This is What Feminism Looks Like: Glasgow Southside

It is getting on for 9pm on Friday night, and we are struggling in from the count at the Emirates to the Scottish Greens' victory party in the Corona pub in Shawlands. Two young women stop us and say, ‘Congratulations!’ I'm slightly startled, I'm knackered and I don't quite know what to say. I don't know them, I think. Did I canvass them? Then I realise I'm still wearing the Green rosette. Ţhank you,’ is about all I can manage. But the South Side knows that it finally has a Green constituency MSP, the amazing Holly Bruce, someone who reflects the area and its values.

The party's been going on for a couple of hours already. We've known for hours that we are guaranteed two list MSPs to join Holly, but the South Lanarkshire count that has the final constituency, Rutherglen, stubbornly refuses to declare. We're determined to be there for Patrick and Iris, our long-standing talisman and our new standard-bearer. The Emirates has collapsed into scattered encampments: the Greens waiting expectantly to cheer our second and third MSPs to the rafters, Labour grimly hanging on to witness the close of Anas Sarwar's disastrous campaign and, probably, leadership. There are a couple of Reform folk hanging about. The SNP have no more at stake, and have gone home. The Greens are down to their last packed snacks. We've come prepared for the long haul, but even so we are running out. It's reminding me of waiting for Patrick's first win in 2003. There are differences: that was an overnight count and there were only half a dozen of us. This time we are outnumbering and outperforming Labour. We are equally tired.

The place is looking like a tip. One of the media photographers encourages us back up to the bleachers for a group shot. We progress through a mess of abandoned packages to get back to our previous position. Reader, I have to tell you that it was the SNP's area that was doing them no credit whatsoever. One of our crew suggests doing a community clean-up to pass the time while we are waiting for South Lanarkshire to declare.

We wander out in search of caffeine. The cafe has stoppped serving and the women's toilets are out of loo paper. We spot (or, rather, my wife spots) Iris outside the venue and there appears to be a tense exchange with some of the Reform boys. We check to see that she is OK and that she has Greens with her. The overwhelming thing about this whole day has been the extent of care being shown: everyone is looking after each other. We give up on caffeine, or at least I resign myself to the cherry cola that Chloe filched from the offspring before we left.

Later I talk to Iris. It's been a long day for her in particular. Earlier, well before the Southside declaration, it had become clear that we weren't going to make it over the line in Kelvin/Maryhill. It wasn't the primary target, but Iris and her team had been putting in a ton of work and we had been hopeful: they have come agonisingly close. There is an emergency huddle. One of our members who's had experience of being in this position gives an urgent explanation of how we should take care of her in this situation. We're tense but determined. By 7pm things have become much clearer, and now Iris is contemplating life as an MSP. ‘The TERFs are going to be brutal,’ she reflects. I share my experience of being monstered, many moons ago when I was naive and fragile (probably for the umpteenth time; she is very patient), ‘But you have a support network. You know who you are.’ Others talk of social media precautions and decisions. We're all good. When we finally make it to the declaration, we are going bananas. We've already cheered Iris to the rafters in solidarity at the Kelvin/Maryhill declaration. At the regional declaration, we are going to do it properly; the Returning Officer clearly is as desperate as the rest of us to go home and urges us to let her finish the list. We joke that there is a gin and tonic with her name on it.

I am crying again. I have been crying a lot today, but in a good way. I lose it for the first time when we hear that Lorna Slater has won Edinburgh Central, the first ever Green constituency MSP. She's had a tough time, with the collapse of the Bute House Agreement, and then narrowly losing the co-leadership. That is a huge result and a massive personal achievement and we are all thrilled. OK, there is a wry regret that Edinburgh beat us too it, just as later when we hear they have managed four MSPs in total, with three on the list. We hear the declaration and cheer every one of them. ‘They're going to have bragging rights now,’ someone observes. ‘That's the sort of problem I can live with,’ I reply. I'm crying again.

More happiness ensues when the live BBC feed returns and it's Joanna Cherry being questioned about what is going on. She's not looking happy, by all accounts. Clearly the wrong kind of women, the wrong kind of feminists are winning. (That's to say, mainstream feminists.)

This news of the Edinburgh list results comes after the Southside declaration. We know we're close. We know we've left nothing out there. The South Side has been humming along for months. The ward organisers are totally focused. We have the support from the central party as a national target. The canvassing has been relentless. The South Side is awash in Green window posters and there is very little else to be seen other than a mere handful of SNP ones. The canvassing returns are looking good. OK, the having-better-things-to-do-of-an-evening party is winning, but when we find folk at home, as often as not it's a G1 voter. We've covered the majority of polling stations and all the key ones; the get-out-the-vote teams are working. Still we can't be certain.

