THERE’S a lot that’s great about Holyrood, but this week it made a bit of an eejit of itself. It looked for a while there as if the Scottish parliament was trying to ban suffrage colours, the symbol of women’s right to vote, which would be only slightly less farcical than Hampden Park banning football tops.

It all happened on Tuesday. A woman wearing a scarf in purple, white and green, the colours of the women’s suffrage movement, had been watching MSPs in the equalities committee debate changes to gender recognition legislation and was asked to leave by staff. She had apparently fallen foul of rules for visitors on the display of banners, flags or political slogans, “including on clothing and accessories". She was on the astonished side of surprised about it, as you might expect, and made her views known.

The news spread; Joanna Cherry got her phone out; disbelief, anger and confusion reined. Baffled journalists posted pictures on social media of suffrage colours on sale in the parliament’s own shop. Indignant women pointed out that rainbow-coloured lanyards, showing support for the rights of LGBTQ+ people, were allowed to be worn by MSPs. Things escalated from nutty to bonkers.

Then in swept Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone to put a stop to the nonsense. Sounding like a weary headteacher who’d been called out of an important meeting to sort out a playground scrap, she said: “Let me make one thing crystal clear, suffrage colours are not and never have been banned at the Scottish Parliament.” It had been an “error”, she said, apologised, and that was that.

Except it isn’t – not quite. The incident was cock-up not conspiracy (isn’t it always), but it’s an illuminating cock-up which hints that feminist symbols that were once universally lauded and uncontroversial, are starting to be seen as problematic.

If so, we’re going down a dangerous path.

Why should this be happening? Clearly the meaning of symbols can change over time – the Saltire is a centuries-old symbol of Scotland which should be above politics, but Saltire flags draped from window ledges or on car window stickers now scream support for independence. The two meanings sit alongside each other: unionists still regard the Saltire as equally theirs, but in certain contexts, it conveys a clear pro-independence message.

Something similar seems to be the case with women’s suffrage colours. They originated with the suffragettes more than 100 years ago and have been revived by feminists in recent years to highlight the ongoing struggle women face for equality on a range of fronts. A smiling Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson stood side by side wearing them in Holyrood’s Garden Lobby to commemorate the centenary of women having the vote in 2018. Even the Queen wore a mint dress, plum coat and jaunty purple hat with dark green plume to open the Scottish parliament in July 1999 (it was a stylish get-up. The fact she was one quine who’d never had the vote, gave it added poignancy).

The colours have been worn more recently, however, by women campaigning against elements of the proposed gender recognition reform legislation and it’s this association that appears to be linked to parliament staff taking a dim view of a silk scarf.

But why? Perhaps because those who have ongoing concerns about the safeguarding of women and girls are so often branded transphobic – either explicitly, as by one tweeter this week who described the suffrage colours as the symbol of a “hate group” – or by implication. This happens when senior politicians decry in general terms the “bigotry” on show in the debate and lazily allow people to interpret that as they will.

This vague charge of transphobia is in my experience very wide of the mark. The majority of women who have concerns about this issue simply want to ensure that in ensuring the rights of one vulnerable group, trans men and women, the rights and protections of another, women and girls, are not rolled back.

The fact that the Scottish Government is now tabling significant amendments to its own legislation and accepting backbench amendments too does rather vindicate the campaigners’ view that the legislation needed to be improved. Social justice secretary Shona Robison has tabled an amendment, for instance, which would give sheriffs the power to block "fraudulent" applications for a gender recognition certificate; the resignation of minister Ash Regan over the bill and the rebellion of eight other SNP MSPs, may have helped concentrate her mind.

The wider point, though, is that the hurling around of the word “bigotry”, has left a shadow. Women’s rights campaigners, and now apparently the suffrage colours they use, have come to be regarded by some with suspicion. It’s against that febrile background that this week’s fiasco over scarves played out.

But ultimately common sense prevailed. Ms Johnstone saw to that, leaving no room for misinterpretation. There may be some on the fringes who regard the suffrage colours as a badge of hate, but they have found no supporters in the Holyrood chamber. However you interpret the symbolism of the colours purple, white and green, no one will in future stop you wearing them in the Scottish parliament.

And that’s very heartening. It has often felt in the last decade as if we have moved into a more prescriptive age, as well as a more politically polarised one. Some even detect authoritarian overtones in Scottish and UK politics, with senior politicians signing up to orthodoxies and batting away alternative points of view. But politics is never clear cut; no good policy can be made without self-scrutiny, collaboration and the consideration of alternative points of view. That means bringing everyone into the tent and listening to them with respect.

The women’s suffrage colours are a symbol simultaneously of women’s historic struggle for democratic rights and now here in Scotland perhaps they will be seen as something else too: the right to be seen and heard in today’s political debate. That can only be a good thing.