This article originally appeared in T&S Issue 40, Winter 1999/2000.
Mary McPherson used to work as a housing support worker for Leeds Shaftesbury Project (now Community Links), a housing charity which provides housing for single homeless people. On the 1st December 1998, she removed pornography from a tenant’s new flat. Seven days later she was sacked. Her actions led to the formation of a new anti-pornography group — Leeds Campaign against Pornography. Here, two members of the group, Jude Boyles and Ruth Ingram, interview her about her experiences.
Jude: Mary tell us about your work at Leeds Shaftesbury Project (LSP), how long you worked there, and what job you did?
Mary: I had worked at LSP for 4 years. The job that I did involved preparation of properties for clients to move into. I’d go to properties, check them over for any repairs and decorations and order all the furniture and fittings for delivery and move the client in on the day.
Jude: So can you describe the process that led you to being sacked last year?
Mary: It was the morning of the first December and my colleague M had organised a move. He asked me if I would help him. As I wasn’t particularly busy, I said yes I would do. So off we went to this house and started checking it over, just to see what needed doing. M went into the bedroom, and then came out, looking a bit shocked, and said, ‘I’ve just seen the largest pile of pornography I have ever seen in my life’. I went in, wondering what on earth he was talking about, and I saw six piles of magazines on the floor. The front two piles had got football magazines on the top of them and the rest had pictures of naked/semi naked women on the covers. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was really shocked at what I saw and had this awful sinking feeling. I thought, ‘oh no, I bet this is all pornography’ and I thought, ‘I just can’t walk away from this. I know about the harm pornography does to women. I know how it contributes to men’s violence against women’. So I decided I was going to bag it up and chuck it.
M said it belonged to the client, and I said that I didn’t care. I said that ‘we (the organisation) have policies about sexual harassment, and we are working on a policy about male violence against women and this stuff is that, and I am just going to get rid of it’.
So I bagged it up. As I was doing that I saw more of the magazines, some of which had covers with women with their legs open showing their genitals.
When I’d bagged them up I rang the client’s housing support worker to tell him what I’d done, and why I was doing it. He was very angry when I told him I was going to dump this stuff. He said that it was the client’s possessions, that he was into this stuff, and that if I dumped it, it would damage his mental health, that I would jeopardise his move to independent living.
Whilst I was on the phone, M had put the bags of porn in the van. I drove off to our head office in town, looking for support from a woman colleague. I went to see R, who was leaving as she had another job so I thought I could talk to her, as she wouldn’t get into any trouble as she was leaving. I told her what I’d done, and said that I just had to get rid of the stuff. She suggested that I talk to one of the managers, and I said ‘no’ as he would only tell me not to do it and I have just got to do it. So she said she would come with me, so she came with me, and we drove to the tip and dumped the bags in the skip.
Jude: You say that you felt sexually harassed by the porn, which is a very powerful and totally accurate way of describing the effect porn has on us as women. How did you come to use that term?
Mary: It was the way I felt at the time, a gut feeling; it was offending and threatening me. It made me think, is this how this man views women, as sex objects? That’s how I have always felt whenever I have seen pornography. I had never met this client before, but I had met some of the other clients who were using porn before. It had made my stomach turn, to realise that is how they viewed women, and that is possibly how they might be viewing me. That to me is what it means.
No support from managers
Jude: So what was the response of your managers to what happened?
Mary: When I got back to the office I was interviewed by two separate managers. I told them how I’d felt and why I’d done what I did but their main concerns were what I’d done with the pornography and whether I would do a similar thing in the future.
My line manager informed me that I was going to be disciplined, and I got a letter to that effect. The letter said that although they acknowledged that the magazines contained pornography, to which I should not have been exposed, I should not have taken them and dumped them.
The next morning the director took me into his office and said that he had been thinking about it, and it was serious because it was theft and that one of the possible outcomes of the disciplinary was dismissal.
On the 8th December I had my disciplinary hearing and I was accompanied by a full time union official from Unison.
I explained that I was really appalled and upset by what I saw, and that I had felt sexually harassed and that I just lost control, seen red, and dumped the stuff. I explained that I realised after that I should have withdrawn from the situation and gone to a manager, but I just couldn’t do it.
