Mandy Rhodes interviews Green MSP Patrick Harvie as he prepares to take up the co-covener post of the Green Party about ideaology, sexuality and playing competitive pool.
For a non-believer, Patrick Harvie has a lot to thank God for. In fact, had it not been for religious zealots, he may never have mobilised himself into action and realised that politics can effect change for the good.
As the world celebrated 2000, Harvie was happily working as a youth worker in Glasgow with the gay health project, PHACE Scotland, was a volunteer and board member with the West of Scotland Gay and Lesbian Forum, had been successfully involved in ground-breaking health education literature which was credited with helping to reduce HIV figures in the city and was enjoying grassroots, political activism. He was happy and feeling positive about the future for gay rights and equality. That feel-good was about to be destroyed.
Although for many the new millennium heralded a new start; for the gay community, it promised a return to anti-gay bigotry on a scale not seen for at least a generation. As a well orchestrated and well funded Christian-backed campaign was launched to prevent the repeal of Section 28 in the Scottish Parliament, a court action was also taken by a Glasgow nurse, believed to have been backed by the Christian Institute, against Glasgow City Council for its support in funding organisations which, she believed, advocated homosexuality. The funding to all the organisations named in the action, including Harvie’s own, had their funding frozen. This three-pronged attack was, quite literally, an avalanche on gay rights.
Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act (known as Section 2a in Scotland but commonly referred to as Section 28) was introduced by the Tories on the back of a series of lurid stories in the right-wing tabloids about the supposedly ‘politically correct’ policies of London Labour councils. The tabloids went into overdrive and claimed children were being force fed a diet of gay propaganda at school.
According to the legislation, local authorities would no longer be able to ‘promote’ homosexuality, and relations between gay people themselves, and between gay people and their children, were described in law as ‘pretended family relationships’.
As an early signal that in Scotland things would be done differently, Donald Dewar had called the clause a ‘badge of shame’ and its repeal was seen as a priority.
In response, the ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign was launched with multi-millionaire Stagecoach director, Brian Souter, at its helm. He recruited former Scottish Sun editor Jack Irvine to be the ‘brains’ behind the campaign, which claimed that without Section 28, children in Scottish schools would be forced to act out the part of rent boys in role-play, and explicit gay sexual images would be made available in the classroom.
The fight was intense, vicious and all consuming and for Harvie, was also an epiphany in terms of where his destiny lay. He was routinely vilified in the media as a threat to the traditional family and on his way to work would pass giant billboards sponsored by Souter proclaiming ‘Protect our children’.
“They meant children should be protected from people like me,” says Harvie. “That was wrong, it was hurtful and it was nasty. We had been so positive that Donald Dewar had said early on in devolution that the Parliament would get rid of Section 28 and yet we were now being bombarded with this nonsense. Day after day in the newspapers there were stories that just wouldn’t have been fit to print if it had been about an ethnic minority group but it was about us and that was, apparently, just fine.
“At the time because our funding had been frozen, I was topping up my income by doing stints on a sexual health helpline, which was not always a barrel of laughs having to get up at 6am to answer explicit questions like, ‘what’s a blow job?’ and then to take a ten-minute break from that to see the Daily Record, the Sun or whatever, lying open with some fairly lurid and hurtful stuff. It was not nice.
“I still interpret that whole thing as an attempt by vested interests to find out if a religious right could exist in Scotland and could coalesce and flex its muscles. It failed and we won and we also kept every one of those organisations going through the funding crisis so we beat them hands down.
“The first time I sat in the Chamber, it was not as an MSP, it was as a committee witness representing the youth group I worked for, giving evidence to the Equal Opportunities Committee at the time on why they should go for repeal of Section 28. When the repeal went through, I took a youth group into the gallery to watch it happening and if that had been done at Westminster, there is no chance that we would have been able to participate in the process in that way and it gave me a sense that the Scottish Parliament was doing something relevant, was doing something that mattered to my community and embodied a sense of what the Constitutional Convention had felt about the Parliament sharing power with the people – we were, literally, in there participating in the process. It was highly charged and very emotional for me
we were, literally, in there participating in the process. It was highly charged and very emotional for me 
.