Here, I have to explain how I came to be involved. As a down-list candidate, my job isto answer any campaigning emails sent to me as a list candidate (which are many) and to knock doors. Now, I am a reluctant canvasser. When I last stood as a local candidate for Pollokshields ward in 2007, our first attempt to target in the South Side, we did not have the numbers or the organisation to do it properly; we delivered ward leaflets instead. I've also been reluctant because I was convinced I was rubbish at it, and I used my failing eyesight as a bit of an excuse; also I was also anxious about doing it as a trans woman. The brilliant Access to Elected Office scheme allowed me to work with my support worker to contribute effectively; and by now I'm mostly over the social anxiety. So I was canvassing in the short campaign, and out four or five times a week, but I was doing it as, in many ways, a newbie, and I experienced the brilliant way this campaign brought people in, welcomed us, engaged us and trained us. Everyone shadowed an experienced canvasser until we felt able to knock doors for ourselves. I had the privilege of shadowing an awesome canvasser, who inducted a series of new people across the campaign. With some embarrassment, she told us of her involvement with Girl Guides: it is a tragedy that such powerful role models (as our daughter finds her own Guiders too) are so now out of step with the organisation's leadership.

Over the course of the campaign, the numbers of members involved just kept on growing. Every evening and every weekend session there were new people turning up, including those who had literally signed up that week. They were all cared for in the same way. More often than not, Holly herself was there leading from the front, and I was overwhelmed by her leadership, enthusiasm and the way she brought everyone together. I also went on one round with her and saw her interaction with voters at first hand, which was a jaw-dropping display of retail politics. In my own door-knocking, the number of people who said, ‘Oh yes, I know Holly,’ had by the end of the campaign ceased to be a surprise.

And so, at the count, we started sampling the ballot papers as they were opened. Our box-count operation had a few teething issues, and we were missing a certain number of polling stations that we wanted to sample, but the spreadsheet finally came together. I was sitting with the data folk, and there was a reluctance to predict anything, given the flaws in the data. The percentages for individual boxes looked great, compared to our reference data; the overall percentages gave us a surprisingly clear win. We were reluctant to call it. Frankly, we were expecting a recount. The branch co-convener leaned over as we discussed my local polling station, the one I had been covering with Chloe for most of the day, often accompanied by the offspring, who volunteered to come along. Our numbers were almost at 50%. ‘Can that be right?’ asked the co-convener. We havered. Historically, Pollokshields East was Mohammed Sarwar's ward, and Labour held it until the SNP took it off them just before the 2003 Holyrood election, and Labour-SNP confrontations have been part of the, er, fun at the polling station for decades. But we have always had good results here,. The rest of the family reported a steady stream of nods, winks and elbow bumps, along with the verbal thanks which was all I could go on myself. But was that 50%? It wasn't totally implausible.

The whisper in the hall was that Labour had us winning. The SNP were variously quoted by the media as saying it was too close to call, or that they were quietly confident. I was falling into my default pessimism. Word reached us that Edinburgh thought they had Central. Holly, Patrick and Iris turn up to a choreographed reception, and I am thinking of hubris. The tension is unbearable and we are simply not believing our own data.

So it comes to the declaration. Alison Thewlis (a good thing) has just won Glasgow Central for the SNP, and the first woman to win a seat in Glasgow so far, after a series of men. We're waiting. There are cheers from the SNP crowd. Is it Alison rejoining them from the stage? Reports of other declarations? We become convinced they've heard something about the imminent Southside result. Gloom descends. The stalwart Cllr Martha Wardrop is offering wise reassurance that whatever happens this will be our best ever result in Glasgow. But it is no comfort. There's not even been a recount. We thought we'd be close enough for that, at least.

John, the Pollokshields ward organiser appears. I don't know John very well: we've done a round or two together, but mostly our interactions are him assigning canvassing sheets, or me seizing the completed returns off him for Chloe to do data entry. ‘It's a 4000 majority,’ he hisses sotto voce. I'm hugging him, I'm hugging Chloe, the news is spreading. Somehow our data was almost spot on. That's why we didn't need a recount. And the candidates file out onto the stage. And we go bananas. I am crying again.

And this is, where I wanted to end up. Holly's speech covered a number of things, personal and organisational. But one thing stood out: she was up there as our first constituency MSP in Glasgow, but it was built, she said, on the shoulders of many Green women, who should have been there before her, and she made point of naming some of them, such as Martha. Holly has built her political profile as a proud feminist, and her signature achievement as a councillor has been in feminist town planning. She is an out queer woman in a city whose political environment has not always reflected the vibrant diversity of the place, not least on the South Side. She is not kicking away the ladder or throwing other minorities under the bus. She did not falter, the party has not faltered, when Labour and Reform resorted to blatant transphobia in their campaign materials (‘a largely positive campaign,’ as she wryly noted). She has run the campaign, and led the campaign, on a genuinely inclusive, genuinely caring, genuinely feminist basis. This is what feminism looks like.

Chloe gets a text. It's our eldest. ‘We're having a watch party after school. We won Southside! Greens, let's go!’

Coda.

Because of anxieties over legal threats in the wake of the transphobic Supreme Court ruling that rewrote the Equality Act, the party took the decision to abandon its formal gender balancing mechanism for the Holyrood candidate selection, in order not to go along with a sex-based interpretation. The alternative, and the resolution of the party not to comply, produced the strongest cohort of women in any political party at Holyrood ever: out of fifteen MSPs, ten are women (2/3), including one trans woman. There is, in addition, one non-binary MSP, and four are men (< 1/3). All are, undoubtedly, the wrong kind of women.

We finally made it home. In the small hours of Saturday, our daughter observed, ‘Your eye-liner has disappeared.’