They said that my actions were deliberate, that I knew all the procedures, but I had chosen to disobey advice of fellow colleagues. They said it was my political beliefs that had made me do it. And that I was likely to do it again.
The next day the director told me that they had decided to dismiss me. They gave me half an hour to clear my desk.
So I appealed to the Management Committee and the appeal was heard on the 21st December and they upheld the decision made by the disciplinary hearing committee.
Jude: The main point of their argument was that this was a deliberate political act, rather than that you were provoked because of how upset you were by what you saw?
Mary: Yes, that it was a political act, and that I showed no thought or feelings for the male client. They didn’t show any thought for my feelings.
Jude: One of their arguments was that you would do it again, because of your political views. You had come across pornography in the course of work before. What was different about this time that you made react so strongly?
Mary: Before it was only a small quantity, two or three magazines left by male clients when they moved out. What was different about this was the vast amount of it. I understand now that he had a collection of some 700 magazines. It was the vast quantity that shocked and upset me so much.
Porn as sexual harassment
Ruth: The other thing you mentioned before was the organisation’s policy’s on anti-sexism and sexual harassment, and that you were acting as if you were upholding those policies. Can you tell us about those policies and how they came about?
Mary: They had a general Equal Opportunities Policy, an anti-racist policy, an anti-sexism policy, and a policy against sexual harassment.
The policy against sexual harassment was one that I had helped draw up through the women’s group. So I was quite well versed in what it said. One of the things was that you did have the right as a worker to withdraw from a situation. It wasn’t specifically about pornography, but any situation where you felt uncomfortable, or where you were being sexually harassed, or racially threatened. I was very much involved with working on a draft policy about violence against women by known men. Part of that policy was going to address issues about pornography.
Jude: So, there was nothing actually in a policy around women workers being exposed to pornography?
Mary: No, but we’d talked about porn in team meetings. My understanding was that LSP did not condone pornography, and that if a worker went into a client’s house and saw pornography, they would challenge it and ask them to remove it, but what a client has in the privacy of their own bedroom and kept out of sight of people who might be offended is their own business as long as it is legal.
Ruth: In the light of this did you expect the organisation to support you?
Mary: I thought I would get into trouble for what I did; it was someone’s property, and legally I should not have taken it and dumped it. But because of what it was, and because of the policies, I thought I would just get a telling off. I did expect to be supported in principle.
Ruth: You mentioned that you were quite active in making the policies. Do you think that any part of you getting sacked was about your role as a powerful woman in the organisation?
Mary: It is difficult to tell. I always stood up for my rights at work, and I was seen as just being awkward. I always had a lot of knowledge and awareness around male violence against women. I took that knowledge to LSP, and raised those issues a lot in the team. So I think that they thought I was an outspoken woman and maybe a bit of an awkward customer.
Ruth: Why do you think they were so keen to protect his right to own pornography?
Mary: They said it was legal. But just because something is legal, it doesn’t make it right. It used to be legal to beat your wife, until women fought against it and got the law changed. Who knows how many of the men in the organisation use porn, and how it touches nerves for them.
Jude: How did you feel when you were sacked?
Mary: Disbelief. I couldn’t believe it. Incredulous. Devastated. Those were the immediate feelings. Later on I got so angry at the injustice of it all. It was so unfair. What I had done just did not warrant what they had done to me. It is so unjust. It’s been horrible.
Challenging dismissal
Jude: So you decided to fight their decision?
Mary: Yes. Going to industrial tribunal was something that I felt I just had to do. I felt it was so wrong; if I hadn’t gone, I would never have known if I could have won.
Jude: What did you argue at the Tribunal?
Mary: There were two parts to the case. Firstly, I claimed unfair dismissal and secondly, I claimed sex discrimination. Now you can’t take an action out for sexual harassment under the Sex Discrimination Act because sexual harassment isn’t a separate section under the act. It comes under detriment, so I had to have suffered a detriment that a man in a similar position wouldn’t have suffered. My argument was that exposure to the pornography was that detriment, and that, as they knew it was there, they should have taken steps to protect me, which they didn’t do. We thought there was a good chance of winning this part because of the Bernard Manning/DeVere Hotels landmark case. In that case Black waitresses employed by the hotel successfully argued that they should have been protected from being racially harassed by the predictable content of Bernard Manning’s act.
