Speak Up, Speak Out - challenge the language of hatred

Case study: Neil, Mencap

The language of hatred is in our communities today, and is used to alienate those who are perceived as ‘different’.

Neil was a victim of continual and repeated hate crime, committed against him because of his learning disability.  In this film, produced by Mencap he speaks about the persecution he faced, from name-calling to the vandalism and assault that caused him to leave his home town.

Watch the film

‘I got taunted, my flat vandalised, beaten up on my doorstep, name called – ‘four eyes, retard, spastic’ – the works’.

According to a recent report by Mencap, 90% of people with a learning disability have endured verbal or physical harassment in the UK.  On Holocaust Memorial Day 2012, we must choose to Speak Up, Speak Out to stop the language of hatred that is used against those with learning disabilities.

 

What you can do:

 v commit to never using the words that were used to bully, taunt and alienate Neil from his home

v find out more about the work of Mencap

v find out how those with disabilities were persecuted under the Nazi regime 

Horsemen [and women] of the Equalities Apocalypse ?

Some of you may recall from my previous blogging that I have had the good fortune to have been part of a small group of people in Scotland who were able to bring government to a halt in March 2011.  We brought a stop to government plans which would have seriously diluted the legal protection available to people in Scotland to live, work and play free from discrimination.

Shortly after that I was advised, in roundabout ways and never directly to my dashingly rugged and handsome face [woopppss, wrong blog], that we [the small group] were considered by some to have done a grave disservice to the cause of equality in Scotland, to have set the work on equalities in Scotland back by decades, generally been all-round rotters and bad eggs, and probably done unspeakable things to sheep.  Hmmmmmmmmm.

siren voices beseech MSPs on the Parliamentary
Equal Opportunities Committee to throw out  the 
draft specific duties

Even the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] tried in a last minute, overnight, attempt to nobble the Parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee and persuade them to ignore the siren voices and go with the then draft specific duties. The EHRC were, said Ros Micklem, Scotland Director, 'supportive of the duties as currently framed' and held that they were 'robust enough for regulation purposes'.  Ros went on to warn the Committee 'that any decision to delay would mean Scotland having no specific duties' and that 'we do not believe that this would be in the best interests of the Scottish people.'  

To recap.  Late last year, government consulted on a revised set of specific duties with which to ensure public bodies protected the right of people to live, work, and play free from discrimination.  In my view the revisions offer much stronger protections and challenge public bodies to do more than spin their wheels in the sand as they have been doing for decades on making it look as if they are delivering equality.

The consultation on the previous draft in 2010 found 123 responses submitted.  Government’s analysis then was that 79 [65%] of these came from public bodies [lets imagine them as turkeys] and 43 [35%] came from other organisations or were individuals [lets imagine these as non-turkeys].  The sexed-up analysis [and that is their poor arithmetic] went on to unblushingly conclude that

'There was support for all of the proposals in the consultation document.  A majority of respondents agreed with all questions asked.'

the orgasmic enthusiasm of the
 public sector turkeys

Given an alternative analysis was that the duties would considerably reduce the work required of public bodies to do and evidence much on equalities compared with what had gone before, those of us who could see beyond the chimera of statistical massaging could understand only too well the orgasmic enthusiasm of the public sector turkeys in voting for what would have been an almost permanent delay to the arrival of Christmas.  When the hysterical cacophony of gobbling by the turkeys were set aside, a more complex picture emerged and one which showed that just as many brickbats for the draft had been submitted as there were plaudits. 

Government did admit in the preface to its latest round of consultation on draft specific duties :

'Our changes focus on increasing transparency and accountability and putting more details into the Regulations themselves rather than in guidance.  Making the Regulations more explicit will help public authorities to understand what they need to do and it will help equality groups and communities to see what authorities are doing.'

Government has, last week, published the consultation responses received to the new draft specific duties.  An analysis is being worked on.  It is hoped that it will be a more honest, accurate and transparent analysis.

  

While waiting on this I thought I’d randomly sample and taste what had been submitted this time around, and see if anyone had touched on the hiatus from last year and whether they had taken a view that this latest draft was the better for it.  This was not made easy by the government’s website being set up in such a way that you could not click onto any name in the list of respondents and find their submission.  For those who are not paranoid, this was apparently just a technical glitch.

