christian Socialist Movement, including the Home Secretary Jack Straw. Stuart Bell MP, who spoke on behalf of the Church Commissioners in the Commons wrote to Ann Taylor, the chief whip and advised her of a number of Labour backbenchers who were preparing to revolt against the party line in the House of Commons. Bell, a devout Christian told The Daily Mail: “How can Mr Blair allow another attack on the family”. (This was the very same Stuart Bell who wrote the book Paris 69, about a man who had a promiscuous relationship with seven women). Since both Ann Taylor and David Blunkett MP (later to become Home Secretary in Blair’s cabinet until he was forced to resign after fast-tracking his nanny’s visa application) had voted against an equal age of consent at 16, it was no surprise to hear rumours of a ‘free vote’, allowing MPs to ‘vote with their conscience’. There was fury amongst some MPs over this, more than perhaps many had anticipated and the idea was later dropped. David Blunkett wouldn’t stop there. He was soon engaged in talks with church leaders to press for the supremacy of marriage to be installed in a set of guidelines that would be legally enforceable in England and Wales and later, proposing a law to make incitement to religious hatred a crime in Britain.
The Learning and Skills Bill received its third reading in the House of Lords at Westminster on Monday, 7 February 2000. It contained 118 clauses and eight schedules. Baroness Young led the debate for amendments to include the promotion of marriage over and above any other arrangements, including single mothers, with more than a little help from the Christian Institute. A slightly glazed former Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher sat by Baroness Young throughout the proceedings. Young announced to the Conservative majority gathered in the House: “How dangerous to teach children, primary school children at the age of seven, about homosexuality which, apart from anything else, carries serious medical risks”. Her views were backed by many of the Lords, including Lord Stoddart of Swindon who questioned whether the school was the right place for sex education under any circumstances. He rounded on gays “and their friends in high places” before quoting a passage in a document before him that read: “In what way have we been taught to be heterosexual”? This wasn’t the sort of question the noble Lord felt anyone should be asking and gasped: “I thought heterosexuality was normal!” Dame Jill Knight, who was responsible for placing Section 28 on the statute books, mentioned the book Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin featured a six-year-old girl sitting up in bed with her naked father and his lover. Lord Harris explained that this was a collage and there were, in fact, three separate shots of the three on the front cover. Turning to Lady Young, he challenged her assertion that a video, How to be a Lesbian in 35 Minutes, had been shown in a handicapped school full of very young children and accused her of missing the irony of the title, which was to demonstrate that one couldn’t teach someone to be a lesbian with a video, or even by giving one or two lessons in a classroom. He also explained that the lesbian youth meeting just happened to have been held in a special needs school. No handicapped or disabled children were actually present at the time. Lord Harris also challenged Lady Young’s assertions that gay pornography was being stockpiled for use in schools once Section 28 had been repealed. The Education and Employment minister, Baroness Blackstone challenged the distortion of the facts surrounding the Avon Health Authority’s teaching pack, challenging homophobia in schools which had Baroness Blatch leaping to her feet. “I hope you are not calling me a liar”, she stormed.
Anthony Grey, a leading figure in the campaign to partly decriminalise homosexuality in the sixties wrote a letter to the editor of The Pink Paper. “I wrote to Baroness Young requesting her to furnish me with detailed evidence to back up her assertions that in 1988 ‘local authorities… were spending large sums of money promoting homosexuality’, and were requiring schools to do so, with ‘appalling material (being) given out to children’. I asked Lady Young to tell me which local authorities she was referring to; how much money they spent on ‘promoting homosexuality’; what the ‘appalling material’ was; and what evidence she had that such material had actually been given out to children. Although I have sent her a reminder, Lady Young has not replied to my letter”.
David Stevenson of Cambuslang had a similar letter printed in The Herald: “I responded to a letter from one of Mr Souter’s acolytes and invited that person or Mr Souter to publish a list of the number of times prior to 1986 (ie, the introduction of Section 28/2a) when homosexuality had been promoted in Scottish schools. I have seen no response from either of these people or even Mr Souter’s well-paid PR company on this question”.