Jude: What happened at your tribunal?
Mary: It was over two days, the 27th and 28th May. The whole thing was done under oath and it was like a court of law. Luckily I’ve done jury service, so I’ve been in courts before. Most of Thursday afternoon was taken up by me giving my evidence and being cross-questioned. Their barrister was trying to trip me up and put words into my mouth and, like at the disciplinary hearing, imply that it was a cold deliberate act, that it was a political act. It was a pretty horrendous two to three hours.
The personal is political
Ruth: One thing I heard about the tribunal when I got back was about how clear you had been about the connection between personal feelings and political beliefs.
Mary: What they were trying to say was that I had done it in a cold calculating manner because it was my political beliefs that had led me to do it. What I was saying was what I know about porn and violence against women is part of me. Yes, I have a political belief that violence against women is wrong, I have knowledge that pornography contributes to that violence and I’d recently been on the volunteer training with Leeds Rape Crisis, so all the issues around the abuse of women were fresh in my mind. Seeing all that stuff made me as a woman feel sexually harassed, upset and shocked, and in addition to that, I had my knowledge and awareness around the issues. It just all merged in together and that led me to do what I did.
Jude: It was interesting that they tried to portray you, both at the original sacking and at the industrial tribunal, as a calculating, political feminist who no regard for anyone’s feelings and just went ahead and dumped the porn. Nothing about how you felt and how it harmed you.
Mary: No, there was nothing about that, just about the client and how his feelings were hurt, and the stress that he was under. However, when they were asked, they had to admit that the client was fine and hadn’t suffered by me moving his porn.
Jude: Did they think about the women clients and how they might respond?
Mary: No. They were asked if they had taken into account what message this would send to women clients specifically, and they said, no, we took into account the impact it would have on all clients. No acknowledgement that the message they might well be sending to women clients was, ‘we’re not going to support you, we don’t care about you because we’re supporting men who keep pornography.’ And I know at least a couple of women clients who have been very upset by this.
They were also forced to admit that they had made mistakes that had exposed me to the pornography. They should have followed good practice and not moved anything belonging to him into the house until the tenancy agreement was signed. They had been told to leave the pornography boxed up, which they didn’t do, and they’d been told I shouldn’t be involved in the move. That message never got passed on.
They were as much to blame, in my opinion, as I was, for the actions of that day. However, in the tribunal decision, they said I’d caused my own detriment. It was my fault I’d seen the stuff because I didn’t have to go into the room; having been told by M that it was there, I didn’t have to touch the stuff; I should have walked away, so it was all my fault.
Even though they admitted I shouldn’t have been exposed to the pornography, LSP said they had decided that dismissal was the only option because they thought I would do it again.
And, lo and behold, the decision of the tribunal hearing was that they hadn’t dismissed me unfairly, because they had acted within the bounds of ‘what a reasonable employer might be expected to do’. There was no acknowledgement that it was pornography — it wasn’t common theft. I hadn’t stolen his bloody hi-fi or something, which would have been fair enough. It was pornography, and there were reasons why I did what I did. It was sexual harassment and they had a policy against it. The whole thing was so appalling.
Jude: What was the decision in relation to sex discrimination?
Mary: In relation to sex discrimination they decided that not only was any detriment I had suffered of my own making, because I had deliberately exposed myself to pornography because I knew it was there, but they also said it wasn’t sex discrimination at all. This was because the chairman didn’t agree that ‘exposure to female pornography was gender-specifically offensive’, in that a man would have been as upset as I was by the sight of the pornography.
Ruth: I just love the comment Media Watch wrote in their letter of support: ‘I can only think of a handful of men who would be upset by 700 pornographic magazines. Most would think it was Christmas come early!’
