Susan Smith is a contemporary feminist heroine, a staunch defender of women’s rights against the increasingly unhinged demands of trans activists. As a founding member of the campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS), Smith was at the forefront of the fight against SNP plans to introduce self-ID. And, boy, was she effective.
Along with her FWS colleagues Marion Calder and Trina Budge, Smith brought a case against the Scottish government which saw the supreme court rule in April that, when it comes to the law, sex is a matter of biology rather than feelings. That ruling, applicable across the UK, killed off the fantastical notion that trans-identifying men are women.
Since that victory, Smith has become an increasingly high-profile figure in the ‘gender critical’ movement, appearing at feminist conferences and demonstrations, demanding compliance with the law when it comes to women’s rights. Of course she was always going to be punished for this impudence. Now, with the connivance of Police Scotland, that inevitable process has begun.
Police Scotland remains ready to act as the trans activists’ private militia
Police officers based at the Scottish parliament have ordered Smith to attend an Edinburgh cop shop where she will receive a formal warning over an incident at a recent protest outside Holyrood. The 54-year-old has been warned failure to attend will lead to her being charged with vandalism.
This black farce follows the briefest interaction between Smith and an angry trans activist during a rally outside the Scottish parliament last month. As hundreds of women gathered to demand the Scottish government comply with the supreme court ruling, tiresome perma-protestor Tom Harlow – a stripper and drag queen who performs as Cabaret Against The Hate Speech and has previously received funding from the Scottish government’s arts quango Creative Scotland – arrived and deployed his usual tactic of blaring music from a portable PA system, drowning out the women who wished to speak about their rights.
For 90 minutes, Harlow – real name Thomas Michael Moncrieff – disrupted the event while police officers did nothing. When Susan Smith approached him to ask him to turn down the volume, he held an umbrella in front of her face. Smith, I regret to inform you, touched the brolly.
Video and photographs of the umbrella-touching incident are conclusive. Smith did not commit a crime. (There may have been a second brolly toucher but I’m loath to feed conspiracies).
Tom Harlow’s disruption of the feminist rally outside Holyrood went beyond the bounds of free speech. His appeared to be an aggressive protest aimed at silencing others. He succeeded in doing that. The police should have shut him up on the day. Instead, they’re now doing his bidding.
Last week, the Metropolitan Police announced it would not be taking further action against the writer Graham Linehan, who was arrested by five armed officers at Heathrow Airport after complaints about posts he made on X.
A public backlash against Linehan’s arrest should have marked an end to cops’ indulgence of the long-deployed activist tactic of making spurious complaints and grinding their victims with the process. Instead, as the case of Susan Smith shows, Police Scotland – an organisation hopelessly captured by gender ideologues – remains ready to act as the trans activists’ private militia.
If the Chief Constable of Police Scotland, Jo Farrell – the first woman to hold the post – allows her officers to continue to participate in this campaign of harassment, Smith stands not only to face criminal charges but also bail conditions which would prevent her from returning to the scene of the alleged ‘crime’.
It would not reflect well on either Farrell or First Minister John Swinney if a woman whose campaigning has humiliated them is banned from future feminist protests outside Holyrood. It would look, don’t you think, a smidge authoritarian?
The anger of radical young activists will be nothing compared with the hot fury of Scottish feminists and their allies if Susan Smith is forced to endure another day of this humiliation. Enough really is enough.
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