This is our story, and Scotland’s too, and it deserves to be heard
Regular readers may recall that I recently had a run-in with the National Library of Scotland. The august institution – which according to its website, collects “Scotland's stories - preserving the past, enriching the present and inspiring the future!” – decided a book I had co-edited was too hot to handle.
The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, which I conceived and edited with Lucy Hunter-Blackburn, is a collection of essays by women about their campaign to protect women’s rights, which were under threat from Nicola Sturgeon’s now discredited self-ID plans.
Authors include JK Rowling, Joanna Cherry KC and MSPs Pam Gosal and Rachael Hamilton. Strong women with different political views, united by their sex. There are also essays by women survivors of sexual violence, the mother of a profoundly disabled girl and another woman whose two teenage daughters had decided they were boys after becoming involved in their school’s LGBT+ club.
Every one of the pieces is challenging, with women writing about the sexual violence they have endured and the aggressive hounding that they suffered for speaking out. It became a Sunday Times bestseller, and Lucy and I received heartwarming messages from women across the UK and beyond, thanking us for pulling the book together.
And earlier this year it was chosen by members of the public to be part of the National Library’s centenary exhibition, Dear Library. Except the national librarian, Amina Shah, the woman charged with collecting Scotland’s stories, decided to exclude the book after pressure from the library’s LGBT+ staff network.
A furious row erupted which ended last month when Ms Shah apologised to us and the book was put on public display where it belonged. And then an independent investigation published last week found that the library had made the wrong decision when it decided to exclude our book. That should have been the end to this sorry tale. But Ms Shah went on the BBC’s prestigious arts programme Front Row the day the report was published, where she said that she had banished the book in part because it contained scenes of “violence, aggression, anger that had either happened online or in real life”.
Really Ms Shah? Women telling their stories of surviving rape, of their fears for their daughters’ future happiness, of losing their livelihoods because they told the truth – that human beings cannot change their sex. These stories – which millions of women can identify with – were too violent, aggressive and angry to be displayed in public? Ms Shah told us when we met with her a few weeks ago that she had read the book. I can’t believe that she found it so distressing she felt moved to hide it.
Our book is about the state of politics in Scotland and the failure of our public institutions and civil society to step out of their “safe space” and listen to the people of Scotland, whether it’s about women’s rights or any other issue that matters to us. It says everything about our country’s elite that, even after being found in the wrong, the national librarian still insists that a book by women, about women is contentious. But Ms Shah, it is our story and Scotland’s too. It deserves to be heard.