Something stinks about the SNP’s attitude to complaints of sexual harassment
VICTIMS of sexual abuse and assault have rarely had the voice they deserve. Fortunately that is starting to change as society comes to terms with the truth about how men have abused their power over the years.
But in Scotland’s biggest, most powerful political party, a pattern has emerged that should send a chill up the spine of everyone committed to combatting sexual abuse in the workplace. That pattern is one of dishonesty, hypocrisy and deflection. And it puts the SNP leadership at the top of a culture that prioritises the fight for independence over everything else – even the welfare of party staff.
After the media reported allegations against former chief whip at Westminster Patrick Grady, and an unnamed female MP, furious Nationalist MPs took to WhatsApp, not to demand justice for those who claim to have been assaulted, but to demand that whistle blowers be expelled from the party.
Chris Law, the MP for Dundee West, fumed that those speaking to journalists ‘don’t give a f*** about the damage being done to our team, our party or the impact it will have on support for independence’.
How dare victims of sexual abuse speak out and embarrass their bosses. Do all those women who testified against Harvey Weinstein not understand the damage they did to the reputation of the Hollywood film industry?
Revelation
That SNP parliamentarians believe, even in the era of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, that no cause is more important than the fight for independence, is hardly a new revelation. Last year, Stirling MP Alyn Smith was revealed in an email to oppose his party’s ‘failed experiment’ of expanding its ruling body to include black and disabled representatives. ‘Equalities are close to my heart but not as close as independence,’ he wrote.
None of this chimes with the view expressed by Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, when she appeared before a Holyrood committee and apologised to the women let down by her government when it catastrophically failed to comply with the law in its internal inquiry into the behaviour of her predecessor, Alex Salmond.
But at that same inquiry, in a soundbite undoubtedly composed to attract maximum sympathy, Sturgeon added: ‘As First Minister, I refused to follow the age-old pattern of allowing a powerful man to use his status and connections to get what he wants.’
Noble sentiments. But what was Patrick Grady if not a powerful man? A man who stepped aside as SNP chief whip at Westminster only when the media reported complaints against him.
And a man who other, powerful men in the SNP – Nicola Sturgeon’s colleagues – would seem to prefer to have remained in post, were it not for the inconvenient behaviour of nosy journalists.
When Sturgeon was asked last week if she knew beforehand about the complaints against Grady – complaints first made in 2016 – she said she had been aware of ‘a concern, not a formal complaint’.
Her vague answer about when she knew – was it weeks earlier? Months? Years? – is reminiscent of her ambiguity and evasiveness before the Holyrood committee investigating the Salmond case.
Another piece of this puzzle slotted into place when Angus Robertson, a former Nationalist MP and an ally of Sturgeon’s, revealed in written evidence to the same Holyrood committee that in 2009 he was asked by management at Edinburgh Airport to speak to Salmond about the then First Minister’s ‘inappropriateness’ towards female members of staff. Conveniently, after speaking to Salmond, Robertson decided the case had been ‘resolved’.
In other words, the pattern is one of sexual allegations either being ignored and covered up, or revealed years later only if doing so happens to strengthen an ally’s political position.
Sturgeon may have once regarded Salmond as her friend and mentor, but did she recognise the description of him by his own QC who, after the former First Minister was cleared of all criminal charges against him, described his client as ‘an objectionable bully’ and ‘a nasty person, a nightmare to work with’?
Sturgeon served under Salmond for ten years; either she recognised that devastating description or she disagrees with it. If the former, why didn’t she say something at the time? Or would doing so risk the campaign for independence?
This bitter SNP family quarrel has cast a pall over Scotland’s political culture. We are left with the impression that much that goes on behind the closed doors of government is deeply unpleasant – even threatening – but can never be revealed except under pressure from the media. Even aside from Salmond’s alleged behaviour and his colleagues’ failure to notice it, the SNP seems to have had more than its fair share of scandals.
Mark McDonald, a former children’s minister, was suspended from the party after complaints were made against him by a number of women.
Former finance minister Derek Mackay was assumed to be in line to succeed Sturgeon herself at some point, right up until the point the media revealed he had sent a series of inappropriate texts to a 16-year-old schoolboy.
Resignation
One of the most telling of recent revelations was the report that Joanna Cherry MP, in the aftermath of Grady’s resignation, had asked SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford why she had been sacked from the front bench earlier this year while Grady had kept his post, even though the leadership were aware of the complaints against him for years.
Blackford replied that it was because Cherry was ‘not a team player’.
Think about that. Cherry has indeed been an independent-minded parliamentarian, a supporter of Salmond’s and an opponent of Sturgeon’s, especially the First Minister’s obsessive promotion of trans rights at the expense of women’s. Did that make her less eligible to serve on the party’s front bench than a man against whom there were outstanding serious allegations?
Well, yes. In the SNP, that was certainly the case. And shouldn’t that concern us all?
No other political party has the same over-arching, allimportant policy objective that independence is to the SNP. In other parties, policies compete with each other for the leaderships’ support and change according to circumstances.
When Labour chose to ditch its commitment to nationalisation, it turned its focus on other priorities, such as education and welfare reform. When the Tories are frustrated in their attempts to reform the NHS or the BBC, they move on to other areas such as taxation and regulation.
This is simply what happens in functional democratic parties across the world. Because the danger of having one defining policy, a sacred cow that must be held sacrosanct at all times, is that everything else – including the welfare and safety of individuals – must be subverted to its importance.
And that stinks. It’s a recipe for corruption and for coverup. ‘The end justifies the means’ is not a slogan or philosophy to which any party or country should adhere.
Yet here we are in 21st century Scotland, governed by a party whose own MPs admit that nothing is more important than a constitutional change that’s already been expressly rejected by the country and to hell with anyone who gets in the way.