The Daily Record echoed Baroness Young’s findings with “DAWN’S GAY LESSONS…” Actress Dawn French apparently revealed she was “giving her adopted eight-year-old daughter lessons on homosexuality”. In an interview in gay magazine, Attitude, Dawn French confessed: “… If my friend Nigel has his boyfriend Mark come to stay, she’s fascinated by them. She loves Nigel anyway, and she’ll go and jump on the bed in the morning…” The Record grimaced: “French… allows little Billie to see her gay friends in bed together”. The tabloid also turned on acting partner Jennifer Saunders interviewed in the same magazine. Saunders had “spoken out in favour of homosexual education in schools. She claims the prevention of the promotion of gay issues in schools is ‘fascist’.” Speaking about Section 28, what Ms Saunders actually said was: “Most people didn’t even know this law existed. It’s dreadful. You can’t legislate in that way. You have to stop nannying people. It’s a kind of fascism”.
With many Tories from the shires specially driven into the House of Lords for the vote, it was not surprising that a majority of 210 voted to throw out any attempt at scrapping the clause in England and Wales; only 165 voted for its repeal. Amongst those supporting the retention of Section 28 was the novelist Baroness P D James, three board members of British Airways, Viscount Slim, director of the holiday company Trailfinders and former defence minister Nicholas Soames. Baroness Young warned that without her amendment, marriage was put on a par with a relationship between two transvestites or even two paedophiles. As Baroness Young walked back along the aisle, Ministers reached out to congratulate her and pat her on the back. The Scottish Mail gloated: “A senior Minister last night paid grudging tribute to the way Baroness Young, the Tory leader of the Lords campaign to keep Section 28, has handled the battle. He said: ‘She has marshalled the case brilliantly. The combination of Lady Young and The Daily Mail proved unbeatable’.” As Members slowly filed out - Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Young, assorted men of the cloth and the former Conservative Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth amongst them - the speaker announced the introduction of the Air Quality England Regulation 2000 debate amidst loud guffaws and shouts of “clear the House”. The Daily Mail and Scottish Daily Mail both ran the same headline on their front page the following morning, spouting triumphantly: “PRAISE BE TO THE LORDS”. The Sun commended: “A great victory for common sense has been won by the House of Lords. There wasn’t a parent in the land who wanted to see the safety net of Clause 28 taken away. No one outside the pink lobby wants children to be taught that homosexuality is a natural foundation for family life”. They had all missed an important point. Efforts to keep Section 28 on the statute books in England and Wales was, to a large extent, pointless, since Section 28 applied not to schools, but local authorities, whose control many had opted out of under measures introduced by - of all people – former Tory leader Margaret Thatcher.
Once the House of Lords had finished with it, the elected House of Commons at Westminster had the opportunity of debating the subject of repealing Section 28 once again before returning it back to the unelected chamber of the House of Lords for their approval. Measures to repeal Section 28 in England and Wales were now considered by many to be extremely unlikely. Even after beefing up the Labour minority in the House of Lords by creating 19 new peers; that still wouldn’t have dented the majority of 45 peers in favour of keeping Section 28. Had repeal initiated in the House of Commons (and this is where many doubted so-called New Labour’s commitment to equality), the measure could have been forced through the House of Lords like the equalisation of the age of consent had been.
The debate in the House of Lords finally provoked a show of gay activism. Members of the Lesbian Avengers hijacked a London bus, owned by Stagecoach, in Piccadilly Circus and sprayed it pink. They were all arrested and charged with criminal damage. Seven Lesbian Avengers later appeared in court. Two were found guilty of an offence under the Road Traffic Act; ‘getting onto a motor vehicle whilst it is on a road’ whilst two others had their charges dropped. Three others had to await sentence while reports were prepared for community service orders and probation. The Avengers claimed stipendiary magistrate, Mr Pratt, who presided over the case at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, had been unsympathetic. He insisted the five pay substantial compensation to Stagecoach, plus costs amounting to just over Ł2,000.
In a lecture for Amnesty International, the Most Rev Richard Holloway, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church and Bishop of Edinburgh said: “In some societies, gay people are executed for being who they are; in our society we practise a subtler form of persecution; we merely imply that they are so depraved, so perverted, as to be incapable of responsible, loving relationships, so that we dare not trust our children to them nor educate them about them; then we express false horror when they are bullied in our schools and mugged in our streets. All this because… we do not ‘connect’ the sophisticated intolerance of the House of Lords, say, with the active cruelty to gay people in our streets”.
