A number of constituents have raised with me their concerns about the recent statement made by the Leader of Warwickshire County Council on what he describes as the promotion of contested gender ideology by Warwickshire libraries. In it, Cllr Finch says that County Council libraries should be politically neutral and family-friendly. That is hard to disagree with, though it is worth remembering that families come in all shapes and sizes. He also says that libraries should not seek to ‘embolden political ideologies’, though he does not explain how a library might do that, nor indeed does he provide any evidence of the problem he claims to be addressing.
Understanding the real nature and scale of a problem is important in assessing the proportionality of a response to it, especially a ‘comprehensive policy to strengthen neutrality, increase safeguarding and provide parents with peace of mind that their children are not to be told to believe one set of political ideas over any other’ of the sort Cllr Finch has in mind. The last part of that is particularly intriguing. How do we stop our children being told to believe one set of political ideas over any other in a library? Do we have to hide from them the books which make political arguments in order to promote political ideas? Whose beliefs should we avoid promoting, presumably by preventing the display of books which contain them? Karl Marx? Tony Blair? Nigel Farage perhaps?
This is at best a foolish road to start down and at worst a dangerous one. It is also a distraction from what the County Council should really be doing to benefit our children. If there is scope for work on more policies, they should be on special needs provision, or school transport, or road safety. If there is money available to keep our children safe from contested gender ideology, I think most of my constituents would prefer it be spent on keeping our children safe from speeding traffic. There is a much-needed new crossing outside a Cubbington primary school they could fund for a start. As I say, this statement is a distraction from other priorities, but perhaps that is the point. Reform have been running Warwickshire County Council for a while now, and we haven’t seen much of substance done. Reform politicians know this and would rather we engaged with them in rows about flags or books than hold them to account for failing to provide meaningful answers to Warwickshire’s real challenges. We shouldn’t indulge them in that game.
