LAST Friday the House of Commons debated – and dumped – a Private Member’s Bill tabled by the SNP’s John Nicolson. The Bill sought to right a great wrong by pardoning (and removing from the record) past convictions for a crime that is no longer a crime, and indeed should never have been one: a man loving another man. In my memory, the British state criminalised, humiliated and vindictively punished men who openly chose a different sexual preference from that mandated by the media, the churches and the political establishment. Fortunately, we have moved on somewhat since those dark days. At least I thought so, until last Friday afternoon.

There are still many men – though simple biology dictates their numbers are shrinking every year – who carry the stigma of a criminal conviction or caution for having committed a sexual act with another male. Actually, one did not have to “commit” the physical act. You could be jailed for holding hands in public, dancing with another man or sharing a loving home with him. In the latter case, some policeman in a greasy overcoat would recite to the court your coming and goings overnight, with the inference you had obviously committed a sexual act deemed by the law of the land to be illegal, even though committed by two consenting adults.

Many a judge solemnly passed sentence, hypocritically ignoring the fact that he himself had committed the self-same act as a gilded youth at an Oxbridge college. For hypocrisy lies at the heart of the undemocratic British state, and always has done. To preserve the privileges of the few (including sexual ones) it is necessary to convince the exploited many that they are in danger from anyone except the British ruling elite. Today the scapegoat is European immigrants. In the 1950s, it was gay men.

John Nicolson’s short, simple Bill sought to expunge the stigma and painful memories of that cruel, homophobic era by granting a blanket pardon, both to the living and the dead, for convictions for so-called crimes that are no longer on the statute book. It would also have allowed the living to have their personal conviction removed from the public record after a check, should they wish to do so. Many, perhaps most, of these survivors would probably be reticent to take the latter course. But John Nicolson’s Bill, by offering those few survivors the opportunity of public vindication, was an act of love, compassion and – above all – justice.

Of course, John’s Bill was consigned to the parliamentary scrapyard using a squalid manoeuvre order by Theresa May. I sat through that debate with occasional tears in my eyes. I was not alone. Men wept as they made their speeches. That’s rare in a Commons which – despite being the campest of political debating chambers – demands MPs to be straitlaced and formal in its proceedings. There were more tears and cries of “Shame!” when Nicolson's Bill was talked out by Sam Gyimah, a ministerial toady at the Department of Justice.

The debate on Friday was the finest I have seen. John Nicolson’s introductory speech was magnificent: forensic yet funny, passionate yet analytical, and above all conciliatory to the government. There was no need to destroy the Bill: the Government could have sought changes in committee. John Nicolson is a former World Universities Debating Champion, so always commands the attention of the House. Not that we had a big turnout on Friday. The Labour benches were rather empty. I say that not to point the finger, merely to say that if Labour had matched the SNP in turnout we would have kept John’s Bill alive. We needed 100 votes and got only 57.


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John was followed by a series of superb interventions. On our own side, we brought out the legal heavy guns. Joanna Cherry QC MP comprehensively shredded the Government's case for denying the Bill a passage – a trumped-up Tory charge that John’s proposed legislation would somehow let paedophiles slip through the net despite the wording carefully stating that the proposed pardon did not apply unless the law used to convict was no longer on the statute book, which clearly does not apply to under-age sex. Even Mike Weir, the SNP’s wise and doughty chief whip, made a rare contribution – whips are normally behind the scenes. Mike is also a lawyer and has forgotten more about matters legal than Under Secretary Gyimah will ever know. That does not surprise me in the least. Mr Gyimah is a former investment banker with Goldman Sachs, so his fitness to stand in judgement on the injustices done to gay people seems rather doubtful.

The speech that moved me most was from Labour’s Chris Bryant, the MP for Rhondda in Wales and a former Anglican priest. Much of it was impromptu (as he told me afterwards). Bryant retold the story of those gay MPs who first raised the warning against Hitlerism in the 1930s, having seen at first hand the treatment of gays in the early concentration camps.

Why did Theresa May’s Government break John Nicolson’s Bill like “a butterfly upon a wheel”? Partly, according to the government’s own media briefings, because it did not want to be seen to “hand the SNP a victory”. But this was a Private Member’s Bill, not a party initiative. The truth is that Theresa May is no liberal. As with the turn to embrace grammar schools, her true agenda is to recover ground lost to Ukip by taking the Tories to the right.

To save face, the Tory Government is bringing in its own, watered-down version of John Nicolson’s Bill. This will be attached as an amendment to the Policing and Crimes Bill now making its way through the Lords. I ask you: what is the symbolism here? Attaching a pardon (only for those safely dead, mind you) to a Crime Bill when those pardoned consenting acts should never have been deemed “crimes” in the first place. And doing it through legislation in the unelected House of Lords.

John Nicolson calls his Bill after Alan Turing, the mathematical genius whose work during the Second World War helped break the German Enigma code and so allow the Allies to read Nazi communications. In 1952 Turing was convicted of “gross indecency” (actually he was living with another man) and forced to undergo chemical castration. As a result of this torture he committed suicide. Last Friday the Tory Government tortured Alan Turing in spirit yet again – and thousands more still alive who were prosecuted for being gay in those dreadful times in the 1950s. Who would have thought that Scotland now has three party leaders who are openly gay? That openness and social ease is one result of the Scottish nation recovering even a modest degree of Home Rule. Imagine the tolerant, creative society we could build if we were fully independent. Now think of a Tory investment banker smugly talking out John Nicolson’s Bill on Friday while around him MPs cried and anonymous old gay men watched on television, reliving yet again their humiliation at the hands of the British state. Think and make sure Scotland no longer has to be part of this constitutional farce.