The new Green clerics
In the way they contest the trans rights debate, Scottish Green leaders mimic the certainties of religious dogma.
AN old friend of mine, prominent in the British environmental movement, used to go to the Glastonbury Festival dressed up as a Catholic priest. He would set up a “confessional”. Visitors would then be invited to sit down with him and list their environmental “sins”. My friend would provide them with absolution by setting out the green tasks they needed to undertake to lessen their carbon footprint.
It was all light-hearted and, despite being a Catholic myself, I thought it was funny and quite clever. But it also struck me that my friend’s pastiche of the old trappings of religion said something about the culture of the Green movement more widely. There’s the ironic glee that comes from mocking the old established order, like religion and institutions such as the Catholic Church. And there’s the iron-clad moral certainty in the revealed truths of their own cause; something which, equally ironically, resembles the very religious dogmatism they enjoy mocking. Typically, there’s also a blinkered failure to see the potential here for hypocrisy.
My friend’s antics came to mind this week after a newspaper interview by another environmental activist, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens, Lorna Slater, who is also the Scottish Government’s Minister for Green Skills, the Circular Economy and Biodiversity. In a wide-ranging discussion which took in her views on consumerism (very bad), the oil and gas industry (extremely bad), and independence (very good), she also set out her views on transgender rights. Miss Slater is a firm advocate of the new legislation on gender recognition being pursued by the Scottish Government. This seeks to make it far easier for people to register legally in their acquired gender. After warning that the debate on it had led to trans women being portrayed as “inherently dangerous” and “afraid for their safety”, she then threw petrol onto the flames by launching into a remarkable attack on the bill’s opponents. “My understanding is that there’s money in this from certain right-wing American groups that’s been flooding into organisations in the UK,” she declared, with McCarthyite intrigue. And why, she demanded, were the views of “pro” trans groups being balanced on the BBC and other media outlets by “anti” trans groups? “We wouldn’t put balance on the question of racism or anti-Semitism, but we allow this fictional notion of balance when it comes to anti-trans. The whole thing is disgusting.”
I do not wish to use this column to focus solely on the arguments around the SNP’s gender reform proposals. Save to say that, far from being “anti-trans”, just about every sceptic of the measures who has had the courage to speak out against them, and been given a media platform to do so – such as JK Rowling, SNP MP Joanna Cherry, and the swimmer Sharon Davies – has been at pains to stress their support and empathy for trans people. Patiently, and in the face of a tide of abuse themselves, they have simply raised questions over the clash of rights implicit in the plans. They have expressed the entirely reasonable concern that women’s sex-based rights in sport and in private spaces may be eroded by self-identification. They have also sought to highlight a wider philosophical question over whether a subjective sense of who you are should take precedence over the facts of biological sex. It is the Scottish Government apparent belief that it does which takes us into the realms of fantasy.
All that will continue to be pieced over. What I found more interesting, and troubling, was the thinking that lay behind Miss Slater’s comments. Yesterday, a spokesperson for the Scottish Government claimed the Minister did not believe people who engaged in “respectful” debate on trans matters should be barred from having their say. She was only saying that about ‘transphobes’. I’m afraid this is bunkum. Transphobes who hate trans people have not been given airtime in the British media. Only mostly female critics of self-identification have. Miss Slater simply let the cat out of the bag. It is clear she believes the argument over self-identification can be divided between those who are “pro” and “anti” trans. It appears she sees this as a matter of right and wrong, good and bad. She therefore sees little untoward in demanding that the ‘bad’ side should have their views supressed. Thus we end up with an actual Minister of government, who self-identifies as a guardian of liberal tolerance, airing extreme illiberal notions on who and who should not be permitted to speak.
How does somebody achieve this feat of mental gymnastics? I think it comes back to that iron-clad sense of moral certainty. I can see why the Green movement is suffused by it: there isn’t a lot more morally important than the future of the planet. Yet in too much of the environmental movement in recent years, we have seen this sense of moral fervour curdle into something more divisive: into a kind of righteous arrogance where the cause is motivated less by concern for the planet than by contempt at the people living on it. Perhaps this arises from a sense of frustration at the slow pace of change. Perhaps, contrarily, it comes from the fact that environmentalists no longer have the green turf to themselves, and therefore feel the need to stake out more extreme territory, and onto areas that have nothing to do with the environment. Whatever the cause, in Scotland at any rate, the Green party is now less a campaign for the improving the environment than the leading proponent of a modern culture war.
That’s their choice. But while my friend’s Glastonbury confessional was a harmless joke, it can’t be ignored that in so doing, the Scottish Greens resemble nobody so much these days as the old-time religious institutions they like to sneer at. There is a catechism to be followed: hard-line independence, anti-capitalism, self-ID. There is an absolutist intolerance for anybody who deviates from the faith: think of the absurd row last year when the party ended up attacking Greenpeace as a “London-based NGO” after it had dared to criticise the Scottish Government’s record. And then there are its heretics. Think of the way the party treated former MSP Andy Whiteman who resigned from the Greens over what he described as its “alienating and provocative” stance on trans rights. After raising concerns about the impact on women’s rights, he said he had been threatened with expulsion. The party he said was “very censorious of any deviation from an agreed line.” I think also of a friend and former Green party member who declined to take the agreed line on Scottish independence and similarly resigned citing “group-think and a cult-like pressure to conform”.
The bad news is that this divisive party will likely go from strength to strength, piggy-backing on the votes of independence supporters who have figured out how to game our electoral system. The question is whether the rest of us are going to take notice. The Scottish Green party is not a cuddly outlet for our environmental consciences. It is led by extreme zealots who are so pumped up on their moral righteousness that they see nothing wrong in cancelling reasonable voices from the public square. A space exists in Scottish politics for a party which puts the environment first. The Scottish Green party isn’t it.
ENDS
This article first appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail 13th April 2022