Back in Scotland, ‘Keep the Clause’ were forced to send out letters to everyone on their mailing list to inform them its freepost address had to be closed down, blaming an “organised gay rights campaign” which had sent “certain unsavoury and offensive items together with junk mail”.
While his Stagecoach drivers began their strike for better pay, Brian Souter issued a writ against The Guardian newspaper for Ł200,000 damages after a political cartoon appeared in the broadsheet by Steve Bell in which Souter was depicted sharing the back seat of a Stagecoach bus with Cardinal Winning. With ‘Just Married’ marked on the back and a string of ballot boxes trailing behind, Souter claimed he had been depicted as a religious bigot. Souter later reduced the claim to Ł20,000 before dropping the libel action against The Guardian and Steve Bell altogether in 2002. A number of cartoonists, writers and historians had been preparing to make their way up to Scotland to defend Bell. Unfortunately for Souter, lawyers were hard pressed to find any precedent of a public figure suing a cartoonist. Souter claimed he had received ‘assurances’ from The Guardian that they had not intended to suggest he supported or represented extreme views. In fact, those ‘assurances’ had been sent to his solicitors at the very start of his legal action! Souter was forced to pay both sides’ costs.
The debate in the Scottish Executive on Thursday, 10 February 2000 headed off cries for what The Record labelled the “Blunkett solution”. Wendy Alexander and Education Minister Sam Galbraith had flown down to London to meet David Blunkett who had discussed the possibility of introducing statutory guidelines in Scotland. The debate was on a motion proposed by the Tories to put the repeal of Section 28 on ice. The Record editorial stated: “Our new Scottish Parliament has the chance today to put families first. Scotland will be watching”. The tabloid was thrilled to see a break in the “cosy conspiracy with Labour and the Liberal Democrats” when the SNP – which enjoyed financial support from Brian Souter - started to “come to their senses”. They called for protection against ‘gay sex lessons’ for parents to be enshrined in law. The SNP attempt to include legally enforceable guidelines was defeated in the Executive by 78 votes to 32. The Record sniffed: “The Labour/Lib-Dem motion calls for Scotland to be a ‘tolerant, just and inclusive’ society. That is an insult because Scotland has always been that”. An Executive amendment pledging to consult widely on safeguards and produce revised guidelines on sex education was carried 88 votes to 18 with three abstentions. The Tory motion to put repeal on ice was defeated by 88 votes to 18, with three abstentions (SNP MSPs Winnie and Fergus Ewing and Andrew Welsh). Section 28 was now one step closer to repeal in Scotland.
The Scottish Executive agreed to set up an ‘independent’ working group including two religionists and a member of the Scottish School Boards’ Association headed by Mike McCabe, director of education at South Ayrshire council. It was charged with reviewing advice and materials to be used on sex education in Scottish schools and to introduce a package of safeguards that would be introduced before Section 28 was repealed. Amongst those on the panel was a representative from the SSBA, Mr Jack Waddell, Vice Chairman of Williamwood High School, East Renfrewshire; the Rev John Laidlaw, Convener of the Church of Scotland Education Committee and Mr John Oates, of the Catholic Education Committee. As the Executive prepared to debate, and while a ‘Keep the Clause’ advertising van circled the parliament, nine women led by Brian Souter’s wife, Betty, marched up the Mound for a photo opportunity with t-shirts spelling out the words: “DONALD WHY WON’T YOUR PARTY SUPPORT FAMILY VALUES?” Jack Irvine, who organised the protest while Brian Souter was on business in Hong Kong, warned the press Wendy Alexander was getting on the wrong side of “Scotland’s mothers”. Police interviewed Betty Souter, along with several other women, after they staged a protest in the parliament’s viewing gallery. During the debate, Wendy Alexander, who was interrupted by Section 28 supporters, vigorously reaffirmed her commitment to repeal: “Section 2a, when all is said and done, remains a piece of legalised intolerance. The passage of time will neither heal it nor help it. It needs to go”. The Scottish Mail’s front page squealed: “BETRAYED… MSPs triggered a furious backlash last night by voting to support plans to end the ban on gay propaganda in schools. It was a wilful defiance of public opinion…” The editorial accused the parliament of having “broken its covenant with the people” before fielding comments from a string of religionists: The Catholic’s Cardinal Winning, the Kirk’s Ann Allen, the SSBA’s Alan Smith and even Family and Youth Concern’s Valerie Riches, who sneered: “Democracy doesn’t appear to be beholden to the militant, homosexual lobby”. Along with a new Scotland-wide ‘Keep the Clause’ advertising campaign, Brian Souter promised to consider financing a broad-based family values campaign if Section 28 was repealed.
