Persecuting poets: the “progressive” witch hunt against Jenny Lindsay

Jenny Lindsay (photo: Ryan McGoverne)

The worst of what I suppose we must still call “the left” has many evasive responses to the charge they are collaborating with cancel culture. The first is to deny that progressive McCarthyism exists. Then, when confronted with incontrovertible evidence that it does, they maintain that their allies are just holding bigots to account. If that does not work, they laugh at the naivety of their critics.

In a mocking voice they say you cannot possibly pretend that artists as celebrated as J K Rowling, or whoever the target of their hate is that day, have really been cancelled. No one is stopping them making their views known elsewhere. They have dozens of platforms. The press, television and social media can’t get enough of them. Don’t play the far-right’s game by suggesting that the left are witch hunters.

There have been two cancellations this week, and it is only Wednesday.

The Stand theatre in Edinburgh cancelled an appearance by the Scottish National Party MP Joanna Cherry because, in her words, she was “a lesbian with gender-critical views". Members of staff objected to her presence and the management folded.

Whether it is legal for a venue at the Edinburgh festival to ban a speaker because of her views on the material reality of her sex is open to doubt. Religious fundamentalist shop owners cannot, for instance, refuse to serve gay customers.

But I take the point that Joanna Cherry has many other platforms open to her, as the publicity her cancellation provoked proved.

The second story got no publicity. Jenny Lindsay, a Scottish poet, revealed that years after she objected to threats against lesbians, arts venues were still “refusing to allow me to hire them.”

Jenny is not famous. She is not rich or powerful. She most certainly is not bigoted. If she cannot perform in arts venues, she has nowhere else to go.

In 2020 I wrote about how one tiny slip destroyed her life. Here is her story.