Death before equality ?

Our devolved government is, once more, trying to draft specific equality duties for public bodies to use as a map in finding their way towards the goal of creating public services free of discrimination.


Having taken a bloody-nosed defeat earlier this year on another draft they tried to push through parliament, there is some evidence in this latest draft of government’s willingness to listen and, having done so, to amend previous positions and accept reasoned rationale for improving how these can deliver measurable, person-centred improvements in the experiences Scotland’s diverse citizens have when accessing and experiencing public services.

Before Ministers and civil servants tremble at the unheard of prospect of my giving them a gold star, I contend the debate is not yet over on just how much needs to be made explicit in the specific duty regulations and how much can be implied if we are to make a fresh start on delivering real, person-centred and measurable equality.

This cannot be viewed as simply being an academic debate.  Discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, hate and the denial of fairness and dignity remain an everyday reality for too many people living in Scotland.  It is also a shameful reality that the public sector in Scotland hosts many of the people, the attitudes, the mindsets and the practices which combine to sustain the denial of fairness and dignity to people who are different from them.

We have had several decades of opportunity to dismantle discrimination based on a person’s ethnicity.  That someone can be murdered in 2011 in Scotland simply because they are of a different ethnicity suggests those opportunities have been wasted and that racism and racial discrimination remains entrenched in our society.  Equal Pay for women has been a goal for several decades, and yet recent research on rates of progress suggest between another 70-90 more years are needed to reach that goal at present rates of change.  In the last few months a major inquiry into the abuse, hate and violence endured by disabled people has destroyed any cosy consensus that we are anywhere near delivering equality with and for disabled people.

The choices are stark.  We can sustain the false consensus which is most often at home in the dining and drawing rooms of Scotland's chattering classes, and has as its truth that all we need is just a few more minor policy tweaks, tick just a few more business plan boxes, airbrush in a just a few more black faces to Visit Scotland videos, and we will surely arrive, very soon, at some equality-Brigadoon.

Or.  We can learn from the history of our equalities work over these last few decades and accept that as a result of our failures, tens of thousands of people from Scotland’s diverse communities will have lived and died before experiencing what it would be like to live each day free from discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, hate and the denial of fairness and dignity.  Having learned, we can resolve to create and use these latest draft specific duties to deliver a robust measure of real equality in the current lifetimes of Scotland’s diverse communities of people.  

Do you want to see your mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son or your best friend meet each day of the rest of their life knowing they will face discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, hate and the denial of fairness and dignity?  I repeat. This is not an academic debate.  Early last year I visited my mother in an intensive care unit in hospital as she struggled to recover from a fall.  Days before she died I recall walking on to the ward and seeing her on top of her bed, clearly having been restless in her drugged sleep, and with her nightgown ruckled up around the top of her thighs.  I had to remind staff that though she was a heavily drugged patient, an old woman who had little time left to her, she was not only my mother but also a human being in our collective care, and that her dignity was precious to her and so should be to us.  Together we rearranged her nightgown and restored her dignity. 

If you believe we need to aim for real equality in the lifetimes of today's older, vulnerable and marginalised people, contact Nicola Sturgeon by email to let her know these specific duties need to be stronger so that all of our mothers can grow old without the fear of facing discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, or hate, just because they are different.