VICTORY IS TWEET
I DON’T SPEAK TO DAD ANY MORE OVER THIS
KEZIA Dugdale has won her legal battle with pro-independence blogger Stuart Campbell, who runs Wings Over Scotland. But she has lost her father in the process.
Over the two years of the case, the former Scottish Labour leader has stopped speaking to her SNP-supporting dad, Jeff.
She said: “I’ve no idea what he thinks. I can’t humour him in my life just now. Even since the legal action, he has regularly engaged online with Wings Over Scotland.”
It was 11.30am and 38-year-old Kezia was working in her partner Jenny Gilruth’s garden in Markinch, Fife, when she heard the judgment was on its way. Half an hour later – “which felt like six hours” – her lawyer called with the good news.
Jenny – an SNP MSP – walked in the door as the phone rang. She was the first person to hear that their two-year ordeal was over.
Kezia said: “I’m so pleased, so relieved, it’s a massive weight off my shoulders.”
Her first call was to the office manager who was by her side throughout the court case. Then a quick text to her mum before jumping in the car to race into Edinburgh and issue an official statement.
It all began in March 2017 when Kezia, then leader of Scottish Labour and a Daily Record columnist, called Campbell out for a tweet she described as “homophobic”.
The blogger wrote that Conservative MSP Oliver Mundell “is the sort of public speaker that makes you wish his dad had embraced his homosexuality sooner”. His father, Scottish Secretary David Mundell, came out in January 2016.
Kezia responded that she was “shocked and appalled” by the “homophobic tweets” and that Campbell “spouts hatred and homophobia towards others” via Twitter. He sued her for defamation and demanded an apology, an undertaking not to repeat the comments and damages of £10,000.
The first lawyer’s letter arrived three weeks before the snap general election called by Theresa May. The case rumbled on as Kezia resigned from the leadership in August 2017 and appeared, briefly, on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.
She later raised the issue in the Scottish Parliament as part of a debate on the use of intemperate language in politics. In came another lawyer’s letter accusing her of repeating the defamatory remark. Campbell’s demand for damages went up to £25,000.
In December, she was served a writ as part of a £30,000 court claim by her former fiancée Louise Riddell. The pair split up after nine years together and had a flat in Edinburgh. Dugdale used her fee from the reality show to buy Riddell’s share of the property.
She went through all this while grieving for her closest friend, Gordon Aikman, who died of motor neuron disease at the start of 2017.
The first stage of her legal campaign, funded by the Labour Party, attempted to get the case thrown out before the preliminary hearing in August 2018.
The sheriff ruled there should be a full hearing. This generated a £93,000 legal bill before it got to court. All of those costs, plus Campbell’s up to that date, were paid by the Labour Party.
Then Labour’s support disappeared. Dugdale found herself facing a financially disastrous court case on her own. She said: “I was told ‘that’s it, end of, you’ve had your tea’.
“That was when I was at my lowest throughout all of this. Selfishly, because I didn’t know how I was going to defend myself financially.
“But also I couldn’t believe my party, that believes in equality so fundamentally, that’s for LGBT rights, that wants more women in politics, could do this to me. It was the darkest bit of the whole two years.
“The Labour Party was my life and it had just done this thing to me. I felt very isolated and very alone.” It came at a time when Kezia, who had backed Yvette Cooper for the Labour leadership, was out of step with Labour nationally.
She said: “It did feel political, although that would be denied by them and they would say it was financial. Jeremy wasn’t involved with this, it was an operational decision. I only involved him when all the other routes went silent. I’d text him and say, ‘Jeremy, I really need your help with this, this is serious and it’s not just about me’.”
Corbyn never replied. Then the Daily Record stepped in to cover Kezia’s legal costs and, she said, “things began to feel less desperate”. But it did not make it any less politically damaging for the party.
Kezia underlined this to her Labour
colleagues: “If he wins, it’s really bad for the Labour Party, it’s not good for you politically.
“If Wings wins, it emboldens the use of provocative, offensive language in our politics. That’s not good for anyone and it’s not good for Labour.
“The party desperately wants to move Scotland on from the conversation that’s defined by yes or no in a referendum that was five years ago. Nobody in the Labour Party wants to be constantly stuck in the constitutional debate. That’s the political reason, it’s important the party understands this is bigger
than me. If he wins, what message does it give to anyone who wants to call out what they believe to be homophobia, misogyny, racism or whatever?”
Kezia was astounded by what she found on the Wings Over Scotland website and Twitter feed.
She said: “There is offensive stuff around Hillsborough and transphobia. He frequently says online, ‘die you c***’. He can say that and I can’t say I think his comment was homophobic as a gay woman. I can’t say that I find that offensive because to my mind, he thinks I can’t have a family. I really genuinely find that quite upsetting because I want to have a family and he’s telling me I can’t have that. But he can say ‘die you c***’. How is that fair?”
Jenny was a rock-solid support throughout the tough times, administering love, advice and wine when necessary. Kezia’s mother was anxious but solid: “She knows I’m quite a tough cookie but that doesn’t mean she was not worried.”
The MSP is estranged from her nationalist father, who has been separated from her mother for more than 20 years. This is not a purely political split but their relationship became untenable when her father interacted with Campbell on Twitter.
Kezia said: “I go out with an SNP MSP, it’s not that clear cut.”
She is convinced the symbolic victory of winning a big payday from a Labour MSP was Campbell’s aim all along. She said: “It was clear to me from the start that what he wanted was money.”
She does not regret writing the column, adding: “I want to live in a country where we can freely say what we believe to be honestly held without being hauled to court. Now I just want to get on with my life.”