“As well as going through this intense period and connecting that with the already positive feelings I had about the Green Party, I also developed a respect for the devolution experiment, as it still was then, and about the new institution we had to govern Scotland and more importantly, for the people that make up the Parliament and what they did when they got there. All of that galvanised me into wanting to be part of that process and gave me the kick up the arse to get involved.
“I guess I am Brian Souter’s greatest legacy…”
Harvie is an unlikely radical. The youngest son of what he agrees were two right-on, middle-class lefties, a sort of Dunbartonshire version of Viz’s Modern Parents.
As a child growing up in Dumbarton, he would spend Saturdays throwing around bundles of newspapers for some recycling project or another started by his mother, wore a CND badge at primary school and can remember getting a bit of a ‘redder’ when he took part in a bit of street theatre ‘en famille’ about nuclear weapons in Dumbarton town centre.
“We were growing up pretty close to the UK’s nuclear fleet and we were all probably aware that slight embarrassment was, on balance, probably less bad than nuclear war, so I think I just went along with it.”
His dad, Dave, was a BBC film editor with an obsession about news and current affairs and his mum, Rosie, a midwife with a passion for recycling and an early political interest in the environmental movement - she stood for election in the late 80s as a Green candidate.
His earliest political memory was as a six-year-old watching Margaret Thatcher walking into 10 Downing Street for the first time. “I turned to my mum and I asked, ‘Mummy, is that a nice lady?’ and she said, ‘No, Patrick, that is not a nice lady at all’.”
Above all, he just remembers politics as being part of family life. He was taken along to branch meetings as a child and remembers attending an election count and thinking how absurdly tall Donald Dewar was.
He didn’t need to be taught about politics, he says, it just was…
But can you be middle class and a radical? What do you rail against if your mum and dad are more right on than you and can you become politicised by injustice when you have never really experienced the hard edge of life yourself?
There is something faintly apologetic about being middle class; it’s synonymous with pedestrian, boring, run of the mill. Safe, middle-class suburbia isn’t readily identified as a hotbed breeding ground of radicals but perhaps that misses the point. Sometimes it is wholesome security that breeds a confidence and stability that allows you to believe in a better world for everyone.
Patrick Harvie is absolutely a product of parents who were both politically aware and environmental activists. The only way he could have rebelled would have been to join the Conservative Party, enlisted and piloted a nuclear submarine.
“My parents tell me I was a bit right wing when I was a teenager,” he laughs, “but I don’t remember that.
“Even when I came out, my mother laughed and said, ‘do you think we didn’t already know that, dear?’ which was a bit of an anti-climax for me. I was at least expecting a bit of a drama. In hindsight, however, I could not have wished for a better reaction.
“I certainly get on very well with my parents now and like all teenagers, that wasn’t always true. I have a lot of respect for them. We are all a product of our parents to a certain extent and I owe them a lot for the values and interest in politics that they gave me.”
However, apart from a brief flirtation with the Labour Party while at university in Manchester, an experience which he describes as an “off-putting experience”, Harvie put party politics to one side until he joined the Green Party following the Section 28 debacle and agreed to stand in the 2003 Scottish Parliament elections. He was duly elected as list MSP for Glasgow and walked straight into controversy, with his sexuality used as a stick to beat him when he proposed a Bill on civil partnerships.
Scotland on Sunday columnist Gerald Warner said that the Greens, “after two weeks in the political sun, have turned Pink, proposing legislation for homosexual ‘marriage’. Here it comes – Section 29! What was that wise saying about forgetting nothing and learning nothing?”
