Mick Hartley

Gillian Bowditch, in today's Sunday Times, makes the comparison between the Sandie Peggie case and the Dreyfus affair that tore France apart at the end of the nineteenth century – with JK Rowling as Zola.

Alfred Dreyfus’s wrongful conviction for treason in 1894 demonstrated how far senior military and government officials were prepared to cover up the truth and trample on the rule of law for a warped antisemitic ideology.

Émile Zola’s excoriating open letter, J’Accuse, on the front page of L’Aurore on January 13, 1898, highlighted the extent of the institutional corruption. The case was to divide France for three generations.

President Chirac said it tore French society apart, divided families and split the country into two enemy camps. According to Nelly Wilson, a Zola expert and Holocaust survivor, on one side was a fierce nationalism and a temptation to justify almost anything for raisons d’état. On the other was a strong attachment to justice for the individual. Remind you of anything?

It's an interesting comparison. This case does resonate on so many levels – though only time and the eventual tribunal outcome will tell if it comes to occupy a prominent position in the war against gender ideology for future generations to study and ponder.

The Dreyfus case was, fundamentally, a lesson in how injustice can penetrate the highest levels of the state. The Peggie case exposes how little has changed.

When the tribunal ends next week, the focus should be on NHS Fife and those who conducted this witch-hunt, a medical organisation where basic biology is deliberately misunderstood and the only things being doctored are the evidence and the truth.