HAWICK Common Riding Committee is to press ahead with an attempt to run the centuries-old festival this year despite the bitter row over women's participation which has split the town and led to a civil case being brought against the committee under the Sex Discrimination Act.
The announcement came yesterday from new chairman Bruce McTaggart after a meeting of the Common Riding Committee decided to ask last year's Cornet, Mr Alan Wear, to nominate a successor - something which would normally have been done weeks ago but has been on hold because of the legal dispute.
The committee has already offered one unofficial ride for women during the month-long festivities leading up to the main common riding day in June. However, the Lady Riders' Association has been holding out for a minimum of three - a deal which was agreed by negotiators in January but then sunk after a rearguard action by traditionalists.
Now, however, the committee says it will hold one mixed ride for men and women whether the lady riders accept it or not.
''The ride will be open to any Hawick women who want to join, not just members of the Lady Riders Association,'' said Mr McTaggart, a Hawick farmer, yesterday. ''But we do not intend to offer more than one.''
The ride would fill the vacant Saturday created by the scrapping of the ill-fated Denholm ride-out which led to ugly scenes in Hawick when girl riders Ashley Simpson and Mandy Graham joined the cavalcade and broke the all-male rule last June.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article