Always on the Move.

Welcome to the Lawmanity podcast, where we explore the complex relationship between law and activism and discuss the different ways that law can oppress people but can also lead to real social change.
I'm Jen Ang, a human rights lawyer and activist based in Scotland and your host on the Lawmanity podcast. Now, every episode will bring you legal summaries of interesting cases and one-to-one interviews with activists across the UK who are using the law in creative ways to challenge unfairness and secure justice for people and communities who are excluded, discriminated against and overlooked.
This week, we're speaking to activist legend, Tim Hopkins. Dr. Tim Hopkins came to Scotland to pursue his studies in computer sciences but rapidly became a prominent activist in the fight against the notorious Section 28 law, a part of the Local Government Act 1988 that prohibited local authorities from promoting homosexuality or teaching about it in a positive light in schools.
A prominent and eminent campaigner for LGBT+ rights and equality for all people in Scotland, Tim was also involved in organising Scotland's first pride march, and headed the National LGBT+ organization Equality Network for 14 years before stepping down in 2024. Tim continues to campaign for LGBT+ rights, including recognition of the rights of trans and non-binary people.
Welcome to the show, Tim, you've been such a force of nature, but also part of not just LGBT history, but human rights history in Scotland. I'm really looking forward.
So in this podcast, we start with an opener question just to get a settled and for us to learn a bit more about the legends behind the people we're interviewing. So a friend pointed out that our sense of smell is our oldest sense, and that we can hold deep connections between the sense of smell and our memories.
So if you don't mind, can you please tell me about a smell that's meaningful to you, maybe one that you like or one that's connected to a time or place that you like to bring to mind?

You’re right, the sense of smell is very evocative, but I'm actually quite boring on this point. I think I might mention two. One is a smell of an ex-boyfriend of mine, mostly the kind of perfume that he used to wear, which, after we split up - we split up after a few years - but that stuck with me for years afterwards. In fact, I used to have, in my cupboard, a jacket that belonged to him, which still smelled of him. I went and looked to see if I still had it before we started and I must have thrown it away at some point over the years.
But actually, before I thought of that, the smell that first came to mind is actually the smell of coffee, because coffee for me is quite important in the morning. Until I've had my first coffee, I'm not much use. It's also connected in my mind to work, I suppose, but not working in an unpleasant sense, but getting things done. That's a kind of comfortable smell for me.

Thank you so much for sharing those. And I love the idea of a signature scent that sticks with you, even well beyond the contemporary. And that is so true. There are some people who are just associated with a smell and a time and a place. Must have been a great pick for that person. Must have been the one. And I can totally relate to coffee as well. Thanks so much for sharing those things.
So now we're going to dive into the simple question about the law and equality. So my question is, do you feel the law works equally for you or for your community, however you choose to define community? And why or why not?

Yes, so I suppose when I thought about this, I was also thinking about the definition of law. There's kind of two dimensions to that, for the work that I've been involved in for a long time. One is what the law itself says, what is in criminal law, what is criminal and what isn't. In a civil law, what are people's rights and so on. So that's one dimension. Then the other dimension is how the law works and you know, being able to uphold your rights and what's involved in that. To answer the question, when I started campaigning, which was back in the 1980s, the whole environment was that the law treated us very unfairly as LGBT people.
And that's really what got me involved, so it was all about changing the law.
Over the past 30 years, or a little more, 35 years, there have been big changes, big positive changes to the law as it affects LGBT people in Scotland and across the UK and other places as well. I made a list, and there's about 10 really important things on the list.
And if I look back at the Equality Network’s first manifesto for the first Scottish Parliament election in 1999, almost everything on that manifesto has been done, and most of the things on the manifesto were about changing the law. And since then, we added some additional things that weren’t such high priorities, but a large number of them have been done.
So in terms of whether the law works for LGBT people: for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, the law is far better now than it was 30 years ago. For trans people, things are really quite different. There have been some improvements: the two key things are the gender recognition system that came in in 2004 [ https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/contents ], and the anti-discrimination and anti-harassment laws which are now in the Equality Act [ https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents ], which date back to, originally, 1999.
But both those things have been seriously undermined this year, in particular, by the Supreme Court judgment back in April in For Women Scotland versus Scottish Ministers [ https://supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0042], which is a huge huge problem for trans people. So for trans people, the law is definitely not working at the moment.

