A matter of class
Something very odd happened when the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal delivered its judgment – and it wasn’t just the made-up quotes and mangled law.
Call it institutional bias, ideological capture, or just the law doing its job, but what Employment Judge Sandy Kemp’s tribunal delivered was the most one-sided outcome since Butch and Sundance decided to come out shooting.
Every single member of the NHS Fife side was accepted as a credible witness. But Peggie and her team were cut down in a hail of negative conclusions. It seems worth spending a little time with the judgment to understand how this happened.
Peggie, a senior nurse, had been suspended for objecting to what the tribunal ruled was a male doctor, “Beth” Upton (who identifies as a woman) being in a changing room reserved for female staff.
Peggie won her claim of harassment against NHS Fife because, among other failings, they didn’t provide her with a single-sex changing room and because they made such a mess of trying to hang her out to dry for standing up for her rights.
On pretty much every other point the tribunal found against her. At the heart of it all was a simple question: who, out of a middle-class doctor and a working-class nurse, was most credible? It was definitely the doctor, the thoroughly middle-class tribunal decided.
Peggie had tried complaining to managers about Upton’s use of the women’s changing rooms at the Victoria Hospital in Fife but they just fobbed her off and told her to change in the toilets if she didn’t like it.
Matters came to a head on Christmas Eve 2023 when Peggie found Upton once again in the female changing rooms. She told him it was inappropriate. He stood his ground.
At this point, recollections vary. Peggie says she made her point in an encounter that lasted a couple of minutes. Upton says it was more like five or 10 minutes and she was very rude to him. The tribunal heard she reduced him to tears.
Many people would understand that Peggie was livid. She’d experienced heavy menstrual bleeding and gone to change only to find the man she’d complained about once again in the changing rooms.
The tribunal saw it differently. They thought she wanted a confrontation, a showdown. His evidence was so much better presented than hers. Upton was one of their own. Sure, he’d said some things that weren’t exactly true, but he was upset and it was ages ago.
He’d been terribly upset by the chippy little nurse. But he’d bravely managed to write everything down – which they liked – and when he talked to them, he did so in a way they approved of. They preferred his “demeanour”. So they believed what he said.
Peggie hadn’t made notes. Why would she? It was months before she got to present her version of events. Naturally there were inconsistencies. She missed some things out. The panel seized on this as a sign she was wrong.
Rarely in the judgment does she get the benefit of the doubt – though they do eventually acknowledge that she’d managed 30 years service without a sniff of trouble.
To understand the mountain they built for Peggie to climb the panel even criticised her barrister, Naomi Cunningham, for misgendering Upton so often that elsewhere it would have amounted to harassment.
And as for Maya Forstater – whose tribunal judgment they misquoted and whose victory ensured gender critical laws enshrined gender critical beliefs are now protected under the Equality Act 2010 – they dismissed her evidence as unreliable.
But what of the saintly NHS Fife staff? It should be enough to know that they considered the bumbling Isla Bumba a credible witness despite her telling them she didn’t know if she was a woman.
But of course there was much worse. Part of Upton’s account relied on “contemporaneous” notes he’d taken. Except, as en expert witness called by Peggie’s team demonstrated, he’d not written them when he said he did. They were altered.
This, the tribunal had to concede, was awkward. It raised questions. But the solution was simple. Brand the expert unreliable. He’d told them Upton was trying to mislead the tribunal so he was obviously not impartial.
As for Upton, he hadn’t perjured himself. He wasn’t lying. Yes, he’d not been accurate. But he’d been inaccurate honestly. He’d probably just forgotten. It was ages ago. This sort of forgetfulness was obviously different to Peggie’s. For some reason or other.
And then there was Upton’s friend Dr Kate Searle. She’d failed to maintain the confidentiality of the investigation, not least by emailing colleagues describing what happened as a hate incident. She’d called Peggie’s actions “completely unacceptable”.
The tribunal had to admit she probably wasn’t impartial, what with supporting him and representing him. But never mind. Unlike the expert witness, hers was the good sort of not impartial. They believed her.
And on and on it went. A doctor in a secretive “need to know” group told colleagues Peggie had been reported to the Nursing & Midwifery Council and admitted knowing that was untrue. She couldn’t explain why she’d said it. Yet the tribunal still considered her credible.
The tribunal doubtless believes that it acted fairly and was correct in its findings of fact, just as it doubtless believes it was right in law, despite the criticism it has faced from legal experts and those who question the accuracy of the quotations it cites.
And of course it is entirely possible that the panel weighed up every single bit of evidence and decided that the NHS Fife side were simply good and decent people who could not tell a lie and that Peggie was a wrong‘un. Only they know.
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Gethin Chamberlain is a photographer and journalist specialising in human rights and labour rights, published in The Observer, Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, Scotsman and more. You can follow him on Twitter or on his website and Substack, where the original longer version of this piece can be found.
“The tribunal heard she reduced him to tears”
Good.
It’s bloody obvious there’s a whole raft of others (not trans) who need to be reduced to tears too.
High time we rolled our sleeves up and made a start.
May 2026 seems like an opportune date.
DEI. We need to weed the garden. After all weeds are just flowers in the wrong place.
