When a pressure group moves from promoting the rights of a minority to trying to micromanage the behaviour of the majority, we should be worried. When large numbers of organisations in both the public and private sectors dance to the tune of that body, we should be more so. Stonewall is a case in point, if the evidence given at an employment tribunal case decided yesterday involving commendably pugnacious lesbian activist Allison Bailey is anything to go by.
Founded in 1989 as a gay equality campaign group, in recent years Stonewall has diversified into aggressively promoting trans activism. As an organisation, it has also become pretty rawly commercial. A good chunk of its income of over £8 million a year comes from encouraging organisations – for a substantial fee – to join it, use its logo to show their progressive credentials, and perhaps become so-called ‘diversity champions’.
About four years ago, Garden Court chambers, where Bailey worked, joined Stonewall’s scheme. Bailey strongly dissented. She attacked Stonewall’s practices, publicly tweeted her personal view that biological sex mattered more than any individual’s feeling of what gender they belonged to. As a counter-measure, Bailey helped found the LGB Alliance, a gender-critical gay campaign group that was (and is) anathema to Stonewall.
Bailey’s chambers at Garden Court need to do some serious soul-searching
A nasty sniping campaign ensued. One internal email referred to applying ‘censorship’ to Bailey; people were encouraged to ‘express concern’ about Bailey to Garden Court over her behaviour and the transphobia inherent in it. A formal investigation into her followed.
Bailey had had enough. She sued her chambers for discriminating against her on the basis of her belief; she also added a claim against Stonewall for inducing them to do so. Yesterday her claim succeeded against the chambers and she recovered a substantial sum. Her belief was worthy of protection, and Garden Court had treated her worse on account of it. She failed against Stonewall, largely on the basis that there was no evidence of direct rather than passive encouragement, and that the Stonewall officials involved had generally been acting as independent activists rather than on behalf of the organisation.
There is much good news here. For some time it has been an uncomfortable fact that threats to free speech come increasingly not from the state but from private pressure groups and the efforts of public and private bodies to appease them. Stonewall’s champions programme itself, for example, requires member organisations to say they ‘will not tolerate discrimination or harassment of anyone based on their gender identity or expression,’ and ‘highlight specific examples of transphobia’. The latter of these, apparently, includes any instance of ‘speculating about someone’s gender’ or ‘ignoring someone’s preferred pronoun’. If Bailey’s victory shows that organisations that uncritically toe the Stonewall line are in danger of losing expensive lawsuits, we should rejoice. Having said this, however, there are two more serious points worth making.
First, although Stonewall technically won, it does not come well out of this debacle. Whether or not in law it instructed, caused or induced Garden Court’s campaign against Bailey, there is little doubt that, however well-meaningly, Stonewall exercised a thoroughly malign influence over that organisation.
It’s worth remembering that Stonewall has form here. Last year, Essex university was forced into a humiliating apology after it prevented two eminent speakers with gender-critical views addressing groups there. It did so having previously relied on legal advice from Stonewall that an independent inquiry by barrister Akua Reindorf regarded as wrong.
The other worrying point concerns the legal profession, or at least part of it. Bailey’s chambers at Garden Court need to do some serious soul-searching. A set supposedly dedicated to human rights, freedom and the rights of the underdog, in this case it behaved like a faceless corporation concerned more about reputation management than individual liberty.
At dinners in the Inns of Court, the Bar may be fond of promoting itself as a fiercely independent profession that encourages its members to act fearlessly and not allow themselves to be browbeaten. After the Allison Bailey episode, however, some of us may begin to wonder.
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