Sandie Peggie has been badly let down by a legal system hamstrung by class and sexism. The employment tribunal simply couldn’t accept that a working class woman might be entitled to stand up for her rights. So it rejected her evidence and tried to rewrite the law.
Her win was a technical one; a grudging admission by the tribunal that NHS Fife made mistakes in handling her case. But the tribunal made it clear that it did not believe that female staff had any right to single sex spaces.
The Supreme Court judgement that the definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010 should be interpreted as ‘biological’ sex was succinct and crystal clear. But the tribunal thought it knew better.
The result is a rambling, bloated and incoherent 312 page judgment riddled with grounds for appeal. (The Supreme Court took just 87 pages to resolve For Women Scotland).
The judgment made it abundantly clear that the tribunal much preferred the evidence of middle class doctor ‘Beth’ Upton over working class senior nurse Sandie Peggie. But why?
Anyone old enough to remember the 1987 Archer libel case will remember the judge’s summing up in which he praised Lady Mary Archer’s fragrance and elegance. How could anyone doubt such an exquisite creature?
And so it was too with Dr Upton, a middle-class man with middle class luxury beliefs who thinks he’s a woman.
He used female pronouns and a female name, wore female clothing and makeup. He even had a voice female in tone and pitch. Why be mean to him? The tribunal thought him rather brave.
Sandie Peggie though is a working class woman. She has opinions that wouldn’t play well at a middle class dinner party. She doesn’t believe that men can become women. The tribunal didn’t take to her at all.
So who to believe? The tribunal instinctively knew who, and it wasn’t the woman who thought she had a legal right to get changed away from a male gaze….
Mick Hartley 
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