It’s official: Scotland has 31,161 bigots (those who voted for the Scottish Christian Party)

Despite the fact that the Scottish Christian Party, fielding 72 candidates, only managed to attract around 30,000 votes and won no seats in the 2007 Scottish elections, its leader, the Rev George Hargreaves, is convinced that his party’s narrow following of delusional crackpots will provide a springboard for far greater influence in Scottish politics in years to come.

“As I travel around Scotland carrying the news of the Scottish Christian Party, I have been greeted with joy and enthusiasm as Christians across all denominations and traditions have cried out: ‘At last we have a political party that will stand up for the Lord’,” trumpets Hargreaves on his website.

Hargreaves, an ordained minister of 15 years’ standing, first entered politics as a candidate for the Referendum Party in 1997, when he stood as a Parliamentary candidate in Walthamstow, London.

“The Scottish Christian Party,” he continues, “hopes to use the talents of the Lord’s people, in their different callings, to bring the grace of the Gospel to bear upon the religious, spiritual, moral and social problems of our society. The SCP believes the country needs a distinctly Christian Voice in the Scottish Parliament. By God’s grace, it is possible to do so.

“We are thankful that there are Christian MSPs in the mainline parties, but they are not always able to articulate Christianity clearly because their party managers don’t want them speaking in a ‘religious manner’. Even our Prime Minister was prevented by his advisers from ending his address to the nation, at the start of hostilities in Iraq, with the words: ‘God bless you’. On a later occasion, Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s director of strategy and communications at the time, interrupted an interview with Tony Blair to say: ‘We do not do God’, in order to prevent the Prime Minister from answering a question about his Christianity. We hope to be a distinctly Christian Voice in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, Edinburgh.”

Posing the question “What is the point in having a Christian Voice in Holyrood?”, Hargreaves provides this answer: “The rise of the Green vote in the Scottish Parliament, from one MSP in 1999 to seven MSPs at present, has contributed to the other parties turning green. Similarly, we believe that a rise in the Christian Voice will have an effect on the other parties. Party managers in these other parties, keen to win back ‘the Christian vote’, will allow Christians in their own parties to speak more openly about Christian values. At present, the Labour Cabinet seems to think that there is more humanism in the country than Christianity, so it ignores even the powerful Roman Catholic vote over the gay adoption issue.”

Hargreaves then goes on to attack Green Party leader Robin Harper, MSP for Lothian, pointing out that Harper is “a prominent supporter of homosexual issues. He is a patron of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] Youth Scotland. Do Christians want this?”.

Earlier this year, Hargreaves spectacularly crossed swords with the Green Party’s Patrick Harvie, the MSP for Glasgow.

In a report in The Times (April 13, 2007) Lucy Bannerman revealed:

“There is a curious battle being fought in the wings of the Scottish Parliament.

“In one corner stands the Rev George Hargreaves, leader of the SCP, whose belief that homosexuality is a sin underpins his election campaign. In the other is Patrick Harvie, the openly gay Green MSP for Glasgow and a prominent gay rights campaigner.

“However, only one of the contestants for the Glasgow vote is also the songwriter behind the 1980s Sinitta hit, So Macho, and its double A-side, Cruising, which were gay anthems for the disco generation. And it isn’t Mr Harvie.

“The challenge by the pop-producer-turned-evangelist to unseat Mr Harvie in the forthcoming Scottish elections has become fraught with allegations of homophobia and hypocrisy, as Mr Hargreaves stands accused of waging a prejudiced, personal attack against his political rival.

“Having made millions from his success on the gay club scene, the Pentecostal minister is having to deny accusations of double standards as he uses his fortune to fund a campaign berating homosexuals.”

“So Macho,” said Bannerman “reached No 2 in the charts and became one of the bestselling singles of 1986. Mr Hargreaves’s spiritual conversion came several years later, while he was living as a tax exile in the Isle of Man.”

In a letter to the Manx press, as well as other publications, Stuart Harthill of the Isle of Man Freethinkers group, wrote: “Readers old enough to remember naff 1980’s music may recall a song called So Macho … Embarrassed by the popularity of the song as a gay anthem, Mr Hargreaves admits he felt it necessary to move to the Isle of Man to avoid tax on the proceeds. Distressingly, he goes on to say that he also took solace in religion while over here after an ill-advised liaison with members of a local evangelical sect.

