Cancelled. Again.

There is a dangerous intolerant totalitarianism, aided by timidity, strangling debate in this country.

The cancer of slowly killing free speech in Edinburgh and beyond continues, aggressively. Our event with Hugh McCarthy, a respected retired headteacher, and a former Director of Education of three Northern Ireland Learning Areas, someone who has presented directly to ministers, political party leaders and elected members, was refused several possible venues for the talk ‘What Are We Doing To Our Children?’ on grounds that were both spurious and unsettling. At the moment, Common Knowledge is more cancelled than an Amazon Prime subscription once the free trial is over.

We have had our bookings terminated with the Edinburgh Quaker Meeting House by the Quaker Management Committee who were upset by our Twitter account, which is a fairly mild one as it goes, and particularly by our meeting in which two organisers of a public meeting concerning Gender Ideology in schools told of their experiences of being harassed and their booked venues intimidated. We were accused, in that meeting, of using hateful language that was at odds with the Quaker theology and covenants. The phrase cited was by a member of the audience who called Gender Ideology ‘vicious’. Immediately, it was made clear by one of the speakers that the issue was the ideology and not transgender people or anyone based on their sex, gender or preferences (we have the video and transcripts to prove this). However, this one incident, trivial and innocuous was enough for our association to be ended with the Quakers.

Two more venues took the booking but then cancelled for reasons that were not completely clear. One sort of reason given by one of the venues was that staff from the LGBTQ+ community, or sympathetic to it, would refuse to work at the event (shades of Joanna Cherry). We have no idea why some people should think a retired headteacher documenting the harms of lockdown on children threatens the LGBTQ+ community. It is clearly irrational. However, no more irrational than having transgender women having their cervix checked by the NHS - an official policy - so the thinking is completely in line i.e. irrational.

One venue cancelled because our online ticket had been shared, not by us, on a channel that contained pro-Russian content and therefore, we were, by unintended association, guilty of being sympathetic to the Russian side in the war in Ukraine. (Anyone can share an online ticket, even ill-willed people who then draw it to an institution’s attention.) Another venue contacted replied, honestly at least, that hosting us would bring to their site so much opprobrium that it was not worth their while to accommodate us and, therefore, they would have to refuse.

With little room for doubt, there are two possibilities: either our reputation as some sort of malevolent organisation proceeds us - strange, because each booking usually requires an explanation of who we are - or some person(s) is targeting venues where meetings are proposed to be held, contacting them and whispering poisonous untruths, tempered with veiled threats concerning the consequences if we are allowed a platform at their locale. Disappointing. Human beings should not conduct themselves this way; giving dishonest accounts and indulging in clandestine manoeuvring; if they have a problem, then let them come out and say it and we can argue the facts like rational beings. We have always made clear that we welcome every one, regardless, and are happy to host debates.

In the short term, whomever is notifying venues has been successful since, as the Covenanters and Dissenters of the 17th Century were, here in Scotland, Ireland and England, we were forced to discourse in the open air. Necessity can be the Mother of Invention and, in this case, an enjoyable and informative public meeting, despite a chilly Scottish breeze. Hugh McCarthy’s wife Lorraine as it happens is descended from Dissenters so it’s an historical irony of some magnitude that she and her husband should be forced to speak opinions with the clouds as their roofing since, over three hundred years since her ancestors similarly took to the fields, Established Authority in coalition with Unwilling Timidity persecutes still alternative views. Progress? We are going backwards. We are now the New Covenanters.

On to the talk. In a humane society, an enlightened one, Hugh’s words would be broadcast as widely as possible, not censored. Hugh’s information about the harms inflicted on children by masks, social distancing and lockdown is absolutely damning. The figures and facts that Hugh marshals, and which he spoke so clearly and eloquently, are not marginal declines in literacy, mental health or child brain development; they are massive troughs that threaten the stability of society itself as the damage works its way through the coming years. Devastatingly, in many instances, the impairments inflicted are not recoverable: we are facing the possibility of a lost generation whose mental and social limitations will be passed onto subsequent generations. What the hell did the government think it was doing? Hugh’s presentation, hard to take as it would be for most educators and parents, is one that each individual concerned about their child and children in general should take time to read (or watch - video coming soon!).

Hugh and Lorraine’s stand in Northern Ireland has not been met with a lot of outright, public support, although there has been some given privately. Hugh is possibly too respected a figure to be ‘othered’, but, if not banished from society, then neither has an idealistic Praetorian Guard of truth defenders and free speech advocates surrounded him, swords unsheathed ready to defend him, Lorraine, the right to oppose, to say ‘No’ - another irony - and the right to be heard. Allies and friends seem to lose their words when presented with an opportunity to speak out in public on these matters. And Northern Ireland has a lot of tough people with a powerful history of resistance, on both sides, who have rarely been shy in stating their point of view. (Scotland has similar characteristics, albeit to a lesser degree. Yet look at Scotland’s near total capitulation.)

Instead of what should be happening, of what people are always complaining about, of what they say they want - honesty! - we have the current situation. Speakers, with vital, evidenced information that every parent should hear, are being prevented from speaking: venues are not daring to get involved in any kind of controversy and few people are making any attempt to look at the other side of argument, most just seem to want it to go away.

Three years after covid started, there is little significant progress in getting a committed movement to form around these issues; issues that are surely the most important ever faced in known human history. Issues that are not large, international ones where individuals understandably feel powerless, but ones that reach from the powerful bodies and secret hideaways of Established Power into the intimate setting of every family and community. Decisions taken by ordinary citizens now can shape the future. People might slowly be waking up to the fraud and the criminality, but it will not mean much if they do not get involved, stand-up and speak out.

M.