And thank you so much for highlighting those differences. And it must be-- I just wanted to sort of ask a follow-on question from that, actually. For you, at the moment, do you see in the contemporary struggles for the rights of trans people and non-binary people any parallels to either the challenges or some of the tactics that were necessary in fighting for the rights for L,G and B people?

Yes, I've been saying to people - especially younger people who weren’t around in the 1980s - I've been saying recently that it feels like we're back in the 1980s. The kind of things that happened then, targeting, if you like, lesbian and gay people - or gay men, it was primarily - but the impact was just as bad on lesbian and bisexual people as well. The kind of things that happened then are happening now to trans people.
So one example is Margaret Thatcher famously in the Tory party conference in 1987 had a bit in her speech – it was something like [Margaret Thatcher audio artifact]
“Children who should be being taught traditional moral values are instead being taught they have an inalienable right to be gay.” [LGBT+ Marketing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VRRWuryb4k ]
Tim Hopkins
That's pretty much a direct quote, and that was a signal - that was in 1987 - and it was a signal that two months later Section 28 was going to be introduced [ https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/9/pdfs/ukpga_19880009_en.pdf]. The first and only time that the law applying to LGB people has gone backwards in the past half a century at least.
And we saw almost the same thing happening a couple of years ago when Rishi Sunak, when he was Prime Minister, in his Tory conference speech, made very similar comments about trans people

“And we shouldn’t be bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman. That’s just common sense. [applause]” [The Independent, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5kQhhgK6T8]

So the whole feel of the way that trans people are being attacked now feels very much like the 1980s. And in just the same way that I mentioned Section 28 being the only time the law had gone backwards, the recent Supreme Court judgment is worse in terms of the harm done to trans rights than Section 28 was for LGB rights. Just as with Section 28 the law has now gone backwards for trans people.
In terms of how we deal with that. Well, moving on kind of into the 1990s there were - in fact, actually in the 1980s as well - there were a number of court cases which helped move things forward. For example, cases, some in the UK courts, some in the European Court of Human Rights, and one at least at the European Court of Justice. And I think court cases are going to be really important.
Work in the media I think is going to be really important. So a lot of work was done in the 1990s to, if you like, normalise same sex relationships to kind of give visibility to LGB people. And I think more work needs to be done to give visibility to trans people, and it's really positive that trans people are appearing in TV programs like Heartstopper for example, in a similar way to the way that gay men, in particular at first, and then a bit later lesbians, were beginning to appear in the 1980s, in soaps like EastEnders, for example.
And then I think campaigning with politicians to see if it's possible to get the law changed, which was very slow in the 1990s but gradually picked up speed over the last - certainly between 2000 and 2022 - in Scotland.
And I think one of the important things for LGB rights in Scotland was devolution - that was crucial to moving forward faster a bit faster than down south on some things, and doing it better than down south. And I think there's an opportunity for doing a similar thing with trans rights as well. Having said that, there is a major problem, which is the reservation of equality law.
And in fact, going right back to 1998 when the Equality Network was only one year old, we did a lot of work campaigning around the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, and we fed into the various bits of consultation that were done about what should the Parliament look like? What should its powers be? And one of the things we said right back then, and we’ve said it many times since, is that equality law should be devolved, like it is in Northern Ireland.
If equality law had been devolved to Scotland, then the court cases, For Women Scotland versus Scottish Ministers - of which there have been two [ https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/media/0a1plqgo/court-of-session-judgement-reclaiming-motion-by-for-women-scotland-limited-against-the-lord-advocate-and-others-18-february-2022.pdf and https://supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0042 ], and the Supreme Court judgement was in the second case - those cases wouldn't have happened.
Well they certainly wouldn't have been decided in the way they were, because they were based on Scotland has to comply with whatever equality law means across Britain.
And the blocking of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill [ https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/s6/gender-recognition-reform-scotland-billhttps://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/s6/gender-recognition-reform-scotland-bill], which was kind of the last one of the positive changes to the law that have happened over the past 25 years in Scotland, that was only blocked because equality law was reserved to Westminster.