Another columnist described him as a “militant gay activist turned MSP” who “wants gay couples to be allowed to take part in civil ceremonies that would give them the same legal rights as married couples…Patrick Harvie may have been elected to Holyrood under the umbrella of the Green Party, but one look at his CV suggests his real passion is not environmental reform but the crusade for gay rights”.
Harvie’s own personal favourite was the label the Daily Mail gave him as “the voice of the irresponsible, left led, anti-family, anti-Christian, gay whales against the bomb coalition”.
“This kind of reporting is just silly and I am sure a lot of Daily Mail readers know it is bullshit,” he says. “It is kind of annoying and I would rather the newspapers were talking about green politics rather than green politicians but I wouldn’t expect it to be otherwise.
“There are a few figures in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church who the press will go to for a reactionary quote about me but the great mass of religious people in Scotland are far more level headed and don’t like being told how to vote by religious figures and are much more open about some of the arguments we in the Greens want to put to them, whether it’s about sex education, equality, the economy or SUVs.
“It’s a shame because even back during the Section 28 campaign, I knew people who were working in the archdiocese were furious at the way the hierarchy were getting involved on specific agendas around social conservative values when they were people motivated by global injustice, by war and Trident and protection of asylum seekers and the devastation of environmental destruction, those are the great moral issues of our time and to be finger wagging about who goes to bed with who, is just plain daft.”
Regardless of Harvie’s level headed and far too understanding approach to his critics, he undoubtedly engenders strong feelings. So much so that George Hargreaves, the founder of the Scottish Christian Party, and the man who bizarrely penned the gay anthem, ‘So Macho’, stood against Harvie in the 2007 elections on the grounds that Harvie’s open bisexuality made him sinful.
In a newsletter to supporters, Hargreaves said: “Patrick Harvie tried to get the Archbishop of Glasgow arrested for preaching that homosexuality is a sin.
“We are out to undermine the Greens because they let in a secularist fundamentalist gay rights activist under a Green flag of convenience. We will expose him.”
Harvie was re-elected.
That personal victory was, however, tarnished by the fact that the Green Party’s presence in the Scottish Parliament was decimated. Having had seven Green MSPs, they returned only two, Harvie and Robin Harper.
“It felt shit!” he says. “It was a shock because I had genuinely thought we would hold our position or pick up an extra couple of seats – how wrong you can be. I also lost £50 on a bet at the bookies that we would get eight or more seats.
“What hurt more than anything was making our staff redundant and dealing with the fall out in the party. I think, to be honest, for a little part of last year for a couple of months after the election, I went through a bit of a low point… I remember Mark Ballard (a former Green MSP who lost his seat in the 2007 election) asking me ‘how long do you want to be an MSP?’ and I honestly hadn’t considered it. I think the answer I gave at the time was that we are a relatively powerless group in a relatively powerless parliament and if both those things stayed the same for a long time, this would not be a job that would be ultimately rewarding to do for decades.
“However, I think we have the opportunity to change both of those things and I think if we can, then it will be a privilege to do the job and be part of that and yes, I do intend to stand in 2011.”
Always one to see the positive side in everything, Harvie says that the poor election result has allowed the party to regroup and rediscover its strengths. He also believes that minority government has offered the Greens a crucial deal-making role.
“We have been able to achieve a great deal in this session that we wouldn’t have been able to achieve in the last session with more numbers. We only have two votes but they are more crucial than our seven of the last session. We can get budget concessions, legislative sessions and our constructive attitude in debates has been perfectly suited to this period of minority government.”
In fact, Harvie has been a bit of a surprise this time round. There is no doubt he has grown into the job and admits that he himself has adopted a more professional and single-minded attitude.
He is a popular and respected figure in and around the Parliament and a key player in the politicians/media pool league that has established itself in a local hostelry of a Tuesday evening. It’s an incongruous vision; little Patrick Harvie, the very out gay in the political village, propping up the pool table with a pint in his hand
It’s an incongruous vision; little Patrick Harvie, the very out gay in the political village, propping up the pool table with a pint in his hand
, surrounded by the political hack pack, which is perhaps more testament to his own tolerance of them than some sections of the press have been about him.