Out of the 136 submitted, I have skim read around 20.  My overall impressions [note I don’t claim it was an analysis and that these are ‘findings’]?  It looks as if most people and organisations agree that the latest draft specific duties are good for Scotland.  But then a few of them agreed that was the case last time, which is probably why I am unable to find reference in these submissions to the last time - it has been conveniently airbrushed out of the official history as is written in the model of the world of these respondents.

As ever, there are the usual eejits who manage to dig a deep hole for themselves and instead of throwing away the shovel keep on stabbing themselves in the foot with it when they worry in their response about having to ask job applicants if they are pregnant.  Yes, really.  And for a small fee I will let you know who and save you reading through all 136 to get to that gem.

'There are the usual eejits who manage to dig a deep hole for themselves and instead of throwing away the shovel keep on stabbing themselves in the foot with it when they worry in their response about having to ask job applicants if they are pregnant.'

 There was also a response from the EHRC in Scotland.  Still predicting doom for the people of Scotland ?  Their latest offering concludes, 'The Commission welcomes this consultation and looks forward to the publication of the duties in their final form.  The current absence of the Specific Duties has created an uncertainty amongst public authorities, and those served by them, about what the balance of rights and responsibilities are.'  Not much bridge-building there then.  Clearly we are still scoundrels, rotters and bad eggs.

  

4 horsemen of the apocalypse .... left the orphaned
 equality communities helpless in our wake .. 

What is missing from all of the sample I looked at is any sense that maybe, just maybe, Liz Rowlett, Jatin Haria, Eleanor McKnight and others got it right about a year ago.  That maybe, just maybe, those who reckoned the we were nothing more than the 4 horsemen [sic] of the apocalypse who scorched the earth of equalities work and left the orphaned equality communities helpless in our wake, need to acknowledge that what has been achieved is a set of much stronger protections for people from all of Scotland's equality communities, as well as a landmark moment for active and participative democracy.

FOOTNOTE

For the sake of historical accuracy and the official record, when Jatin and I took on the role of siren voices and beseeched the Parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee to throw out the duties, we both kept our clothes on, unlike our body doubles featured in 'Ulysses and the Sirens' above and as painted by Herbert James Draper [1863-1920].

Golden Showers and democracy

Growing evidence suggests there is a huge deficit in the democratic process and that it is seriously damaging the foundations of the consensus by which governments are elected to govern on behalf of all citizens.  In turn, the integrity of politicians and the democratic process is in such a parlous state that this deficit will simply deepen.

I talk not of financial or monetary deficits, although those are stark and chilling enough.  I do wonder if the post-apocalyptic vision harrowingly etched out in Cormac McCarthy’s novel ‘The Road’ is now closer than we can imagine ?

I talk instead of how our governments are ‘consulting’ citizens over planned changes in law or in public services.  Or if I may put it more plainly, how governments [and public bodies generally] have become expert at passing off any of their ‘consultations’ as being but the briefest of precipitations in our unbroken progress towards the sunny uplands and green be-turbined hills of government’s vision, when in fact the policy compass is broke and our sense of being damp, cold, clueless and alienated comes not from being lost but from having to stand still and endure yet another ‘golden shower’ being delivered from a great height by civil servants and ministers. 

Almost a year ago, Scottish government published plans to introduce specific equality duties.  These plans followed extensive ‘consultation’ late-2010.  Some of us – OK, a telephone box-ful of us – were disbelieving at the very slight changes made in the final plans from the pre-consult version.  In a matter of days before Parliament was to vote the duties into being, those denizens of the telephone box [it kept us dry from the ‘golden showers’ amongst other things] took a long hard look at the analysis of consultation responses published [very late] by government.  Big surprise.  Almost all of the public bodies which had responded had welcomed the planned specific duties with orgasmic trumpet voluntaries fit to burst. 

Almost all of the public bodies which had responded had welcomed the planned specific duties with orgasmic trumpet voluntaries fit to burst.

Turkey Voter

Given the removal of the previously onerous specific duties which no public body had been able to meet to any real degree, it was understandable that public bodies would welcome having to do a lot less than they had failed to do previously.  What was naughty was the analysis then went on to advise the reader and MSPs that the majority of respondents agreed with the draft specific duties.  The quality of analysis was on a par with that you'd get in running a survey mid-December, where 10 out of 10 turkeys asked said, yes, they agreed with government plans to abolish Christmas.

