Campaigns
...are all in the past. No point in dragging them out of the archives now; the world's moved on.
But they worked, by and large. Local government (here and there) and policing in the peninsula are all the better for what's happened in the way of Intercom campaigns over the last seven years or so. Schools, well, we haven't yet found the campaign that will persuade South West schools to put their house in order about young LGB/T people and homophobic bullying---we're still looking for the magic word (no, no, "please" isn't the one, doesn't work---we tried that for years).
Peering into those old files for a moment we wonder if anyone remembers signing our big community petition about the collapse of the case against two men accused of a serious homophobic attack in Plymouth in 2000? The world's certainly moved on a long way. Devon & Cornwall police has had a new Chief Constable (twice), and the entire Crown Prosecution Service and the Courts system have both changed almost beyond recognition. We've been able to influence the bigger changes, even though we never did get to the bottom of what went wrong in Court that day.
So what about now? Let's run through some of the issues on which Intercom campaigns nowadays.
We have a better idea than we used to have of the level of phobic (homophobic and transphobic) crime in the South West peninsula. (See the report on our main Community Safety page.) The figures are very bad. We are campaigning for:
- police to take action about the perceived barriers to reporting
- better reporting systems
- more community and police help for people affected by phobic crime.
Watch this space, and keep an eye on our main Community Safety pages.
We've got great resources for schools, and if any of them want to make a start on creating a safe whole-school environment for all, including young LGB and Trans people, they could do worse than start with us.
But in general schools in the peninsula are very damaging places for young lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people. We have helped young people and parents in countless cases of homophobic bullying over the last seven or eight years, and we can only remember two cases where the school's response was professional and effective in helping the young person. In every other case it's safe to say the school's response involved trying to diminish, marginalise, or blame the young LGB/T person. The problem was not perceived to be the bullying, still less the gaps in the skills and resources available to school staff and the ineffectiveness of their anti-bullying protocols... no, the problem was uniformly perceived to be the fact that a young person, just by being LGB/T (or by being perceived as LGB/T, or by having two parents of the same gender) had raised issues that some school staff wanted to ignore.
In fact, now that the new Regulations are in place (see Breaking News), schools need to act swiftly, but we won't place a bet on any of them doing so. The new Regulations apply to all schools equally---state schools and independent schools, religious schools and secular schools, special needs schools, muslim schools and christian schools... the lot.
But let's get our priorities right: schools need to change for the sake of young people, not just so that schools can protect themselves against legal action under the new Regulations. We will continue to campaign for schools to become secure and positive places for all, irrespective of sexual orientation and gender identity---as they ought to be.
If anyone would like to work with us on schools issues and homophobic bullying, or simply find out what resources we can offer, please contact us!
The Human Rights Act 1998 introduced a brilliant mechanism whereby public authorities (including central and local government, the police, CPS and Courts, and the health service) can make sure they are not discriminating (and thus protect themselves from unfair legal challenge). We believe all public authorities should take steps to ensure the Human Rights Toolkit is embedded in all their policy-making, strategic planning, and service-delivery, and that all officers should be trained to use it, and apply it, routinely throughout all their work. For more information about the Toolkit have a look at our Human Rights page.
Two years ago we lobbied Parliament to get phobia put on the same legal basis as racism, so that incitement to homophobic or transphobic hatred would be a crime. We got nowhere at the time: the senior MPs we approached were interested and positive, but then a local gay organisation in London (which ought to have known better) put them off, telling them that no new legislation was needed, so the MPs lost interest. But the legislation is needed, now more than ever. Does anyone feel interested in volunteering to get this campaign revived?
Prejudice and Discrimination in Whitehall and Government Offices
There is a dreadful, deeply discriminatory, phrase circulating round Whitehall and government offices: "Race and Diversity". Recently it's become even worse: "Race, Faith and Community Cohesion" (!!).
These aren't just phrases: they are a genuine reflection of powerful institutional discrimination that has somehow got right into the wheels and cogs of central and regional government. It is really disgraceful that Government offices and departments are the last happy homes for an outdated hierarchy of discrimination. Looking at policies, government priorities and directives---and funding streams!---we see our sexual orientation, our gender and gender identity, our abilities and disabilities, our age or middle-age or youth, all these things, rolled up in an indistinct flavourless mass and concealed within a bland paper bag labelled "diversity" (and then, many of us feel, placed on a shelf towards the back of the cupboard).
Our own black, asian, middle-eastern and muslim supporters are particularly angered by the fact that (for instance) the Home Office---and the Government Office for the South West---continue to use these discriminatory phrases in key policy and funding documents as if the Government only cares about someone's experience of racism or islamophobia, and feels that their experience of homophobia, however horrendous and destructive, is of no political account and does not deserve equal attention. We have been told that separating homophobia and transphobia from racism, as these civil servants insist on doing, suggests that only white people experience phobia. This attitude is widely seen as being deeply racist, as well as homophobic and transphobic.
This discrimination must end. The twin challenges of fighting racism and fighting phobia must be addressed together, and prioritised on a basis of justice and need, not (as we believe is the case now) on the basis of a few civil servants' personal comfort-zones.
Too much that is done by these civil servants implicitly sends out an official message that phobia is somehow less evil than racism. There can be no "community cohesion" where government policy is to drive a wedge between BME communities and religious communities on the one hand, and LGB/T people and everybody else on the other.
We're led by our BME, muslim and christian supporters on this issue, and the first thing they and we are going to do is ask the central and regional government to consider that the existing approach to "community cohesion" is now unlawful under the new Regulations on goods and services. Central government must take control, audit what's been happening, and ensure that communities and people are treated fairly according to their individual needs, and that the old damaging "hierarchy of discrimination" is finally buried.
Watch this space! And get in touch if you'd like to be part of this campaign---whatever your racial and ethnic origins, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Intercom does not discriminate! Let's work together to bring central and regional government up to date!
Local policies and strategic planning
Now here's a phrase to clear a room with! But hold on, these things, policies and what not, can make an enormous difference to the way local government and others actually deliver services. All these policies are supposed to go out for consultation, but Intercom has little time to work through them and help them become more practical (and in many cases they also need frankly to be less discriminatory). If you have experience in this world of policy-documents, and would like to work on improving the ones that are being written now, and will shape the landscape we live in for years to come, please contact us. We will be happy to provide focused expert training on the local issues to people with the right skills and commitment who would like some specialised training.
This work can sound abstract---but it can make a great difference to real people living real lives in the peninsula.
There is increasingly a pernicious tendency to ask people to tell employers or other organisations their sexual orientation. We know that this angers and worries the great majority of LGB/T people in the peninsula who are not Out. It's offensive, and it's an absolutely unjustifiable intrusion into people's private lives, and it's utterly meaningless, because we have good evidence that most people confronted with this enquiry (very understandably, but unhappily) lie.
It's all due to lack of community awareness, and lack of consultation, on the part of low-level managers and ill-informed policy officers. Chief executives and elected members, nationally as well as locally, should call in all these decisions for informed re-consideration.
This mechanical and mischievous monitoring must be stopped. People have a right to their privacy, whatever their sexual orientation---and sexual orientation is protected under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention as a matter of private life. So, even more strongly, is one's gender identity.
If you care about the reality of LGB/T people's lives in the peninsula, please make a stand within your organisation, or, if you prefer, contact us, and let us know your thoughts. Click here if you are interested and would like to read our position paper on monitoring.