Harvie has done much personally to transform the characterisation of the Greens as an eccentric, single issue, fringe group and in doing so, has also transformed himself – he has even accepted that conformity might have its advantages.
“I guess I have accepted that you wear the uniform if you want to be taken seriously. I did get taken more seriously when I put a suit on and I suppose I have got used to wearing suits and there is a little part of me that secretly likes dressing up!
“Saying something radical wearing ripped jeans and dreadlocks is one thing and saying something radical when you look part of the mainstream may prick people’s ears up a bit.”
Harvie says his approach is to try and achieve ‘constructive debate’, which he says leads to a better outcome rather than just thinking, ‘you’re all shit and my way is right.’ Never was that more true than amid all the brouhaha of the proposed HBOS takeover by Lloyds TSB when the First Minister coined his controversial ‘spivs and speculators’ phrase and Iain Gray agreed that short sellers should be ‘thrown to the fire’. It was Harvie who brought some much needed clarity when he said: “Debating the HBOS takeover without addressing the fundamental causes of economic trouble amounts to little more than a group hug on the deck of the Titanic. It might feel like it helps a little bit, make us feel a bit better, or give us some comfort in the short term, but it does nothing to change the problem that is at the very heart of the crisis.”
His lone voice caused a number of heads to turn and look at him with fresh eyes. The Greens, he says, may still have a way to go to persuade the electorate that their views are valid and all encompassing but it is something he hopes to address when he takes over Robin Harper’s role as male co-convener next month and gets a bit more evangelical about spreading the word of the Greens.
“I think, for instance, we have something radically different to say on the economy and the financial crisis. We have been saying something radically different on a different vision for financial services in Scotland; about looking at a diverse range of small and local financial services companies rooted in local communities – not all credit unions and co-operatives but including many of those – but with the
kind of values that the likes of the TSB and Halifax had before they were all taken over and I contrast that with a financial services sector that is dominated by a couple of mega banks, with everybody simply just worried about jobs. I am worried about jobs but also about the quality of jobs and whether they are satisfying jobs that are rooted in local communities.”
I observe that he is quite a frightening force in the Chamber, a heady mix of intelligence, cool control and independence of mind. His surprise secret is, he discloses, blood pressure pills.
“I have been on blood pressure pills for several years now following a kidney infection when I was a child and before I started taking them, I did get nervous during public speaking but now – not a flutter. I do get angry but stage fright and nerves do not affect me – all a façade but quite handy.
“I do enjoy saying what I think but I am puzzled by the prospect that other parties do not have the freedom
I do enjoy saying what I think but I am puzzled by the prospect that other parties do not have the freedom
and I think you only lose that freedom if you choose to constrain yourself. I think it would be a terrible, boring, soul-destroying job if you only cared about keeping it.
“The Green Party has the potential and opportunity to change the political landscape in Scotland, which is sometimes hard to see when you have gone through a bad election like last year but if we can build on the fact that we survived the big squeeze last year, and if we can come back in bigger numbers, we genuinely have the potential to not just change our status in politics but also the status of certain debates within the whole political spectrum.”
These are mighty aspirations. The word diminutive tends to prefix any description of Harvie and he is, undeniably, a Polly Pocket-sized politician but he is also a big man – big enough to say what he thinks, big enough to say he can change the world and big enough to keep trying.
“I do think the Greens have the most distinctive position, the most exciting and positive message in Scottish politics at the moment but I don’t pretend that we are the only decent and noble people…that would be bullshit.
“All people are flawed and imperfect and all parties could do better on all things but to gravitate towards machine politics, to do whatever it takes to keep your job, does not interest me – that would be a hateful life for me…”
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