Mary: Which is very true, the number of men who haven’t looked at and used a pornographic magazine must be in the minority. Yes, M was upset when he saw it, but it didn’t threaten or hurt him or make him have to get rid of the stuff.
Ruth: On top of all of this you were also reported to the police. Could you tell us how they came to be involved?
Mary: The client reported the theft of his porn to the police. In the same week that I was sacked I had to go to the police station with a solicitor to make a statement. Ironically, the police were quite sympathetic. One of them said that in his job he met a lot of people whose morals took them the wrong side of the law, but the law was the law. I told them I got sacked, and he asked, ‘Couldn’t they have dealt with it in a different way?’ I was cautioned and that’s on my record now, although I don’t have to disclose that unless specifically asked.
Ruth: So was that the end of that, then?
Mary: The police involvement ended, but the client then took out a claim via the small claims court for the price of the porn, which he said amounted to £2,000.
I knew this was happening and had sent off my statement. Then I got a letter from the County Court saying that they had had the court case on Easter Tuesday, and because I wasn’t there, they found against me for £1,000, and demanded that I pay it by the end of April. I was so surprised, as I had had no notification whatsoever. I had to apply to the court to have that judgement set aside and the case reheard, which it was.
Thanks to various contacts in Leeds CAP and Leeds Justice for Women, a solicitor agreed to defend me for free. This woman judge decided that the client was 50% negligent because he had been told to cover the magazines up and he hadn’t done so, and I was 50% negligent because I shouldn’t have chucked them. But, as it came out that LSP had already compensated the client for £500.00, she made no further award. That meant I didn’t have to pay that slimy little toad anything!
The client was never in the courts. He was always represented by his housing support worker.
Ruth: It seems like he did an awful lot of proactive work to support his client.
Mary: Yes. He was only supposed to be an advocate, but he was the one that put in the claim to the small claims court. He got my address and phone number from LSP to do this. He was defending the client all the way down the line.
Ruth: Can I go back to the police? As far as you were concerned, it was over, but one of the things that happened was that your name was put on the Department of Health Consultancy Index. How did that come about, and where has that left you in terms of employment?
Mary: The first I knew of it was in March when I got a letter from the Department of Health outlining what they did, and how people got on the list. The list is set up to protect children. One of the ways a person’s name is added to the Index is when they have received a caution or a conviction about children or whilst working with children. The police will then forward their name to the Index. Prospective employers then check the list to see if job applicants have a record that might mean that they are dangerous to children. I was put on the list by mistake! LSP works with single homeless people, not children or families.
If it is wrong, you are allowed to challenge it, so a woman solicitor wrote them a letter in March explaining what had happened and asking for my name to be removed. We heard nothing, despite her sending a reminder. In June I went to my MP about it. He was appalled and has taken the case up. He wrote to the Department of Health and they assured him they would be writing to me to apologise and would take my name off the list. However, I’ve not heard from them. So I am stuck on this Index, and already it had prevented me from being able to get work with Reed Social Care, because they will not employ anyone whose name is on this list to work with children or vulnerable adults. They did not ask me my side of it.
Ruth: It is just so ironic that that index is set up to protect children, and to some extent women, and you have been put on it for taking action to protect women and children. It makes no sense at all.
Jude: So, it has just been a serious of injustices from the beginning.
Mary: It bloody has!
Jude: Moving on to the campaign formed to support you, Leeds CAP. A few of us feminist activists in Leeds have been trying to form a CAP for a while, with little success. But your campaign was an impetus to actually getting a group started, which is great. Can you describe how CAP came about?
Mary: It was a bit of an ongoing process, and just came about via discussions with various women activists who encouraged me to have a group behind me. In the beginning it was more of a group of women supporting me and [my partner] Lorrie. The group really formed properly when I decided that I was going to take legal action.
One of the first things they did was to leaflet the change of name event that LSP held. The aim was to publicly shame this organisation, with its ‘right on’ image. Activists went around passing information about CAP’s aims to everybody there. They made sure that the managers of the organisation got copies of our leaflet. CAP wanted them to know they were being watched by the women of Leeds, but obviously did not want to jeopardise the legal situation.
Jude: How did having a campaign help?
