LAST WEEK’S SOLUTIONS
ACROSS: 1 Crete. 4 Robotic. 8 Perkins. 9 Draft. 10 Bites. 11 Oyster. 14 Beret. 16 By ear. 18 Expert. 21 Flock. 24 Turin. 25 Olympia. 26 Eastern. 27 Posse.
DOWN: 1 Cope. 2 Earlier. 3 Evident. 4 Rose. 5 Buddy. 6 Tract. 7 Caterers. 12 Spy. 13 Absentee. 15 Eve. 16 Belly up. 17 Escapes. 19 Parts. 20 Range. 22 Torn. 23 Rake.
Imagine that Alex Salmond had still been First Minister when the MeToo movement became a global force for change.
He’d stepped down three years before, immediately after the independence referendum, leaving his beloved SNP in the more-than capable hands of his deputy,
Nicola Sturgeon.
So a strong feminist was in charge of this nation in 2017 (and doing rather nicely) when the Harvey Weinstein scandal in Hollywood detonated a bomb under male dominance and the abuse of power. The shockwaves spread across the world, causing every workplace in every land to examine itself through new eyes and causing women to look back over difficult experiences at the hands of men, harassment which they’d ignored or accepted as just “the way things were” over many years.
Suddenly, shockingly, we could see it happened everywhere.
I can’t have been alone in feeling a sense of shame that I’d never acted in my own defence, or on the behalf of other females, in circumstances I could now see were appalling and exploitative.
More than that, I’d shown misplaced loyalty to men who – with the power to influence the course of my life – had given my backside a grope while I was trying to talk business or snapped my bra while I worked at my desk.
By “accepting”, I’d been complicit in perpetuating the behaviour of “handsy” men in powerful positions, and my daughter was likely to grow up and experience exactly the same shoddy treatment. Enough.
There was a universal move to call it out, make it stop and – crucially – demand workplaces institute policies that specifically addressed sexual harassment and provided safe, robust procedures for the reporting and investigation of allegations.
“Informal” handling of complaints was no longer adequate, a “friendly” apology to the offended party was no longer a sufficient ending of the matter.
We can only wonder how Alex Salmond would have responded had he been FM in this new environment. He seems, from his evidence to the Holyrood committee investigating the Government’s handling of complaints against him, bamboozled by the demands of the MeToo movement which, rightly, insisted on immediate action and more than just tokenist tinkering with existing policies.
Had he still been FM, would it have been top of his agenda to establish a whole new policy which acknowledged the problems of the past, allowing for historic cases to be aired?
Would a man who knew he’d had “sleepy cuddles” at Bute House have been keen to champion tougher sexual harassment procedures?
The kind of “inappropriate” behaviour which Salmond has admitted was indicative of the very problem MeToo highlighted. Would he have been driven to be part of the solution? We can only speculate.
Salmond seems to think the world was out to get him, with Sturgeon leading the way. But what he’s failing to see is that the world changed around him, and other women had already led the way.
In her evidence to the committee last week, Sturgeon said the details of complaints against Salmond made her head spin. “What he described constituted, in my view, deeply inappropriate behaviour on his part.”
Which was probably the moment the apprentice truly outgrew her mentor and, like so many of us, was forced to see the failings of a man, a friend, to whom she’d been so loyal and grateful.
Tragically, two women complainers were still let down by the bungled Scottish Government investigation into their claims, which tells us we have a long way to go before we’ve really done justice to the MeToo movement. Please get on with it. Cause that’s what’s important now.
And maybe, instead of continuing to hurl accusations and worry at minutiae, Alex Salmond should be grateful to be able to move on quietly now and leave modern politics to modern people.