Great article Gethin. Without doubt one of the biggest stitch ups, smudging and smearing of facts I’ve witnessed in many a year.
“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”
I was thinking more Thelma and Louise.
Pervy men and their collaborators. Totally bemusing to normal men and women everywhere….
But despite everything, Judge Kemp is an honourable man;
So are they all, those witnesses for NHS Fife, all honourable men, and women–
We all heard how the Second Respondent was confused as to detail with regard to note taking and that such notes had been changed on a number of occasions:
But Judge Kemp said the Second Respondent was a credible and broadly reliable witness;
And Judge Kemp is an honourable man.
We all heard how Dr Currer had admitted to circulating false information to a WhatsApp group with regard to reporting action allegedly taken against the claimant:
But Judge Kemp said that, except for that one instance, Dr Currer was considered to be a credible and generally reliable witness;
And Judge Kemp is an honourable man.
I could go on…
(Apologies to WS)
Thank you for this post Gethin , And YET all this evidence about their conjecture allied with the obvious myriad of legal criticisms from fellow legal professionals Kemp has not budged or responded
If the judiciary of the SC believes that they and the LAW have ANY credibility they MUST investigate what has taken place to reach this IMO unbelievably flawed judgement riddled with inaccuracies and BIAS
They MUST insist that their judgement is acted upon by the relevant parties with any attempt at obfuscation or misinterpretation treated as contempt of court
The only folk surprised by all this ‘stuff’; this “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” stuff; this “Independence Day” stuff; this “Falling Skies” stuff; this “War of the Worlds” stuff; this “District 9” and “Defiance” stuff are those folk who haven’t yet clicked that the Scots have been ‘invaded’ by a foreign power.
A power whose representatives on Earth – those ‘friends of the power’ native to Scotland and those ‘aliens’ native to the power – ‘manage’ Scotland’s NHS, civil service, police force, Judiciary, local councils, education authorities, transport and shipping, financial institutions; arts and culture, the Scottish Government and Parliament and… whatever else is left over.
There’s a word for this style of foreign ‘investment’ in a nation… can anyone guess what that word is?
There’s a science fiction TV series called “Colony”… it’s more or less a series of educational videos explaining Scotland’s situation and the true nature of her people’s’ predicament, except the aliens in the videos are much nicer than the ones controlling Scotland.
“NHS, civil service, police force, Judiciary, local councils, education authorities, transport and shipping, financial institutions; arts and culture, the Scottish Government and Parliament and… whatever else is left over”
You missed ane, Northy, Scottish Water.
They’ve been adding something. It causes all sorts of madness. Haverin in a made-up language of badly-spelled English words.
Slaverin too.
Drink your own piss only, Northy. Don’t let them win!
The Red menace contaminated the water long before that. Or was it the will of God. No. Alas it’s University training.
“Education Education Education”
University land where the likes of the whole NOT the Scottish government where spawned.
You’re on those magic mushrooms again.
“You missed ane, Northy, Scottish Water.”
Nope… it’s right there in the “whatever else is left over” class of things not specifically mentioned.
It’s naw, though. I’ve checked.
Your vision’s getting blurry, Northy.
What have you been up to?
Socialism is a parasite that feeds on the host nation (fanny).
You hit the nail plum on the head, Rev. It was a travesty. Legally, contemporaneous notes can be strongly evidential – but only if they are accurate and actually contemporaneous, and not amended at a later date, and actually written by the person offering them as evidence.
I believe that Upton took notes because he was well aware, in my opinion, that he was in the wrong legally and morally when he opened the door to the nurses’ changing room and stepped inside it. He knew he would be challenged at some point and he was willing to have a nurse lose her job in order to facilitate his delusion (delusion may be the wrong word because these men know exactly what they are doing). Even before that, when he asked for permission to enter the female nurses’ changing room, it showed at least some knowledge that he might be refused, so knew that he was probably in the wrong. That he might well have altered the notes makes him unreliable. Police who do that are disgraced in court and their case often is not upheld.
Judge Kemp was far too senior an employment arbiter and far too experienced to have made that judgement the way he did without some intervention. Perhaps the lay persons with him put in their two pennies worth? Ultimately, though, the buck stopped with him. I can see no other explanation except that this was ‘trans’ activism, raw ‘trans’ activism so arrogant as to believe that no one would question the judgement.
Upton is middle-class. Upton can speak well because he is well-educated. Upton does ‘posh’. Like all these men, he can charm the birds out of the trees when he has to do so and can count on any number of stupid, craven women to support his delusion. Nurse Peggie is working-class, a wee wifie who was not about to stand down and take this s**t. Nurse Peggie speaks with a working-class Scots accent. Oh, yes, there was class bias, and more.
Why did the tribunal never ask why Upton used the female nurses’ changing room instead of the female doctors’ one? Why was he so sure that he would be granted permission to use it? The nurses will be almost entirely working-class and are at the bottom of the hierarchy and much easier to bully into compliance. That her union – not his, so no conflict of interest – was unwilling to stand up for a working-class nurse in favour of a doctor who claimed to be a woman says it all about the ways in which the Left has abandoned the working-class and GC women in the UK.