Alex Neil

Some of us managed to persuade the Parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee [PEOC] that the information they were being given to support the new specific duties was somewhat flawed and, along with some persuasive passion and guidance how better duties for Scotland could be built and on how to tell the difference between ‘golden showers’ and honest rain, they agreed, inviting Alex Neil and his civil servants to button-up, zip up, and think again.

..... inviting Alex Neil and his civil servants to button-up, zip up, and think again.

Some of us were naïve enough to believe that after that experience it would not happen again. 

Alex Neil and a JCB

Late in 2011 Scottish government ‘consulted’ on plans for a Social Housing Charter.  Lots of us commented.  This week, government sent a note to all of us who commented to provide us with a copy of the final Charter which will be considered for approval in Parliament next week.  It has significantly changed from what was ‘consulted’ on.  When I engaged with civil servants over when I could read an analysis of the ‘consultation’ responses and asked had it been weighted to take account of whether respondents had been landlords or tenants and other citizens, I was advised that I would be sent a copy of the analysis once it was approved for publication.  When I went back and asked if MSPs and Ministers had seen the analysis, I was told that yes they had been given a copy.  To summarise, MSPs are being asked to approve a Charter, heavily revised to take account of a ‘consultation’, and those of us who responded are not able to get a copy of the analysis to ensure that it is fair and transparent, and not just another ‘golden shower’ of the kind with which Alex Neill tried to hose down the PEOC last year.  Is it just coincidence that Alex Neil now has the Ministerial bag in which what is left of social housing sits ?

Sue Marsh

‘Golden showers’ are not exclusive to the Scottish political climate.  Many of you will be aware of the Welfare [sic] Reform Bill winding its way around the corridors of Westminster.  Some of you might even be aware of the work of Sue Marsh and others in getting the House of Lords to amend the Bill, only for government to win subsequent votes.  Sue and some other disabled people pulled off a remarkable coup in exposing the massive ‘golden shower’ trick pulled by government when they claimed that their ‘consultation’ over the Bill showed most disabled people supported their plans to abolish Disability Living Allowance [DLA] and replace it with Personal Independence Payments [another ‘golden shower’ in its own right].  The ‘#Spartacus’ report from Sue and others exposed the ‘golden shower’ on DLA reforms in astounding detail.  If you want to read more on this shameful episode, follow this link.

Matthew Norman, columnist with the ‘Independent’, expressed himself forcibly on the duplicity around WRB and it is worth a read.  A sample :

Whatever damage peers inflict on this snarling Pitbull of a Bill, however many of its teeth they remove, its advancement has taught us something chilling about the Prime Minister.
For all his personal experience, expressions of paternal goodwill towards the disabled and fraternal concern for their carers, at the first clanging of the alarm bells his instinct was to scarper, and leave them in the stairwell to burn.

In countries across the world, citizens are risking and sometimes losing their lives in telling leaders to button/zip-up and enough already with the ‘golden showers’.

Here in Scotland?  We have an ‘Occupy’ camp in St Andrew’s Square which has the buzz often found in long-closed and abandoned factories.  Ironically the camp is now surrounded and hemmed in by the street closures required to allow more roadworks which are needed to let Edinburgh’s Hornby tram set be taken out of its box.  Not quite going to make the history books as Scotland’s redux of the Aurora's pivotal moment in St Petersburg in 1917. 

Not quite going to make the history books as Scotland’s redux of the Aurora's pivotal moment in St Petersburg in 1917.

It was down to the action of citizens like Sue Marsh to expose government’s duplicity and chicanery over WRB.  None of the major disabled people’s organisations [and there are many and some national ones are cash rich] achieved anything like the same impact.  Perhaps part of the democratic process deficit gap is created by the established voluntary/charitable sector’s inability or unwillingness to seriously challenge governments? 

That being so, we need to understand why a momentary, random, alliance of a tiny number of people in Scotland was able to stop the dilution of protections offered by specific equality duties.  We need to understand why Sue Marsh and others were able to harness their disparate knowledge, experience, energy and outrage, and plug it all into social media channels such as Twitter and so ensure that disabled people in this country are not to be left in the burning stairwell of government policy.  With that understanding, we can reclaim control over how our society is to be shaped, regain our capacity to hope for ourselves as well as for others, and revive our determination to live each day as a decent human beings.