M J Foinette and E C Campbell of Falkirk told The Scottish Mail their civil rights had been “violated”. Their concerns were “reinforced by the ejection from the public gallery during the debate on Section 28 of silent and peaceful demonstrators, and their later questioning by police, while supporters of the repeal of Section 28 were allowed to remain in the gallery and were not questioned by police”.
Pauline McNeil MSP for Glasgow Kelvin appeared alongside David Macauley of ‘Keep the Clause’ on BBC’s Newsnight Scotland. Pauline McNeil insisted the cabinet were not split over their wish ditch the clause. Pictured on a large screen behind them in London, Peter Tatchell was able to add his support for the introduction of “non-judgemental” guidelines. In Scotland on Sunday, ‘Keep the Clause’ was reported saying Souter was “disappointed that Peter Tatchell and Outrage! have responded in such a bitter and vindictive manner. However, Tatchell’s actions have uncovered a sinister agenda to promote homosexuality in our schools. We do believe militant gays would use the dropping of Section 28 to push extreme material of a distasteful nature”.
When Sam Galbraith, Wendy Alexander and Frank McAveety, the deputy minister for local government met church leaders, there was no softening of their opposition to repeal. The Board of Social Responsibility’s Ann Allen appeared blind to the fact that by affording special rights to marriage in law was socially exclusive, not inclusive, when she told press: “We want an understanding and implementation of social inclusion which recognises, respects and tolerates all views but is not imbalanced by the agenda of a minority, and so far the executive has been deaf to that plea”. The Record interpreted the meeting as: “Wendy turns a deaf ear as Clause talks deepen”. Alexander tried to explain that since Scotland didn’t have a national curriculum, as in England and Wales; it has never had statutory guidelines. Despite already promising not to interfere with the way Catholic schools already taught religious and sex education, the Catholic Church insisted it would continue fighting against repeal of Section 28. Dr Ian Morris wrote in The Herald: “No guidelines are statutory. If they were they would be tram lines and would simply be laws. Statutory guidelines are oxymoronic just like militant pacifists and intelligent idiots”. The Liberal-Democrats in the coalition remained firm, insisting First Minister Donald Dewar must push ahead with repeal and not compromise. Lib Dem Ministers refused to speak to the press, while Keith Raffan; a senior backbencher insisted they would not back down. He was joined by Nora Radcliffe, the party’s equal opportunities spokesperson, who told The Scottish Mail: “As a society we should trust teachers, not impose restrictions that force them to marginalize their vulnerable pupils”.
Behind the scenes, there was a growing impatience with Donald Dewar at the Labour Party headquarters in Millbank, London. Whilst Downing Street had warned him to “get a grip”, now spin-doctors were suggesting he might find himself being briefed against and advice withdrawn to a point where he might be forced to resign. A similar tactic had been used on the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam. Her appearance on gay Irish entertainer, Graham Norton’s Channel Four TV show, was something that would never have been sanctioned by Labour’s Millbank headquarters and was intended to embarrass her. She came back into political life after having a brain tumour removed, but senior Government aides said she “lacked the intellectual rigour” for the job. The Record insisted: “The Section 28 battle will go on as long as Alexander and her colleagues in the Scottish Executive persist in their pig-headed determination to flout the majority will in Scotland”. Described as ‘bossy’, a ‘spinster’, ‘five-foot-nothing’ and showered by a host of other uncharitable and mysogynistic remarks, Wendy Alexander had been wounded by the continual bombardment of personal and sexist attacks against her. Alan Cochrane in Scottish editions of The Daily Telegraph called her the “accident-prone and politically myopic Miss Alexander”. The Record suggested she was “riding high in the Department of Frump” and gave her a makeover, superimposing her head onto the body of a woman curled up on a couch wearing a white trouser-suit with lilac-strapped shoes. The Scottish Mail chimed smugly: “Her attempt to win Press favour by telephoning a journalist to appeal for support for the repeal backfired”.
Channel Four awarded Wendy Alexander a trophy and the title Parliamentarian of the Year in Scotland, but it was smashed to pieces as she got out of a car at Heathrow Airport. The following year, they awarded one to Baroness Young!