Absolutely. And, yeah, and I suppose we have definitively seen the end point of equality law being reserved to Westminster in this case, a case which originated in Scotland and actually originated in the attempt by Scottish Ministers to exercise the limited powers they had in a reservation.
I am so interested in what you've raised, and as a side note, I also was learning today from someone who was there at the time that the Equality Network was, in coalition with other civil society organisations, really crucial in the establishment of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, as well, as an accountability body.
And I feel there is a whole piece – I think it's not an article. I think it's probably an entire piece of research – about the specific socio-legal history of human rights and equalities in Scotland, which one day I might come back to you on.
So my next question for you is looking back over the span of your career. Is the law for you a barrier or a tool, or both, in the struggle to achieve greater equality for people and communities who marginalised and disadvantaged?

So I guess for LGBT people, obviously at the beginning when we started this work, the law was a big barrier because there were so many things that were wrong with it.
Section 28, sex offences law, treated gay men in particular very different from anybody else. There was no gender recognition for trans people, there was no recognition of same sex couples in any way, same sex couples couldn't be joint parents. And then there was no protective law, so there was no equality law or hate crime law protection. So in that sense, the law was a big barrier.
As we've gradually got things changed, some of those changes were about barriers disappearing, so I wrote down that it took four separate acts, two of them at Westminster, and two of them in the Scottish Parliament, to remove all of the discrimination against gay and bisexual men in sexual offences law. It started in 1980, but it didn't finish until 2009. So that was removing the barrier.
If you think about what does the law do positively, there was one more act, which is the Historical Sexual Offences (Pardons and Disregards) (Scotland) Act 2018 [https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2018/14/contents] which we did a lot of work on, which is basically about giving a pardon to every man who was ever convicted. So it’s historical, it’s kind of posthumous pardons to people who are no longer alive, but also gives a pardon to everybody who is still living who has one of these convictions.
So I guess that's an example of the way in which the law can actually to some extent correct injustices that have happened in the past.
And then of course apart from removing all the barriers, I would include in that, you know, the introduction of civil partnership, and then the introduction of equal marriage, and actually before even civil partnership, the recognition of cohabiting same sex couples, and the laws around parenting.
All of that is about removing barriers, but there are also the more positive laws: the Equality Act and the hate crime legislation, which are about protecting people.
So I think the answer is the law has both been a barrier, a huge barrier, but for LGB people, those barriers have been bit by bit taken down. But also the law is a protector, and it has been genuinely protective: you know, the Equality Act has genuinely protected people. It doesn't always work of course, but some people have been protected from sexual orientation discrimination, and hate crime law has given some people some justice.

As I hear you describe these things and the long struggle for equality using the law in different ways, it occurs to me that a lot of the work has been about redefining the boundaries of who deserves protection, but also who deserves to be recognised in their identities. So it sounds like the story of the '80s and the '90s. And I still remember. I still remember.
There being in the cultural landscape, very severe discrimination and disgust if you like, just around discussions on identity. So the law and the strategic work you did was about bringing people with particular orientations or identities into the fold of people who deserved protection. And it sounds like the work that you're talking about now looking at trans and non-binary people is a continuation in some ways of that dialogue. What do you think?

No, no, that's exactly right. So I mentioned the importance of the media. One of the first demonstrations we organised, before the Equality Network was founded, I'd been involved in a number of other groups, and one we set up at the end of 1987, after Margaret Thatcher made her speech I referred to before, and Section 28 had been introduced in Parliament. It hadn't yet become law. We were doing a lot of campaigning against Section 28.
And one person who got very much involved in the campaign was Michael Cashman, who at that point was an actor - he played a character called Colin on EastEnders, who was a gay man. Colin and Barry were a couple on EastEnders. They were pretty much the first gay male couple to be in any soap opera, really any TV serial in the UK. And then he got involved in campaigning, and then he became a politician, and obviously he's still involved in campaigning. So those things are really important, which is why it's really good to see, as I mentioned before, trans people in programmes like Heartstopper, and also the same people speaking out, and their colleagues speaking out.
But yes, you're absolutely right. The law at the moment is a huge barrier for trans people, especially after the Supreme Court judgment in April. We don't know quite how bad it's going to be, but at the moment it looks like it's going to be very bad indeed. Completely non-compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights, which is why I hope cases will get to the European Court as quickly as possible. But of course, there's no requirement on the UK government to implement rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. So what happens after that, we have to see, but yes, really the situation of trans people now is I think worse than the situation was for LGB people, even going back to the 1980s. Perhaps the media is not quite so unpleasant as it was about LGB people in the 1980s, but it is almost as bad. But the legal situation, the fact that it looks like trans people are not going to be able to use toilets, is just appalling.