Footnote

For those carbolic loving, Sunday Post-reading and thoroughly decent people who consider putting the rubbish out on the wrong day to be bad form and who blush at swearing, I have used the twee ‘golden showers’ throughout this piece in order to avoid giving offence.  Should you be intrigued, want to extend your vocabulary, and live just a little dangerously, you can get a translation of the phrase here.  If you want to retain your innocence, would never watch ‘Goodfellas’, and are content with government’s delivery of ‘golden showers’ on you and yours on a regular basis, do not, repeat DO NOT click on the link.  Click on this instead.

Speak Up, Speak Out

Holocaust Memorial Day [HMD] takes place on 27 January each year. It’s a time to pause to remember the millions of people who have been murdered or whose lives have been changed beyond recognition during the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. On HMD you are asked to honour the survivors of these regimes of hatred and issue a challenge for us all to use the lessons of their experience to inform your lives today.

HMD is not simply about remembering. It is a time when we seek to learn the lessons of the past and to recognise that genocide does not just take place on its own, it’s a steady process which can begin if discrimination, racism and hatred are not checked and prevented. Here in the UK we are not at risk of genocide - leastways, not yet.  We cannot ever be sure, be safe, rest easy.


In many of our communities and neighbourhoods hatred exists.  Stephen Lawrence and Simon San are just two young people who are now dead simply because some other people hated them for their difference.  Discrimination has not ended, nor has the use of the language of hatred or exclusion. There is still much to do to create a safer future and HMD is an opportunity to start this process.

It’s impossible for anyone who was not there to fully imagine what took place during the Holocaust or in subsequent genocides. HMD does not aim to compare our society to a genocidal regime, it aims to show how easy it is for the path to genocide to begin if we are not mindful of what can happen.

Some will be too busy to remember, to honour the murdered, to protest at the abuse of those who are different on the buses and trains we use every day.  For those people I can only remind them of Pastor Friedrich Niemöller.  His legacy to us is a piece of verse which is as relevant today as it was then:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Stephen Lawrence

 As someone who identifies as a 'mongrel European' and who is only here now as a direct consequence of events in the lead up to the Holocaust, I have a deep sense of why HMD is so important in using the past to build a future where diversity and difference is embraced and not casually thrown into the only too easily lit gas ovens of intolerance, prejudice, fear and bigotry. 

Simon San

Get it in your diary.  Friday 27th January 2012.  Have a think about how you can help keep the HMD candle lit and shining a light on the darkness in which so many acts of hatred take place and which diminish us all.  Having thought about it, do speak up and do speak out.  Stephen Lawrence, Simon San and millions of others will have died for nothing otherwise.  If you do nothing else, simply say their names out loud next Friday - Stephen Lawrence and Simon San.

Fear and loathing in Victoria Quay

Charities that provide public services are increasingly reluctant to speak out against social injustice because they fear they will lose their funding,according to a report from the Independence Panel, a commission set up in England to monitor the voluntary sector as it grapples with huge cuts in public funding.  It said service provider charities that traditionally have also had an advocacy role were censoring their public utterances for fear of reprisals from local authority and central government funders.

So far, so clear, so unsurprising.  

Martin Sime - CE at SCVO

And then you go looking for something similar by way of intelligence on what is happening in Scotland.  Where better than the web site of the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations, SCVO?  Well, for one thing the SCVO web site takes ages to load and is not the most accessible of web sites.  That apart, can I find an analysis of the strained relationship between government and the voluntary sector?  Three guesses and the first 4 don't count.

Keith Wimbles - CE at VAF

Then to the web site of the Voluntary Action Fund, VAF, which acts as a banker for government in distributing funds to the voluntary sector to do some of the equalities work needed in Scotland.  They distribute at least £4,683,807 of funds to 65 projects and get £180,402 themselves for doing this work.  I have tried asking questions of VAF [like what difference that work makes to individual people] but I have been told that they are not accountable to citizens, only those who use their services.  Do they offer any insights as to the atmosphere of fear and loathing between voluntary sector organisations working in equalities and the government?  Do they even tell you what the 65 projects are to do with over £4 million of funds and how it will make a difference to you, me and other people?  No, no and once again no.  

So VAF, like SCVO, are unable to say just how much voluntary sector organisations are bullied by government into not openly and overtly challenging or criticising government, with the sub-text being if you challenge you will lose funding at the next round.  Maybe not unable to say.  Maybe not willing to say?

