Remember the grim phrase which once faced those seeking lodgings in boarding houses in the fifties and sixties? ‘No Blacks, no Irish’.
It’s unimaginable that such discrimination could be allowed today.
But The Stand comedy club has opened itself up to such accusations this week, and this performance is no laughing matter.
The staff in the Edinburgh establishment aren’t refusing folk on the grounds of their colour or Celtic heritage. They’re declining to allow Joanna Cherry to perform there on the basis that, according to them, she holds anti-trans views.
Bosses issued a statement regarding Cherry’s participation in The Stand’s Edinburgh Fringe programme.
In it they said the MP and KC, a high profile lesbian, had been informed that key operational staff are unwilling to work at the event if she is allowed to speak.
To complicate matters, Tommy Sheppard, a director of the club, is an SNP MP and party colleague of Cherry’s, who sits with her in the House of Commons.
Aside from the fact that Cherry denies that she holds any anti-trans views, who might the militants decide they can’t accommodate next?
Catholics? Muslims? Disabled people?
Experts question legality of Joanna Cherry cancellation
Staff have apparently claimed they would feel unsafe at the event if Cherry is allowed to speak.
I’m not sure if they’ve seen Joanna Cherry, but she’s no Tyson Fury.
It should not be possible for venues or their staff to no-platform #lesbians & feminists like me who believe that sex is an immutable biological fact. Such discrimination is unlawful as well as unacceptable. This needs widely called outhttps://t.co/KSs0fedbkd
— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) April 30, 2023
And not only have bosses at The Stand backed and indulged the petty whims and biases of their employees, they may also, according to learned legal scholars, have broken the law.
Michael Foran, lecturer in public law at Glasgow University, has pointed out: “You are entitled not to be unlawfully discriminated against in the provision of goods and services.”
He says the law ensures that protected characteristics such as sex, race, sexual orientation, religion, or protected philosophical beliefs mean it is illegal to discriminate against those they apply to.
Roddy Dunlop, KC and Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, has also warned: “We are in dangerous territory here” and urged those cheering on The Stand to be careful what they wish for.
“How will you feel when staff at another venue claim that they won’t serve Trans people, or gay people, or Christians?” he asked on Twitter.
“You ok with that?”
Joanna Cherry cancellation comes amid wider party strife
The whole matter is murky.
And it is set against the background of the ongoing civil war raging within a party which has forgotten that its there to run the country, not to indulge in student politics and petty infighting.
Cherry, a long-standing opponent of SNP proposals to make it easier for transgender people to self-identify, has traditionally been seen as being on the Sturgeon-critical side of the party, while Sheppard might be regarded as in the Sturgeon camp.
It all makes me wonder if, increasingly, folk might conclude that we’re deluding ourselves into thinking that an independent Scotland – if it ever happens – would be the fairer and more just place that some of us had hoped for.
When a business directed by a senior politician, such as Sheppard, is prepared to appease the infantile and bigoted posturing of junior staff when deciding who will be allowed onto its stage, it does not bode well for a country claiming to be progressive.
Many folk are watching with mounting concern as, bit by bit, Scotland begins to resemble a rather dark place.
Trial by jury is threatened. Women are physically stopped from seeing a film at Edinburgh University by men purporting to represent trans women. And now a leading politician and lawyer is denied entry to an event, to which she had been invited, in order to satisfy the capricious arrogance of intolerant, jumped-up employees.
Given all of that, Joanna Cherry’s ban from a comedy club is anything but a joke.
It’s deadly serious.
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