Mary: It has really helped. I didn’t feel as alone. I know that I was the main player, but I felt they could take a lot of the weight and take up a lot of the organisational tasks there were. The support I have had has been invaluable and it has felt so good, it really has.
Ruth: In the beginning, I remember it was hard for you not to blame yourself and not take on what LSP was saying about you. What I saw happening once you had a campaign around you, was your conviction and the sense of injustice you felt coming back. You weren’t on your own — others supported what you had done and understood why you had done it.
Jude: Yes, by the time it came to the industrial tribunal, you were so strong. I was so impressed at the clarity and conviction you showed throughout that process.
Mary: I needed women to remind me and to tell me I had done the right thing morally, and you did all tell me that. I needed to know there was support, and that I shouldn’t blame myself. I felt reassured when people said how wrong it was that I’d been sacked, and that LSP had been totally out of order. It does affect you, your self-esteem and your belief in yourself. I had never even been disciplined before, never mind a sacking. That reinforcement that I was OK, and that what I did was understandable in the circumstances was so important. During those meetings I did feel stronger, and began taking the lead in what was happening.
Ruth: What kind of responses have you had from other people? Your family, friends, partner?
Mary: My partner, Lorrie, has gone through hell with me. She’s been there for me, and has totally supported me. She has also been active in the campaign alongside me. But it has not been easy for us both. We’ve not always known where to direct the anger. There’s been so much daily stress, so many different things to juggle about — you’d worry about one thing and then another would pop up. And just dreading the post; that’s one thing, I still dread the post. When it comes through the door I’m thinking, ‘God, I wonder what’s in the post?’ because there’s been so many things — the disciplinary letter, horrible letters from LSP, the DOH Index letter, the small court letters coming, or not coming, and you where just wondering what the hell was coming through the door next.
It has been a testing time. LSP have a lot to answer for, as far as I am concerned. But Lorrie’s stuck by me through it all, and we are still together.
The rest has been a bit of a mixed bag. My family — my son and my daughter and my brother — have been extremely supportive and understanding.
I’ve had strength and support from a lot of women — women from the lesbian community and straight women — including ex-colleagues from LSP. I’ve reconnected with a couple of women I lost touch with years ago. But then there’s other people I thought I’d have support from, other lesbians who I thought were politically OK, who haven’t supported me. Lorrie has lost friends who were involved in the management of LSP.
It’s really sorted out who our friends are. We really know now who are friends and we really know who aren’t our friends, and that’s been really upsetting.
But it’s not only been local support. I’ve had support from women from across the world. Sheila Jeffreys, who was here visiting someone else, took part in and joined in our campaign. And some women who live in New Zealand have also been in regular email contact and have been very supportive. They have also sent cards and little presents — home-made chocolates — arriving from Christchurch New Zealand. So the post hasn’t all been bad!
Ruth: I think that’s the thing that’s astonished me, and which, I suppose, outlines how much pornography is a cutting edge issue. It’s the reactions of people, and, in particular, women who I’ve seen as feminists judging by their actions in the past that amaze me. You can’t rely on someone’s reactions.
\Mary: Yes. There are women who have told me about the impact pornography has had on their lives. But there also seem to be an awful lot of women around who don’t understand the impact of pornography, who seem to think that if you’re anti-porn you’re some old reactionary, that we’re all liberal now.
I think that everyone’s sensitivities have got numbed by more and more exposure to pornography and violence. There’s so much exploitation of women around now, and portrayals of women as sexual objects, that women themselves get immune to it.
Jude: I remember you saying that you had seen a difference in reaction between women who called themselves feminist and women who identify as radical feminist.
Mary: Yes, radical feminists seem a lot clearer about the relationship between pornography and violence towards women and the sexual objecti¬fication of women. They know that porn can lead men to want to act out pornography with their partners and can lead some men to actual acts of violence. They understand that there’s a continuum.
Jude: It’s interesting that this whole process has just illustrated how men defend porn all the way to the end and how, for some women, it’s a real sticking point in terms of how radical they are prepared to be.
