Letter from Scotland #4 Who handles the complaints about the complaints secretary?

There is a  Latin saying “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – but who will guard the guards? The same could be asked about the complaints about the SNP’s new complaints secretary.

The SNP appointed a new complaints officer on Friday – Ricky Taylor. He took to Twitter to express delight at his new post. However, it wasn’t long before the SNP’s brilliant, maverick, and “gender critical” lawyer Joanna Cherry complained.

She said Taylor had targeted her on Twitter – screenshots published in the Herald read: ‘“I’m not in any nasty minority. I’m a member of the party that’s deeply concerned with the open transphobia that you constantly spout.”

Cherry replied: “You won’t find anything to show I’m transphobic because I’m not. Standing up for women’s rights and those of lesbians is not transphobic. Grow up.”

Taylor responded: “No, Joanna. It’s time you grew up and stopped creating a toxic environment within the SNP and pulling the defamation card anytime you’re challenged on your views.”

The hostile, patronising tone of Taylor’s messages to Cherry on Twitter certainly seem to lack the discretion and courtesy one would hope for in a complaints officer. They don’t seem to offer much hope either for the SNP to get over the rough ground lightly as it struggles to cope with the fraught issue of gender politics.

As Cherry tweeted to JK Rowling recently “Thank you @jk_rowling. We may disagree on Scotland’s constitutional future but we know how to disagree respectfully.” An important skill indeed.

The saga continued over the weekend when affable journalist and elder statesperson Ruth Wishart tweeted: “Gosh, I’ve been blocked by the not yet in post @theSNP complaints officer. That didn’t take long.”

Actor, Gaelic folk-singer and longtime independence campaigner Dolina Maclennon posted on Facebook: “ I have no idea who the young man is (Ricky Taylor), who has been appointed as ‘complaints convenor’ but he has a record of insulting a friend of mine and that has to be recorded. He has called my friend Joanna Cherry transphobic. That is not true. Joanna is a lesbian and a friend. I am neither a lesbian nor a transphobic. I am an 83-year-old woman who gave birth to two daughters. So, I hear you ask, What do you know about anything? Quite a lot, actually. it begins with one word, ACCEPTANCE.

“I was brought up in an age where ‘deviations’ were accepted in a community. I well know personally, several well-known gentlemen who chose to go through the very painful experience of becoming women and eventually found the person inside them whom they always yearned to be.  a few years ago I played a part with a beautiful wee girl in Theatre Workshop who is now taking HIS finals as a nurse.  How wonderful is that?

“I had two female friends come to stay in my guesthouse in Blair Atholl , but it took them coming for 3 years before I knew that Paula had once been a man. Did that matter– the three of us fell about laughing and hugging So why are they attacking Joanna?

“Support Joanna Cherry – and I  for one wish to question the people who put this man in charge of complaints. I am an honorary life member of the party and as such, I need an answer.” At one point, Maclennan appeared to be saying if Taylor stays in post she would feel compelled to leave the party.

(There is another side to this story  – Herald columnist Mark Smith wrote a column recently saying Joanna Cherry demanded an apology from him over a dispute about Irish history).

There is a lot of heat and not much light in the gender identity question generally – older feminists fear that misogyny has taken on a new guise. Trans activists fear discrimination and exclusion.

But do we need a sense of perspective? Many people on social media express anxiety about the role of transgender athletes in sport for example – but how many transgender athletes are there in Scotland? Very few, I would guess.

My uncle David Kemp asked me to explain why young people get so het up about this and I was unable to find an adequate explanation. However, it does seem that this is a “wedge issue” of the type skillfully manipulated by right-wingers in the US. As such it has to be handled carefully.

Another friend said the other day: ‘When I joined the Greens, they were obsessing about climate change – now they seem to talk more about gender politics. But it won’t matter what gender people are when the water levels start to rise.”