It's a concerning prognosis. And one, I'm afraid I might share. But I suppose it's really helpful in speaking to you because you and other activists who are still of the movement have this longer perspective. It's really helpful to remind people of some of these challenges we've seen before, some of them are new and bigger, but people are still in the movement to lend a hand, as you are, to think about what to do. I'm going to move on or move back, I suppose, to the role of the people who make the legal system happen.
And that is a question about what you think the role of lawyers and the legal system might be in relation to social justice movements?

Okay, so for us, for LGBT people, including trans people, the role of lawyers and the legal system, as in the courts, has been absolutely crucial. That is one of the things that has allowed us to move forward on all of these changes to the law that have happened over the last 25 years. There was actually a case at the end of the 1970s, taken by three gay men in Scotland to what was then, I think, called the European Commission of Human Rights, which was a kind of, I think, that was the first place you went to before you went to the Court. It doesn't exist anymore, but that was the process back then. And that was basically a case about the fact that sex between men was then completely criminal in all circumstances. Although it had been decriminalised in England in 1967, or partially decriminalised, that hadn't covered Scotland.
That case actually was withdrawn because Robin Cook introduced an amendment to a bill, under the Thatcher government actually at Westminster, the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill, which became the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Justice_(Scotland)_Act_1980], which basically brought the law in Scotland into line with the law in England. So partial decriminalisation. So that case was withdrawn, but probably the fact that it was there, was one of the things that helped the government agree to Robin Cook's amendment.
There was a case in the late 90s where four people who had been members of the armed forces, and were thrown out at the armed forces for being lesbian or gay, because in those days, if you were lesbian or gay, you couldn't be a member of the armed forces. It's normally called Smith and Grady [https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-58408%22]}], although there were four of them. I can't remember whether their case was completed. I think it was. I think they won the case in the European Court of Human Rights. That meant that the law was changed under the Blair Government in around 1999-2000.
And around the same time there were cases, well in fact there was a case in the early 1990s, somebody that I knew here in Scotland who was a student called Hugo Greenhalgh, took a case with his boyfriend, Will Parry, supported by Stonewall, to the European Court of Human Rights https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-2013%22]}], because they were under 21, and the age of consent then, because decriminalisation had only been partial, the age of consent between men was 21. It never got to judgment, if I remember rightly, because the Major government allowed an amendment to be debated, which became part of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. The amendment was led by Tony Blair [and Edwina Currie MP] to equalize the age of consent at 16. It didn't succeed, but the age was reduced to 18, and those two men were over 18, so their case kind of disappeared.
But Stonewall then supported another case, for somebody who at the time had been, a few years before, 16, and so his case was about the fact that he'd been criminalized for being 16. Euan Sutherland, his name was, and that went to the European Commission of Human Rights, who ruled in his favour [https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-45912%22]}], and that was one of the reasons why, in 2000, the Blair government introduced the, I think it was, the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act, which equalised the age of consent for sex between men at 16.
So, those are all examples of the European Court of Human Rights, and there's one more really important one, and that is Goodwin versus the UK [https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-60596%22]}], which is the one about gender recognition, and relates to the Gender Recognition Act in 2004. And that's an interesting one, because it was something like the third separate case about gender recognition that had gone to the European Court of Human Rights, and the first two cases had been lost, but the Court takes into account the context across the Council of Europe, and by the time it got to 2002, the majority of Council of Europe countries had some sort of gender recognition; the UK was pretty much an outlier through not having gender recognition.
And so the Court said, yeah, well, previously, we've said it's not a requirement to have a gender recognition system, but now, 2002, we're saying it is a requirement. And that then led to the Gender Recognition Act.
So those are all European court cases. There was another really important one at the European Court of Justice, which of course we can't go to now, thanks to Brexit. P vs S and Cornwall County Council [ https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:61994CJ0013 ], which was a trans-related case about discrimination, where the European Court of Justice ruled that discriminating against somebody because they were trans was a kind of sex discrimination, and that led to regulations to amend the Sex Discrimination Act, in 1999, to protect from discrimination on grounds of gender reassignment, at least in employment. Then that was extended later to cover goods and services as well.
So those are all European court cases. There have been some domestic cases, which have been important as well, for getting the law changed. The most significant one that I can remember was called Ghaidan vs Godin-Mendoza [https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200304/ldjudgmt/jd040621/gha-1.htm] and it was decided initially in 2002. It was about tenancy succession, so Mendoza was a man who had been in a same sex relationship and his partner had died, and his partner had been the tenant for a flat. I think it had been housing association, it might have been local authority housing. And had they been a mixed sex couple, then the surviving partner would automatically have inherited the tenancy. But he was told he had to leave the flat because the same sex partnership wasn't recognised. This is before civil partnership existed, but had they been unmarried mixed sex couple, then the surviving partner would have inherited the tenancy. So he went to court and said this is discrimination against me because I was in a same sex couple. The court in this country ruled in his favour and said yes, it is discrimination to not allow a cohabiting same sex couple to inherit a tenancy in that way. And that was one of the things that helped ensure that the Civil Partnership Act happened a couple of years later, because I think the government wanted to regularise the law around same sex partnerships.
So that's not my complete list, but that's a list of some of the really important cases. In some cases the law has been changed directly, certainly Ghaidan versus Mendoza - I think that had direct effect - but in the majority of cases it's been about a European Court of Human Rights case, or something that's happened in this country, which has then provided a big impetus to actually getting the law changed through legislation.

