The self-appointed guardians of Scottish culture who claim a book makes National Library ‘unsafe’

Look beyond the Usher Hall and the Citizens Theatre, and you will find a publicly funded subculture dominated by a tribe of malcontents, millennials and entitled Gen Z-ers whose nose rings are as important to their standing in this milieu as their creative output.

Until this week, their existence barely bothered me. I knew they had destroyed my friend Jenny Lindsay’s poetry career, but she is building an even better one in non-fiction and commentary. I was aware that they had tried to break the indomitable poet Magi Gibson, but women like Magi, brought up as she was in a working-class community in the 60s and 70s, fear no one. Her poetry is as powerful and important today as it was when she first started writing.

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Petulant attempt at censorship

I admit I noticed them briefly when they attempted to stop an event at the 2023 Festival Fringe starring Joanna Cherry KC, then an MP and who today remains one of civic Scotland’s most commanding voices. Their petulant attempt at censorship failed at the first legal hurdle.

And, on occasion, I have spotted one or two of them at women’s rights rallies, protesting about our existence. But by and large, they were as relevant to me as K-pop and Love Island, which is not at all.

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Then a few days ago, my friend and co-editor Lucy Hunter Blackburn and I were sent an open letter signed by a motley crew of more than 150 members of Scotland’s “academic, heritage, arts, literary and cultural sectors”.

It was addressed to the board and senior management of the National Library of Scotland and, in the whiny voice of an entitled teenager denied the latest iPhone, complained that the inclusion of a “certain book” in the library’s centenary exhibition created a “hostile environment for queer and trans people working at and visiting the library”.

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A ‘no-nonsense guide to all things trans’

The book in question is The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a collection of essays on women's rights campaigning in Scotland edited by me and Lucy. It was briefly the subject of controversy earlier this year when the National Library excluded it from its centenary exhibition, despite it winning a public vote, after staff concerns that it would cause “harm”.

It was re-instated following a torrent of complaints, and today sits proudly among the 200-plus books that shaped people’s lives, including Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped and Juno Dawson’s What’s The T, described as a “no-nonsense guide to all things trans and/or non-binary for teens”.

A splendid display of Scotland’s diverse and inclusive culture one would think, but not, it seems, for the self-appointed guardians of our nation’s culture.

Their missive went on to complain, with no evidence, that “anti-trans activists had been emboldened to harass library visitors”. The library has, in recent months, become “materially less safe”, they said.

It was signed by such luminaries as writer Catherine Wilson Garry, Dave Coates, duty manager of the Fruitmarket Gallery, and Ryan Van Winkle, director of Stanza, Scotland’s international poetry festival.

Modern-day witchfinders

Peppered among the poets, arts administrators and writers were a number of academics including no less than three professors at Glasgow University and Dr Kevin Guyan, of Edinburgh University, who also happens to be chair of the Scottish Government-funded charity the Equality Network.

A Glasgow University lecturer posted the letter on social media urging people to sign it in support of the library’s queer and trans staff who were “going through an awful time at the moment”.

An “awful time” caused, according to the signatories of the letter, by a book written by 34 women about a campaign for women’s rights. A book so powerful that it can cause harm simply by sitting on a shelf next to an Oor Wullie annual. A book so toxic, these modern-day witchfinders cannot even bear to speak its name.

Scottish culture’s identity crisis

At the same time as the open letter emerged from the depths of social media, an independent review of Creative Scotland criticised the national arts body for being “bureaucratic” and “impersonal”, warning that the agency needed to expand its support beyond funded individuals and organisations.

Who among us can forget that only last year, Creative Scotland awarded £85,500 to an erotic film project in which performers were to be paid to have live sex, only pulling the grant after adverse publicity.

Scotland’s cultural sector is clearly going through an identity crisis. Its national funding agency is in desperate need of an overhaul, and a small, but influential, cadre of activists feel they have the right to destroy the careers and damage the reputations of people with whom they disagree.

What Catherine Wilson Garry and her fellow signatories think about my creative output is neither here nor there. Since my 60th birthday, I have published two books, one a Sunday Times best-seller.

I write for a newspaper I love, and with Lucy I co-edit a popular feminist newsletter. But Ms Wilson Garry is part of the Push The Boat Out poetry festival team. She has the power to make or break a young writer’s career.

She and the 163 signatories, including 13 who wished to remain anonymous, may feel they have the right to censor Scotland’s arts. But in reality, they are nothing more than small-minded attention-seekers. As Burns would say, “O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us!”