The Lack of Debate is a Habitual Problem

By-passing an argument is how things are being done.

FREE EVENT! 3rd of March, Edinburgh. Join us for a crucial discussion on Scotland's upcoming 'conversion therapy ban’ bill. This is an opportunity to engage in an open and honest dialogue, to understand different viewpoints, and to voice your own concerns during our Q&A session. Your participation is crucial as we navigate the complexities of this proposed ban. Join us and be part of shaping the conversation. Turn up or reserve a space here.

If you are or have ever been an activist in party politics, then you have probably sat in a political gathering of other activists and paid party office holders while a ‘big name’ politician addresses you. There’ll be a few in-jokes, maybe an unknown piece of gossip will be passed on, followed by a fairly standard speech that will raise the spirits of the Faithful. However, if you’ve been listening relatively carefully, then you may leave the meeting slightly puzzled because at some point the speaker will have said, ‘we’re winning the argument on this issue’. Argument?

Politicians will habitually refer to this point of ‘winning the argument’ and it is part rhetorical technique, referencing some unknown, possibly not even existing, constituency that is being persuaded that your party’s policies are correct and should be supported. Yet the literary device is potentially revealing of the modern political situation in a couple of ways.

The first possible reveal is that there is no argument being had that the activists or wider public will be aware of, have been asked to be a part of or have any prospect of influencing. Politicians of the past forty years or so have fled from arguments like travellers escaping a plague town, fearing that they get locked into one, identified with one, then bogged down in it, consequently turning their career into a quagmire of attacks and abuse. It is a unique situation to have a politician, inside or outside a party, actually making a case for anything. Therefore, the idea that an argument is ‘winning’ is pure fantasy.

The second possible revelation is that there is an argument happening. It is simply that you, me, constituents, the public and probably most politicians are not part of it. Most assume this is the case and that the actual debate is being had with people who are closer to the application of the policy: social workers and civil servants if the issue falls within their remit; doctors, unions and managers if the policy applies to the NHS; but no, the debate is not conducted here either unless forced by grievance at the legislation, the guidelines or the procedures being applied -  a rarity! Those that populate our institutions are simply given the results of any debate and told to enact it.

What is actually happening is that certain small interest groups, usually well-funded with corporate or individual backers, are being allowed access to key people in government to advocate their particular interest. They are pushing the policy points to the ones that can make things happen and, in some cases, they are writing the legislation themselves. The argument is had privately; if there is one given that these groups are usually so well-known to each other that they are functioning like a very tight-knit oligarchy, using incentives such as social consequence and future positions to lubricate the governmental machine. These cliques are well-financed, completely beyond public purview, accountability or an open, transparent argumentative process: it is a process that acts like democracy is already dead.

NGOs, charities, corporate interests, billionaires, landed interests and financial institutions are writing the law without any input from those whom it effects, and our elected representatives are too weak or too self-preserving to stand-up for the citizenry. Making this effectively a technocracy of experts, even if the ‘expertise’ is questionable.

Two recent actions by the Scottish Government exemplify this clandestine approach to governing. One is Scotwind where Scotland’s wind renewable resources were sold off in an auction and, unfathomably, without the excuse of imbecility or rank corruption, there was a limit put on how high the bids could go. Is that possible to believe?

A brief watch of Bargain Hunt or Homes Under The Hammer would inform any civil servant or minister that a minimum amount might have to be reached in the bidding, that the purpose of an auction is to maximise the value of the bids. Even children know this, therefore, obviously, this decision and the price ceiling was reached with concerned third parties privately, through the accepted methods of doing business: sidelining the people and secretly cutting a deal. No discussion.

The second action is the Conversion Therapy Bill which will outlaw conversion practices in Scotland. There is a history behind conversion therapy that is grim and horrifying, supplying us with many stories of how a modern, civilised society can be regressive and contradictory in its thought and brutal in its application of ‘enlightened’ science. Banning this is a humane step. However, the debate on the issue has not been had and that is a serious error.