Wow, that was an incredible walk through Tim. And I feel like your list of cases would be such an interesting semester course for law students or for activists, or maybe even a reading group. I just think that we sometimes don't stop and look back, again, at the strategies, but also the circumstances that were in play at the time that change had to happen. And it'd be great to remember that now.
So my next question is one of my very favorites, because it invites you to imagine how things could be different. And it's, what does justice look like for you or for your community, again, however you define community?

Yes, I think it's a really good question. First of all, in terms of even the LGB community, where the things we've been talking about have got a lot further than for trans people, really, I would have to say justice is impossible for anybody over the age of about 20. And the reason I say that is that everybody over that age would have been through an education system in Scotland, where LGB people were discriminated against in the sense that nothing positive was ever said about same-sex relationships or about LGB people. There was no visibility for LGB people, and that will have added to the difficulties that young teenage LGB people have dealing with the fact that they're discovering their sexual orientation. It has changed in just the last few years, quite a lot, thanks to the work of the Time for Inclusive Education campaign in Scotland [https://tie.scot] and also LGBT Youth Scotland [https://lgbtyouth.org.uk], and some others. So it's got quite a lot better. But I think if you’re in your 20s or older, and it gets worse the older you are, because of the history of these changes, then I think, really, justice is not possible because those things have had an effect on you, and that effect can't be undone. This is why the way young people are supported is so important to me.
For trans people that is still happening, so for any person who's a trans person, now the situation for young trans people in particular is getting worse and worse, with the ban on puberty blockers, and all the nonsense from this Cass review thing https://transactual.org.uk/advocacy/critiques-of-the-cass-review/], which is a completely unscientific biased review, which has been debunked by peer-reviewed scientific studies in a number of other countries, but which has had a huge negative impact on young trans people's lives.
I think those things stay with you for the rest of your life in some sense, so complete justice is not possible. Having said that - that sounds very negative - in terms of just laws, we have come a huge way, as we have been discussing, over the past 25-30 years.
So, I personally feel now I live in a country where, for somebody who's gay, we are much closer to a just system than we've ever been before, and I feel kind of quite comfortable about “official Scotland,” if you like, the law in Scotland, what it says about me as a gay man seems to be pretty fair now.
So I guess on that measure of justice, we've kind of got there for LGB people. There are other measures as well, and there's still a lot of hate crime going on, there's still a lot of discrimination going on, but at least in terms of the law, the law is there to try to deal with those things. As I've said several times, for trans people, things are a lot further back.