“His life has now reached such depths of depravity that he is using the royalties of the song to underwrite attacks on his original patrons.

“Certainly George Hargreaves is old enough to know better, but the island’s role in this terrible state of affairs cannot be ignored. In my humble opinion, the Speaker of the House of Keys, as a former DJ himself, would be the perfect person to offer a public apology on behalf of all Manx people.

“Mr Brown, please tell the world just how sad and sorry we really are.”

Bannerman, in her Times article, observes that “though he once wrote lyrics such as ‘he’s got to be big and strong, enough to turn me on’, the born-again evangelist and theology scholar now prefers to quote scriptures on his party banners. He offers a surprisingly revisionist view of his famous song’s success. According to Mr Hargreaves, it was not the gay fans who made So Macho a chart-topper; it was all the straight Sinitta fans north of the Border.

“Without the Scots, it would not have been a big hit. It was because of all the Karens and Kevins” – he pauses to correct himself, mindful of the constituents in his sight – “and Calums and Morags, who went out and made the record a Top 40 hit. The gay support is a myth.”

Harvie said he was not expecting a surge of support for Christian fundamentalism in Glasgow, where he has served as the city’s first Green MSP for the past four years. And the Scottish elections proved him right. “We threw religious fundamentalism out with John Knox 300 years ago, and we’re not about to go back to it now,” he said.

Harvie sympathised, nevertheless, with his rival’s attempts to distance himself from the gay anthem. “There’s no accounting for taste,” he smiled. “I’d be racked with guilt if I wrote that song too.”

Hargreaves, who says he turned to God after realising that he was a “hedonistic sinner”, declares on his website that the SCP “will work with Christians in other Parties. We will talk with other Parties, but we will oppose them when they oppose Christian values. Thus we do not attack the Green agenda, but we attack the Party for supporting homosexual practices. At the same time, the Scottish Christian Party will oppose discrimination against homosexuals as we are to love our neighbour as ourselves.”

Despite this, the SCP wants “the reinstatement of Section 2A (also known as Section 28), to halt the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.

Other SCP policies include:

• The reinstatement of the death penalty for severe crimes;
• Legislation to ban abortion;
• Greater observance of a weekly day of rest (Sunday)’
• The promotion in school of chastity before marriage;
• The reintroduction of corporate readings from the Bible in all Scottish state schools;
• A science curriculum which reflects evidence of creation/design in the universe;
• Publicising “the catastrophic effect of ungodly behaviour on the life expectancy and health of people, whom God loves and we should love; particularly homosexuality, excessive drinking and the use of addictive substances”;
• The restoration of the right for parents to smack their children, and teachers to impose corporal punishment;
• Opposition to the practice of altering birth certificates to reflect gender re-orientation surgery;
• Mandatory Christian religious education.

The Wikipedia entry for the SCP points out the following inconsistencies in the party’s policies.

• The Party claims that it wants parents to have more choice in their religious education. In the Party manifesto, it is claimed that “The rising tide of humanist secular fundamentalism in schools in Scotland has meant that the choice of education in line with parental beliefs and wishes is increasingly difficult to come by”.

However their policy of mandatory provision of Christian religious education is difficult to reconcile with their pro-choice claims. Combined with their policy to “re-introduce corporate readings from the Bible in all Scottish state schools” it is difficult to assess how “choice” for those who do not want religious education for their children can be facilitated.

• Despite claiming to be pro-life, a return of the death penalty for murder is supported.

• It is claimed that “Diversity training ought to be about learning to live peaceably and tolerantly with people with diverse lifestyles and world views”, and yet in their education policy on mandatory provision of Christian education they add, in parenthesis, “with no obligation to promote other faiths”.

• Despite the fact that learning about “lifestyles” is mentioned in their view of diversity training, the Party calls for a return of Section 2A (Section 28).

• It is claimed that they will promote “faithfulness in marriage, as the safest sexual practice” in sex education classes and yet in the same paragraph say that the party calls for “sex education classes to be given only to children on a parental opt-in basis”.

The Party Manifesto also promotes the idea that “extra prison capacity should be purchased from developing countries for the purpose of catering for Scotland’s medium security prisons. This should take the form of building state-of-the-art prison facilities in developing countries that wish to host Scottish prisons”.

The consequences of reinstating the deportation of prisoners (in the sense of penal transportation) to a foreign country and the resulting virtual suspension of their visitation rights (and therefore human rights) are not mentioned.