Mary: Yes and it’s been a nightmare.In some ways the client’s won, because he got his move and I got a caution and lost my job; he got £500 compensation and I’ve got a solicitor’s bill for £2,300 and I’ve been in and out of work. It’s devastated my life, and my partner’s life, and it’s had a tremendous effect on everyone around us, and he’s had all this support from his support worker, and LSP.
Ruth: He’s got his lovely support worker and you’ve got us!
Mary: [Laughs] Oh, I’d have you lot any day, any day!!
Jude: The one thing I hold on to, and I know at the moment it feels like you’re the one who’s lost, but I bet they had no idea when they took you on that you’d fight back like this, and I bet they’re horrified that they had to get a barrister, that it’s been in the press, that a city councillor and an MP have supported you! I bet with taking you on they’ve taken on much more than they ever thought they would.
Mary: And all I wanted was my job back! It would have been nice for them to say sorry, but they will never do that.
Jude: But they might wish that they had. They are going to be the organisation that is remembered in Leeds for sacking a woman worker because she got rid of some porn, and I hope that they have that imprinted under their Community Links title for the rest of their lives.
Ruth: Unison declined to represent you at the industrial tribunal so you had a solicitor. You mentioned that this cost £2,300. How will you pay that?
Mary: CAP have been working hard on this one. We’ve had donations from individual women who support CAP — £5 here, £20 there and we’ve held a benefit.
We had five women entertainers who gave their services free, ranging from amateurs to the internationally-acclaimed singer, Julie Felix!
It was a magical evening. The compère explained a bit of the story and why we were holding the benefit and when my name was mentioned there was all this applause. That was very moving. It made me feel so good.
Several women said afterwards how great it was that women would still come together for a political event. At the end of the evening women were dancing together, holding hands in a spiral, wow! In spite of the fact we hammered them for money all evening!
Ruth: I know it’s been really hard but have there been any other positives?
Mary: Well, funnily enough, I’ve got a better job! The day I went to sign on there was this job with Leeds Housing Concern advertised for a relief project worker to work in the women’s sector. I went for the job and got it and they’ve been really supportive of my work and of me through the court actions.
It also gave me six months’ solid work, and enabled me to apply for other jobs with a reference. Now I’ve got a full-time permanent job as a refuge worker at a Women’s Aid. But I must say I would not recommend that way of improving your job prospects to anybody!
Ruth: You’ve told us what happened at the industrial tribunal. Have you got any plans about challenging that decision?
Mary: Well, I’ve put in an appeal to the Employment Appeals tribunal, and my solicitor wrote to the Equal Opportunities Commission asking them if they will fund the appeal. They have declined to do this and I’m currently seeking a barrister’s opinion about the chance of success if I do take the case forward. If I do, of course I’ll either need someone to represent me for free or a lot of money. If they agree to an appeal it means the case will be re-heard in London.
Ruth: Reflecting on your experiences, what changes would you like to see in the law about women being exposed to pornography?
Mary: Well, I’d like to see sexual harassment be a separate section of the sex discrimination law. It shouldn’t come under detriment; it should be discrimination in its own right. And I think laws around pornography should be tightened up. There should be some definitions about what is pornography, whether or not it’s obscene and whether or not it’s sexually harassing; I would like it to becomes illegal to display pornographic material or obscene material, material that people find offensive.
Ruth: To me it’s about inciting hatred towards women, and although there is law against inciting racial hatred there isn’t anything similar for gender hatred.
Mary: I think that’s very true. I think there should be ‘incitement to sexist/misogynous hatred, hatred of women’, the same as there should be crimes that include homophobia, incitement to homophobia, crimes against lesbians and gay men. There shouldn’t be a hierarchy of oppression, we’re all oppressed groups and we should have equal protection in the law.
Jude: Finally, just in terms of CAP, where’s the campaign going now?
Mary: Well, we’re waiting to hear about the chances of success with my appeal, but we’re also starting to talk about other actions we might take. There are two sex shops operating illegally in Leeds; we’d like to do something about them. We’d also like to tackle the problem of porn being sold in newsagents. Ultimately we’d like men to stop using porn and to stop being violent to women and children and there’s a long way to go on that one.