It, actually, could have been a very useful debate to have. An opportunity for scientists, the medical profession and the population in general to confront the past, question assumptions about progress and bring a wider understanding to the perspective of a minority group, one which is threatening its own destruction in a backlash that is certainly coming. Instead, this has been forestalled and a low-profile, surreptitious Bill is being sneaked through with little public discussion or acknowledgement of its statutes and their implications.

Again, it is the filleting of democracy right in front of us. The provisions of the Bill might make illegal the most egregiously cruel and barbaric applications of conversion therapy, but it is also placing under sanction, with severe penalties, the most natural and common sense responses to issues with sex and identity by parents and teachers. It is not criminal to try and dismiss or discourage a young child from believing that they are in the wrong body. It is not criminal to have the opinion that your child might be going through a phase and express that view to them or others.

And there are some very good reasons why that should be so and permitted. If a person can be born in the wrong body, then that needs to be a certainty, not a whim, a fetish or a result of psychological damage caused by socialisation. This means that the individual has to meet with some form of opposition; an opposition that will clarify the truth of the matter for that person. If there is not that resistance, then any psychological disorder, sexual predilection or self-destructive perversion can be acted upon, usually with disastrous long-term consequences.

The internet, like the Classics before it, has, if nothing else, shown us a dizzying and sickening array of human degeneracy: from cannibals advertising for victims, and getting them, to self-mutilating men and women who wish to look and live like their favourite animal, there is an abundance of self-harming psyches out there and we cannot be sure that in many instances, gender identity is not an aspect of this. It is dangerous and ignorant to make a questioning criticism or hardy scepticism of such extreme behaviour punishable with prison time. In Edinburgh’s mental health hospital, The Royal Ed, it is not practice to affirm the beliefs of a person admitted, otherwise the staff would be saying ‘Good morning’ to a Jesus in every ward and two Satans each time they walk down the corridor. Literally. Scepticism about nearly all claims is healthy and usually warranted.

When a loving, anxious scepticism becomes hostile, bullying and oppressive is when the problems begin. Phase, psychological issue or genuine, no one wants a person to suffer because of what they believe about themselves, especially as it’s not harming others; therefore, the Bill should pay attention to this, rather than criminalise ordinary people who are confused by this explosion of identities, sexualities and ideologies that sits uneasily with how, for most, life is actually lived. The Bill should try to carefully steer a middle ground, especially as the issue at stake so easily crosses into ideology, an ideology that is slowly but surely writing a long list of the identifiable damage it has done.

A consensus, arrived through discussion, is not what we have. Instead, the radical (in a bad way) road has been taken. In charities and NGOs, it is usually the loudest and most extreme voice that gets to (placed at?) the top and it is they who liaise with the key people to get things done, overseen and aided by people who want these agendas to be followed. The extremity and authoritarian tendencies of these individuals would disqualify them as a credible voice in the public arena, so they go private, using the back channel to speak to the people they need to speak to in order to get what they want without debate or compromise.

In the face of these methods, we have been too passive and negligent as citizens, and it will either allow democracy, and with it our rights, to slowly slip away, barely noticed, or it will provoke a backlash that will destroy our institutions and threaten the minorities that have been encouraged to push their positions beyond what is reasonable.

Never was it a more important time to actually have an argument and allow all the aspects of an issue to be aired freely. We have to start challenging our previous attitudes and ideas, such as thinking that we have a group of benign law makers who are bounded by a respect for rights and reason. We do not. Covid has taught us that. We have placemen and women who are clueless about most things and whose only talent is to suck up to a small coterie who determine the candidates for an election. Once elected, they are detritus on the winds of power and money, swayed by whatever gust promises to raise them or threatens to topple them. They will not revitalise our democracy or protect our rights.

The only people who have a stake in a debate are us. The only ones who have any concern about returning power to the citizenry are us. Getting involved, providing a place for and then making the arguments happen publicly is of the utmost importance. Failing in that, we should start shovelling the dirt on top of the coffin of our democracy.

17th March - Mark Devlin! Mark is a UK-based club and radio DJ and music journalist, specialising in black/dance music in its many forms. In recent years Mark has begun speaking about the dark forces that have been manipulating the music industry for decades. Mark has been an independent and courageous voice for truth and human freedom. Book a ticket here. (£10)

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