Scottish Labour leadership hopeful Michael Marra has told how his dying mother had to share a hospital ward with a “mentally troubled” man who had a “history of violence”.
Mr Marra, who is up against fellow MSP Joe Fagan to be the next leader of the Scottish Labour Party, spoke about his late mother’s plight and said he was “fully supportive” of a Supreme Court ruling on gender. Judges at the UK’s highest court ruled last year that for the purposes of the Equality Act, the terms “woman” and “sex” are based on biological sex.
Mother’s final days
Speaking at a Labour leadership hustings in Edinburgh on Tuesday, Mr Marra said: “My mother died from cancer just a couple of years ago, and she was in the last weeks of her life in a shared ward with a man who was mentally troubled, who had a history of violence. She lived in significant fear in the last days of her life. That’s entirely unacceptable, not just for my late mother but for anybody in Scotland, so we need to make sure we have women-only spaces that are protected on the basis of sex.”
He added that he had voted against controversial legislation at Holyrood, which was eventually blocked by Westminster, which aimed to make it easier for trans people to be legally recognised in their preferred gender, because he “felt it didn’t protect women’s rights”. He added that the gender recognition reform legislation, put forward by the Scottish Government, had resulted in “women’s rights being set up against trans people’s rights”.
Mr Marra added: “I have no doubt that trans people’s lives are worse as a result of that process.”
Rival’s response
Rival candidate Joe Fagan, a former council leader who was elected to Holyrood in May, stressed his support for single-sex spaces. But after a “toxic” debate on gender issues, he also spoke about the need for “compassion”.
Labour MSP Monica Lennon, who had hoped to run for the leadership but failed to win enough support from parliamentarians, claimed on Monday that the party has “a problem when it comes to trans people”. In a statement after she failed to make it on to the ballot Ms Lennon said that “punching down on trans people and other minorities is not acceptable”.
Mr Fagan responded: “I’ve seen it said in the last 24 hours that this looks like a party that is punching down on trans people. The Labour Party is the party of equality, and the Labour Party that I lead, and I think the Labour Party that Michael wants to lead, in that Labour Party we punch down on no-one, absolutely no-one. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been at times a really toxic debate, and a hard debate for the party to have. But I start from the point of view that you can protect access to space and services on the basis of biological sex, particularly following that court judgment, but you can do that while creating a place, a party and a politics in which there is compassion and understanding.”
Leadership contest
Mr Fagan and Mr Marra are running against each other to succeed Anas Sarwar, who quit after swapping Holyrood for the House of Lords and a post in Andy Burnham’s government. His departure left party members angry, with Labour having suffered its worst Scottish Parliament election result ever in May, returning 17 MSPs.
Mr Marra said the party had now “gone backwards at six elections in a row” at Holyrood. “It’s not just one bad campaign,” he told supporters, adding that transforming the party was a “long-term job”. With the fall in support for Labour coming at the same time as a rise in support for Reform, Mr Marra said the party was in “a fight for the soul of our country”. However he said: “We will save the UK, and we will save Scotland, from not just the populist right, but a gateway to the far right.” He was “absolutely clear” there would be “no deals with Reform anywhere”.
Mr Fagan said the Makerfield byelection, won by Mr Burnham before he became Prime Minister, had shown how “politics was mobilised against the populist right”. He added: “I think we can mobilise that kind of politics here to show that Scottish Labour represents the interests of those working-class communities we have lost touch with.”
Voting for the next Scottish Labour leader opens on August 28, and the new leader will be announced on September 19.
