What does WOKE mean? Any why has Caroline McAllister been dumped by the SNP?
NOTEBOOK by BILL HEANEY
Woke is the name of the group that has infiltrated the SNP and caused Vale of Leven councillor Caroline McAllister to be dumped as a prospective candidate to take on Labour’s Jackie Baillie for the Dumbarton Constituency seat.
The word WOKE was officially added into the Oxford English Dictionary as an adjective in June 2017.
The dictionary defines it as “originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice”.
In other words, it means to be awake to sensitive social issues, such as racism, trans gender politics and gay rights. It mentions nothing about council tax, housing, education, health and social care and other important local government functions.
People who attach themselves to WOKE are usually avowedly secular.
At least two gay men have thrown their hat in the ring to take on Jackie Baillie. They are Tony Giugliano and Scott Lafferty, who lives with his husband in Dumbarton East.
Another of the competitors for the Holyrood parliamentary candidature is West Dunbartonshire Council’s education committee chair Karen Conaghan, whose father Ian Murray, a former SNP councillor, is a long-time Pro Life campaigner.
The SNP group on the local council however is made up of a large majority firmly in favour of a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.
In a recent Notebook, I quoted the Observer columnist Kevin McKenna who wrote: “My own impression is that since the Church of Scotland is opposed to abortion most of its members, most practising Christians, will vote for Pro-Life candidates.”
He explained: “There is a growing sense of resentment among Catholics that merely to believe in the fundamental sanctity of human life from conception is now deemed unacceptable and tantamount to criminality.
“There is an inference that Catholics who are faithful to all of their Church’s teachings are to be considered unfit for public office.
“We are on dangerous and sinister territory here in which Catholics and Christians in the reformed traditions may soon feel forced to vote according to an exclusively religious agenda simply to protect the status of their faith.
“Modern Scotland has managed thus far to plot an intricately inclusive course and to reject the manipulation of religious belief evident in Trumpian America.
“It would be a tragedy if this were to happen here owing to the shrill intolerance of a secularist inquisition.”
That inquisition appears to have arrived in Dumbarton with the SNP’s dumping of Caroline McAllister and previously in the way it threw Andrew Muir out of the party altogether.
Mr Muir is also a mental health campaigner a subject about which the SNP have much to say but do very little about.
It seems obvious that fundamentalist Catholics – those who stick to the Church teachings currently in force – will vote against any candidate giving support to abortion or gay marriage.
However, it is puzzling that Caroline McAllister is now gone – her political career is almost certainly over – since she was to the fore for women’s right to choose at one debate I attended in West Dunbartonshire Council.
We can only wait and see what happens in Dumbarton constituency, which Jackie Baillie holds at present for the Labour Party. Ms Baillie is expected to go forward for the seat unopposed by her own local party members.
It will not be the same for the SNP though, where there is said to be much acrimony in the air and blood on the walls at every constituency meeting.
Prospective candidates are lining up for selection. They include gay and trans rights campaigner Toni Giugliano who put his name forward in August; Scott Lafferty, who is said to be the favourite for selection, works in Glasgow and lives in Dumbarton East with his same sex partner; Karen Conaghan, a local woman who chairs the Education Committee on West Dunbartonshire Council, and Lorna Douglas, who represents a Helensburgh seat on Argyll and Bute Council.
Into this porridge of confusion, rancour and infighting add the fact that Helensburgh and Cardross are for voting purposes within the Dumbarton Scottish Parliament constituency boundary, but are in Argyll and Bute for local government and Westminster purposes.
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Cllr Caroline McAllister could now quit the SNP and run as an independent against Labour’s Jackie Baillie in May. Pigeons and cats come to mind.
Karen Conaghan must be in with a strong chance of being selected. I always favour candidates who have earned the right to represent their own communities, as she has done, rather than candidates who are willing to move anywhere to further their careers.