Interview
don Labour councils. The tabloids went if a religious right could exist in Scotland ment was, on balance, probably less bad
into overdrive and claimed children were and could coalesce and flex its muscles. than nuclear war, so I think I just went
being force fed a diet of gay propaganda It failed and we won and we also kept along with it.”
at school. every one of those organisations going His dad, Dave, was a BBC film edi-
According to the legislation, local through the funding crisis so we beat tor with an obsession about news and
authorities would no longer be able to them hands down. current affairs and his mum, Rosie, a
‘promote’ homosexuality, and relations “The first time I sat in the Chamber, midwife with a passion for recycling and
between gay people themselves, and it was not as an MSP, it was as a commit- an early political interest in the environ-
between gay people and their children, tee witness representing the youth group mental movement - she stood for election
were described in law as ‘pretended fam- I worked for, giving evidence to the in the late 80s as a Green candidate.
ily relationships’. Equal Opportunities Committee at the His earliest political memory was
As an early signal that in Scotland time on why they should go for repeal as a six-year-old watching Margaret
things would be done differently, Donald of Section 28. When the repeal went Thatcher walking into 10 Downing
Dewar had called the clause a ‘badge of through, I took a youth group into the Street for the first time. “I turned to my
shame’ and its repeal was seen as a pri- gallery to watch it happening and if that mum and I asked, ‘Mummy, is that a nice
ority. had been done at Westminster, there is lady?’ and she said, ‘No, Patrick, that is
In response, the ‘Keep the Clause’ no chance that we would have been able not a nice lady at all’.”
campaign was launched with multi- to participate in the process in that way Above all, he just remembers politics
millionaire Stagecoach director, Brian and it gave me a sense that the Scottish as being part of family life. He was taken
Souter, at its helm. He recruited former Parliament was doing something rele- along to branch meetings as a child and
Scottish Sun editor Jack Irvine to be the vant, was doing something that mattered remembers attending an election count
‘brains’ behind the campaign, which to my community and embodied a sense and thinking how absurdly tall Donald
claimed that without Section 28, children of what the Constitutional Convention Dewar was.
in Scottish schools would be forced to had felt about the Parliament sharing He didn’t need to be taught about
act out the part of rent boys in role-play, power with the people – we were, liter- politics, he says, it just was…
and explicit gay sexual images would be ally, in there participating in the process. But can you be middle class and a
made available in the classroom. It was highly charged and very emo- radical? What do you rail against if your
The fight was intense, vicious and all tional for me. mum and dad are more right on than
consuming and for Harvie, was also an “As well as going through this intense you and can you become politicised by
epiphany in terms of where his destiny period and connecting that with the injustice when you have never really
lay. He was routinely vilified in the media already positive feelings I had about the experienced the hard edge of life your-
as a threat to the traditional family and Green Party, I also developed a respect self ?
on his way to work would pass giant bill- for the devolution experiment, as it still There is something faintly apolo-
boards sponsored by Souter proclaiming was then, and about the new institution getic about being middle class; it’s syn-
‘Protect our children’. we had to govern Scotland and more onymous with pedestrian, boring, run
“They meant children should be importantly, for the people that make up of the mill. Safe, middle-class suburbia
protected from people like me,” says the Parliament and what they did when isn’t readily identified as a hotbed breed-
Harvie. “That was wrong, it was hurtful they got there. All of that galvanised me ing ground of radicals but perhaps that
and it was nasty. We had been so positive
We w
null
ere,
into wanting to be part of that process misses the point. Sometimes it is whole-
that Donald Dewar had said early on in
literally, in and gave me the kick up the arse to get some security that breeds a confidence
devolution that the Parliament would get
there
involved. and stability that allows you to believe in
rid of Section 28 and yet we were now
participating
“I guess I am Brian Souter’s greatest a better world for everyone.
being bombarded with this nonsense.
in the
legacy…” Patrick Harvie is absolutely a prod-
Day after day in the newspapers there Harvie is an unlikely radical. The uct of parents who were both politically
were stories that just wouldn’t have been
process. It
youngest son of what he agrees were two aware and environmental activists. The
fit to print if it had been about an ethnic
was highly
right-on, middle-class lefties, a sort of only way he could have rebelled would
minority group but it was about us and charged Dunbartonshire version of Viz’s Mod- have been to join the Conservative Party,
that was, apparently, just fine.
and very
ern Parents. enlisted and piloted a nuclear subma-
“At the time because our funding
emotional
As a child growing up in Dumbar- rine.
had been frozen, I was topping up my
for me
ton, he would spend Saturdays throwing “My parents tell me I was a bit right
income by doing stints on a sexual health around bundles of newspapers for some wing when I was a teenager,” he laughs,
helpline, which was not always a barrel recycling project or another started by “but I don’t remember that.
of laughs having to get up at 6am to his mother, wore a CND badge at pri- “Even when I came out, my mother
answer explicit questions like, ‘what’s a
null
mary school and can remember getting laughed and said, ‘do you think we didn’t
blow job?’ and then to take a ten-minute a bit of a ‘redder’ when he took part in already know that, dear?’ which was a bit
break from that to see the Daily Record, a bit of street theatre ‘en famille’ about of an anti-climax for me. I was at least
the Sun or whatever, lying open with nuclear weapons in Dumbarton town expecting a bit of a drama. In hindsight,
some fairly lurid and hurtful stuff. It was centre. however, I could not have wished for a
not nice. “We were growing up pretty close to better reaction.
“I still interpret that whole thing as the UK’s nuclear fleet and we were all “I certainly get on very well with
an attempt by vested interests to find out probably aware that slight embarrass- my parents now and like all teenagers,
| www.holyrood.com | Holyrood magazine | 17 November 2008 |
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