Katie Grant started her column in The Scottish Daily Mail praising Wendy Alexander for being “exactly the sort of dynamite” Holyrood needed and “a woman not easily deflected” after she generously hailed a taxi and offered Mrs Grant a lift home. A few more sentences and Mrs Grant shook her head. “Now I am worried”, she warned before clawing Alexander to pieces. Mrs Grant chastised her for treating the electorate “as if they were simply impediments” to her ambitions. She recommended she ought to “listen for a change” instead of applying “her now trademark finger-wagging and the ‘I am in charge and I know best’ school of oratory”. After Wendy Alexander had been handed the responsibility of repealing Section 28, Mrs Grant baulked: “Then in rides Miss Alexander, bustling outrage at a perceived slight to the homosexual community and declares a crusade… Miss Alexander’s message to parents seems to be this: that she is cleverer than they are, that she sees the world more clearly than they do, that their experience of life is not as broad, as enlightening, as visionary as hers. Pretty staggering stuff from somebody who is 36 and has no family responsibilities”. Mrs Grant decided she had brought the “political process into disrepute”, by pandering to a “vociferous minority”.
With the prospect of a by-election in Ayr, Downing Street put pressure on the Labour Executive to come up with a solution that would get Section 28 out of the papers – and quickly. Labour chiefs ordered a leak blackout on a Cabinet sub-committee meeting. The Record printed a picture of Wendy Alexander - “the Minister famed for preaching to the public” - poking out her tongue and left journalist Ron Moore to bitch: “As recently as February 2, she was still happy to explain at length the Executive’s plans to dump Section 28. Even on a Ministerial visit to Dublin, she still found time to bang on again about the issue. But yesterday, the normally loquacious minister was finally forced to bite her tongue”.
The Scottish Mirror’s Scottish political editor, Lorraine Davidson, was sent out on the streets of Ayr to listen to parents, she told BBC Radio Scotland the following morning, in a round-up of the early edition’s of the Scottish papers, how “relieved” she was now that parents could be reassured by news of impending amendments to the Ethical Standards in Public Life Bill.
An impressive list of 34 researchers from Scottish universities, including doctors, psychologists, sociologists and educational experts, including Dr Stephen Reicher, editor of The British Journal of Social Psychology penned a joint letter to The Herald on 16 February warning: “The very notion that one needs to ‘protect’ young people from homosexuality implies that it is a danger to youth. Equally, the idea that a ‘homosexual lobby’ seeks to prey on impressionable youth conveys the idea that homosexuals are a sinister menace. Such ideas are the root of intolerance, the wellspring of hostility, and they are of a tragic descent into homophobic violence”. On behalf of ‘Keep the Clause’; David Macauley insisted parents would not be lectured to by “a bunch of academics”. Peter M Spinney wrote to The Herald warning the academics “they should mind their own business”. A further stack of letters challenged the “gaggle of socio-psycologists” for their support in repealing Section 28. Stuart Ainsworth, co-director of the Equality and Discrimination Centre at the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Strathclyde warned: “…History also teaches us that those of a dogmatic and totalitarian mentality have also targeted intellectuals for daring to speak out”.
Not until 21 February 2000 had anyone closely resembling a ‘spokesperson for the Scottish gay community’, let alone a ‘gay leader’, been afforded space in Scotland’s media to put the case for the repeal of Section 28. Tim Hopkins who led the Equality Network wrote a column in Jack Irvine’s stomping ground, The Scottish Mirror and pointed out: “If Clause 28 picked out any other minority and banned schools from teaching that they were acceptable, it wouldn’t last five minutes”.
One anonymous submission for Stonewall’s Caused by the Clause begged: “I was disappointed that there were so few major public or political figures opposing the ‘Keep the Clause’ position. Where were the key icons of Scottish social and public life – or did they just not want to get dragged into it?”
A Ł120,000 TV advertisement for ‘Keep the Clause’, due to run for three weeks from Valentine’s Day was stopped by broadcasting watchdogs, the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre, after finding it too political. With shrieks of “PARENT POWER”, The Record warned they would now take “the Keep the Clause battle to the streets of Scotland”. In a sense, that is precisely what happened.
garry@garryotton.com
Next: Part 23 – The Anti-Gay Billboards.