I think that's, as always, with you, Tim, articulate and fair criticism of both the position we're in. And also the places where we really need to think about scope for action, particularly what it looks like growing up as a young LGBT person.
And I guess that nicely leads me on to my last question, which is about young people out there. So there will be people out there listening who are maybe aspiring activists or aspiring lawyers, I suppose. And they will be looking at everything that you've done, which I know you won't admit this, but standing back is quite an impressive record. And they might be a younger version of you or someone who wants to be you one day.
And so my question is, what advice do you have for someone like that about what it takes or what they should focus on? Yeah, to be the well-balanced thoughtful, and still in some ways, optimistic person that you are today?

So I suppose I think I've been very lucky to be involved in this at kind of just the right time, certainly in terms of LGB equality. Because when I got involved, although things had just gone backwards, or were just about to go backwards, because I got involved at the beginning of 1987, just before Section 28. From then onwards, things started moving forwards, very slowly at first, but faster and faster.
So I consider myself to have been very fortunate to have been involved in it during that very positive time. But I think the same will be true of trans equality in particular going forward, and I think there are big areas where LGB equality can still be improved – we were talking about young people and so on. So I think there's big opportunities there for making a difference. What would my advice be?
So I guess I'm quite lucky in that I don't get too angry about things. I think if you do get very angry about these things, which is very easy to do, because these injustices are so stark and obvious, then I think that can make it harder to effectively campaign - it depends what kind of campaigning you're involved in on the day, if you like. Because there's nothing wrong, in fact, it's positive, to express your anger on a march, for example, or that kind of thing, which we've done a fair bit of in the past.
But when it comes to sitting down and trying to figure out how the law is going to be changed, and sitting down and talking to politicians and so on, it's OK to express the fact that the law, whatever it is, or discrimination, is making you angry, but you have to somehow do that without letting the anger control what you're saying, and the way you're expressing it. So I guess trying to be laid back is quite an important thing.
What else? Well, I mean, different people have different approaches to these things, and I'm somebody, before I got involved in this, I worked in computing. So I'm somebody who's very detail oriented, and it's important to have detail oriented people in this campaign because it's important to be able to make detailed arguments and to quickly spot if something's going in the wrong direction, whether it's an amendment to a bill that has been introduced, or something that a court has said. So not everybody has to be detail oriented but it's important to have detail oriented people.
But it's also important to look after yourself and to have a group of people who look after each other. That's absolutely crucial. I've been lucky - I've talked quite a bit about myself in this last part - but actually the Equality Network has always been a whole group of people working together, and that kind of support - even before we had any funding, we used to meet weekly to take the campaign forward. Only about half a dozen people, but that kind of support, mutual support between people, that we were able to give each other doing that every week was really, really important as well.

Thank you for that advice.

And just sort of honest reflection about the things that get you through, but also a reminder that campaigns are many hands at work with their many different skills. The detailed oriented people and also the bold dreamers, I suppose, is another. And sometimes you can be both.
I mean, listen, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you.

Well thank you very much for asking me to do this. I suppose if there's kind of one thing that I haven't said, it's because I've been focused on LGBT equality is that you have to see these things in a wider context and certainly, although there are still issues for LGBT people, the injustices in this country are not really around LGBT people, they are around poverty, they are around people who don't have jobs, they are around people not being able to access health services properly and so on.
So I don't want to give the impression that I think that justice is just about justice for LGBT people, because the Equality Network has always worked with people from other equality strands but also other human rights defenders. And issues of poverty affect LGBT people as well, especially trans people. But obviously most LGB people including myself are fortunate enough to have enough money to live reasonably comfortably, but there are a whole load of people, LGBT and many many many others, who don't, and that is one of the biggest injustices facing the country.

I absolutely agree. And one of the things that I have really enjoyed about working in Scotland with people from across different equality groups, I suppose, and something that's different to my experience working elsewhere is that recognition – that recognition between activists and advocates, that these issues are all intertwined and that, you know, destitution and homelessness as well as discrimination against someone who isn't like you, is very much as as much a concern for you as it is about discrimination against you for who you are.
So actually, I love that you brought that back. And I think that sense is alive in the work that we do. It may not always be visible to the public or to people externally, but that's an important piece of the work for sure.

Always on the Move.