Green Light to Victimise Gay Workers

Scan page 9

It is "not unreasonable' to dismiss a worker who has any contact with young people simply because he or she is homosexual. That is at this moment the law in Britain.

It results from the judgement of an Employment Appeal Tribunal in Glasgow in April chaired by Lord Macdonald.

The appeal was made by John Saunders, a maintenance handyman for the Scottish National Camps Association, which dismissed him in 1979 because he was known to be gay as a result of what the tribunal darkly refers to as a homosexual incident in Stirling'.

Reason for sacking

The Camps Association admit that the only reason for dismissal was homosexuality, and the industrial tribunal to whom John Saunders first appealed found against him.

The confirmation of that by the Appeal Tribunal is even more serious since it establishes a legal precedent for the whole country.

If it is not reversed (and it is currently under appeal to a higher court) it could open the flood gates to widespread victimisation of gay workers in a wide range of jobs, especially, of course, in education, health and social work.

It is for this reason that a pamphlet just published by the Gay Teachers Group-Gay Rights and the Teaching Unions - is particularly timely.

The vulnerability of teachers to prejudice and oppression of gays is obvious.

The growth of an openly gay community has not removed the bigoted attitude widespread within imperialist (not to mention Stalinist) countries that homosexuality is some form of corruption of "normal" sexuality.

And from this viewpoint, constantly reinforced by the bourgeois media, the gay teacher thus appears in the role of "corrupter of the young".

If there are comparatively few recent cases of teachers being dismissed for being gay, this is certainly because the hundreds of cases which do occur are disguised and hushed up by mutual agreement between the employers and the teacher concerned, who agrees to resign for "personal reasons" and to avoid damaging exposure.

On the basis of statistical averages there must be tens of thousands of gay teachers in Britain.

The vast majority live in fear of discovery and, like the majority of gay people in general are afraid to come out, especially at work.

Teachers are simply a particular example of the way in i mh which social bigotry about homosexuality converts so many gay people into the most direct and effective agents of their own oppression.

But this would be less true if gay teachers had any good reason to suppose that education authorities would not discriminate against known homosexuals, or if they thought that the teaching unions would defend them if discrimination did occur.

Reason to fear

On both scores gay teachers up to now have in general good reason to fear the worst.

In 1974 the National Council for Civil Liberties submitted a questionnaire on the employment of gay teachers to all education bodies. They asked S questions pertaining to possible discrimination.

Only one authority (Solihull) gave entirely satisfactory answers to all the survey of the rest, came from the ILEA which a few months later, in a notorious case, sacked John Warburton because he would not sign an undertaking never to discuss homosexuality with students in his school.

The Warburton case also showed up the NUT in a very bad light since they ended up in more or less the same position as management.

In 1976, before the Warburton case, the NUT replied to the NCCL that the union was:

"concerned at any form of discrimination or interference with members... and we would provide the full resources of the union to any member that required assistance."

After the Warburton case, the NUT replied to the Gay Teachers Group's questions in 1980 with evasion.

They admitted that the subject had never been debated at Conference (though in the last conference a vote on discrimination against gays was not

----- pull-quotes -----

-CAY TEACHERS GROUP