FOR any society or organisation, the path to equality can be a long but essential journey. Even with the best intentions, changing the structures and the underlying culture isn’t something that happens overnight, or with a single person in the driving seat.
And so it has been with the Scottish National Party.
It took three Holyrood elections before we elected our first MSP from an ethnic minority background. The legendary Bashir Ahmad’s words still ring true today: “It isn’t important where you come from, what matters is where we are going together as a nation”. But at the following election in 2011, despite our historic victory, achieving a majority of members of the Scottish Parliament, only one in four of the SNP group were women.
For a modern, progressive-thinking party like ours this record simply didn’t reflect our own high ambitions.
That’s why we acted to make things right by producing a strategy to address, in the first instance, the under-representation of women in parliament. Working alongside a team from across the party, and including Dr Duncan Ross, William Henderson, Derek Mackay MSP, Mhairi Hunter and Julie Hepburn, I’m glad to have played my part in producing a series of recommendations to address this imbalance and improve our record.
From these recommendations the SNP’s Women’s Academy was set up to provide a platform for training, networking and support for women members, and we established a network of women’s officers in every branch in the country. The creation of the post of national women’s officer was proposed, and agreed by conference delegates the next year.
As a party member elected by conference, and then by my fellow MPs, to be a member of our National Executive Committee, I’m proud to have been elected by the NEC to this position in each year since 2011.
The SNP has made significant and substantial progress over this time. Our first annual women’s conference was held in 2012, this year’s will be our fifth, and was soon followed by our first Out for Indy and later our inaugural disabled members’ conferences. Our first national event for BAME members will be held this weekend.
We have also seen tangible change in the election of under-represented groups to parliament at Holyrood and Westminster, with the return of a much-increased proportion of women in the 2015 General Election and again in this year’s Scottish Parliament poll.
None of this would have been possible without the support of the SNP’s NEC and of course our wider party membership, but I’m proud of the personal contribution I’ve made and the results we’ve achieved together.
But we can’t stop here. As those who know me can testify, I’m not one to rest on my laurels.
We need vision, teamwork and experience if we’re to continue our positive journey to overcome the social barriers, which clearly still exist, to ensure our council chambers properly represent who we actually are as a nation.
That’s why in addition to organising our fifth annual women’s conference, I’ve been working to establish the SNP’s first equalities conference, which will be held in Glasgow on Sunday. Our plan is to bring together members from a diverse range of backgrounds: BAME, LGBTI and disabled SNP members, all in one venue to share our collective experience of our journey towards equality and how best to support each other over the months and years to come. I’m delighted that a number of external equalities organisations have accepted my invitation to address delegates on their specialist work in these areas.
As things stand, only one in four local councillors in Scotland are women, while only 10 BAME councillors were elected in total across our country at the poll in 2012.
We can and must improve on our record, and work to change the face of local councils next year.
At the SNP’s conference in Glasgow tomorrow, I’ll be asking delegates to judge me on my record and re-elect me as the SNP’s national women’s and equalities convener. I know that my personal commitment to equality, combined with my experience and plan for the future, will help our party make our council chambers more reflective of the communities they represent.
This will be our 82nd annual conference, and the SNP’s history is important. We need to remember that change doesn’t arrive overnight in a blaze of glory, but is something which we can build together over time.
We are a team with a record to be proud of, and an exciting vision for a more equal future.
Chris McEleny: ‘It’s time to take control of our councils and give real power to communities’
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