This is not my fevered, paranoid, opium-fuelled gibberings.  In conversation with a number of people working in the sector over the last couple of years I have been told that very direct threats have come from civil servants in Victoria Quay, when some voluntary sector staff have been challenging or in some cases accused of being 'overly familiar' in their approach to and engagement with government minsters.  The message?  Simple.  Back off, else the funding tap gets turned off.

The debate on this issue has now opened up in England.  In Scotland, we are clearly so cowed by the government's bullying culture and in hock to government funding, we can't even bring it out of the closet.  We need cold turkey, and the drug is government funding.


As one of the first steps, why not challenge the two umbrella voluntary sector organisations to comment on the climate of fear and loathing created by Victoria Quay?  Ask Keith and Martin what they are doing to protect the independence and integrity of staff in the voluntary sector?


In addition, you could ask your MSP what she/he knows about this and what she/he thinks should be put in place to remove bullying from the relationship between government and the sector.


Finally, Nicola Sturgeon has ministerial responsibility for equalities in her bag.  Why not drop her an email asking if she is aware of the climate of fear and loathing, and what checks and balances she has in place to make sure it is eliminated?

You can be free only if I am free

Just a few days ago, Stonewall published its eighth annual guide to what it coyly describes as a Workplace Equality Index [WEI] of ‘Britain’s most gay-friendly [sic] employers’.  Credit to Ben Summerskill, Chief Executive, of Stonewall and his crew for getting employers to buy into the concept of benchmarking their work on delivering lesbian, gay and bi-sexual [LGB] equality and using the publication of the results to leverage further improvements in workplace equality for people who are LGB.  The WEI wheeze also generates income for Stonewall, as well as lots of column inches in the media. 

 

Who would have guessed, for instance, that MI5 would have been persuaded to enter the Stonewall WEI after decades of scaring the shit out of LGB people in government and public services as being a threat to national security ?  In the year past the spooks secured 62^nd place in the ‘top 100’ employers, beating [but not at Guantanamo Bay one hopes] such as the Royal Navy at 77^th and the Scottish Prison Service at 94^th.

 

So far, none of the other major equality communities have managed to come up with a similar initiative which has been quite so successful as Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index.  Leastways, if you count success as getting into bed with such fragrant company as Goldman Sachs, merchant bankers, and persuading them to host a reception for those working in LGB equality where champagne cocktails were served on the rooftop garden of the Goldman Sachs offices in London’s Covent Garden [I may have got some of the fine detail on that blurred – it was the champagne – but the overall thrust – rooftop gardens and merchant bankers - is accurate].

 

And who wants to be peer reviewed on equality when the peer group includes MI5 who are linked to people have been illegally imprisoned and tortured in Guantanamo Bay and held without trial for a number of years? 

 

Stonewall friends and occasional hosts Goldman Sachs – in at number 6 – have been cited as discriminatory in relation to gender, with three former female employees claiming in 2010 that the firm has a testosterone-driven culture of press-up contests on the trading floor, male-dominated golf outings and scantily clad escorts at an office Christmas party.

 

In at 90 and way behind the merchant bankers [why do I keep itching to use a ‘w’ instead?] and spooks is the Scottish Government.  Yes indeed, that same organisation which routinely discriminates against disabled people when publishing information in printed form or on its web site.  And the same government which steadfastly delays, delays and delays again the delivery of equal pay for women working in Scotland’s NHS. 

 

In the top half of the ‘top 100’, at 45^th place, is Morgan Stanley, yet another merchant banker.  There may well be a link between dealing in and holding on to obscene amounts of money at the same time as causing world economic disater, but Morgan Stanley are no strangers to discrimination, having paid out $54 million in settlement of a class action on sex discrimination in 2004.

 

I have neither the time nor the inclination to dig further beneath the glossy and glittery surface of what Stonewall’s WEI purports to tell the reader on equality.  There is already a strong enough whiff building up around the buried evidence of real discrimination and I do not want to lose my lunch.  It would appear you can blag your way into Stonewall’s ‘top 100’ of ‘gay-friendly’ employers while at the same time being discriminatory against people from other equality communities. Duplicity ?

Clarence Darrow

You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free only if I am free.

It was Clarence Darrow who first coined what I consider to be a robust truth : 'You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's [sic] freedom.  You can be free only if I am free.'  I would commend this truth to Ben Summerskill and all others who strive to secure equality and freedom from discrimination for people from all of the communities of people who experience discrimination on a daily basis.