The exclusion of women was ruled offside in the battle of Hawick's Common Riding and the town settled into an uneasy truce - but, as Gerard Seenan discovers, there are still open wounds

UNTIL two years ago, Hawick was known for not very much, beyond the standard and the obvious. People knew it mainly as a fairly substantial Borders town boasting the typical small-time chain-stores, local bakers, and grocers of the genre. Hawick was known to be that rather comfortable version of Scotland: not quite old fashioned, not quite modern; not quite backward, not quite worldly; timeless and easy.

Many no doubt owned a jumper or a scarf knitted in the nearby woollen mills, where employment has dropped slowly but markedly over the years. Those with a passing interest in sport had probably heard of its rugby team. Those with more than a passing knowledge of Scotland probably knew of its Baronial town hall. And some no doubt knew of its Common Riding.

But by the end of June 1996 we all knew of its Common Riding. We also knew, more pertinently, of the sexism that went with this Common Riding.

At first, most looked on Hawick's Common Riding sexism indulgently - small-town attitudes, nothing to worry about; it was all faintly ludicrous, silly sexism perpetrated by boys who

didn't want girls to play their games. And then came the news of the death threats, suspicious fires, smashed windows, cars driven and horses ridden at members of warring factions. There was something a little more sinister, more deeply riven, in this sexism.

It should have been no surprise, then, that the fragile, creaking voice at the end of the Common Riding Committee telephone line should be so instantly suspicious of this journalist's questions.

''I hope you're not going to make too much of the ladies issue. Hawick had an awful lot of bad publicity about the ladies. It was a terrible thing,'' she says. It was a terrible thing, though not, perhaps, for the reasons resonated in the frangible chords coming down the telephone line.

It started in May 1996 when two women, Ashley Simpson and Mandy Graham, let the Common Riding Committee know of their intention to join the Denholm ride-out. The all-male committee was none too happy about the ladies (the committee seems still to think it acceptable to refer to women as ladies) joining them, but their attempt to obtain an interdict banning them from so doing was unsuccessful. So Simpson and Graham attempted to join the ride-out.

That Saturday has since become known, melodramatically (and there is little in the

subsequent dispute that was not farcically, stupidly, melodramatic) as Black Saturday.

To those, comparatively few, good sexists of Hawick, the decision of two women to challenge an all-male bastion was somewhat equivalent to a currency crash and billions of pounds being wiped off share prices.

On Black Saturday, Graham and Simpson were greeted with the baying taunts of abuse we have recently come to associate with the mobs panting for paedophiles' blood.

A group of more than 50 women (sexism in Hawick Common Riding was clearly not reserved solely for the menfolk) thwarted Graham and Simpson's attempt to join the ride-out. And that was the start of the whole sexism shebang - played out for all the world to see, much to most of Hawick's embarrassment.

A Lady Riders Association, championing the cause of Simpson and Graham, was set up. In response, around 1400 opponents, half of them women, joined the Customs and Traditions Association, desperate to put a stop to the inclusive demands of the Lady Riders.

The main justification for this group's sexism/desire to preserve tradition took one form. ''It's aye been,'' they said. That may be, said the Lady Riders, but it's not going to be any more.

The squabbling and the bickering continued; reasonable request was met by petty response; the people of Hawick, who had long cherished their cosy image, found themselves tarnished and branded. Neanderthal sexists, was how Scotland thought of them.

''It was a difficult and damaging time,'' says Norman Pender, the paternalistic spokesman for the Lady Riders Association. ''The number of people, the real militants, who were against the women joining in was very small - in the referendum it amounted to only tens of the population - yet I think it has damaged the image of Hawick.''

Over the coming months there was much to-ing and fro-ing; abusing and retorting; claiming and counter-claiming. Eventually, after the provost of Hawick said the Common Riding could not go ahead unless the warring factions reached agreement, women were allowed to join it in June of last year. But that - of course, for nothing is simple where the problems of the Common Riding are concerned - was not the end of the matter.

The dispute continued through the courts until all came to a head in August 1997, when Sheriff Principal Gordon Nicholson ruled that the exclusion of women from all-male mounted events at Hawick Common Riding was a breach of the Sex Discrimination Act. In the opposing camps, there was jubilation and consternation in equal measure.

There was talk of tradition being, if you'll excuse the pun, ridden over roughshod. This was complemented with cries of victory for progressivism and twentieth-century common sense. How the outside world viewed these peculiar goings-on was clear: in October 1997 factory worker Ashley Simpson and student Mandy Graham travelled to London to collect their Woman of the Year awards at the Savoy Hotel. (The legal battle had cost them dear and they managed to make it to the event only with the help of an anonymous benefactor.)

And so what has happened in the past six months between the warring factions of Hawick?

Telephone calls to town officials and members of the warring factions generally go unanswered. Those few who do speak wish to do so off the record; and then it is hard to see what they are being so secretive about - melodrama prevails still.

They talk of an uneasy truce. Some of the Lady Riders - as is their right under the sheriff principal's ruling - want access to all the races. Some, perhaps most, of the members of the Common Riding Committee are prepared to give concession to women only on a piecemeal basis; the minimal drip by drip. It is a matter of compromise now, the difficulty being how much each side is prepared to give.

Frank Scott, secretary of the Common Riding Committee, has previously gone on record to complain that the legal battle may force the Common Riding into bankruptcy. Today he harrumphs his feelings. ''The problem obviously still persists because we have never had any notification about how much the legal costs are going to be,'' he says.

''It has to be accepted that the ladies can now join the ride-outs, and, obviously, we are now going to have to look at our constitution, but we have other things on our minds just now.'' It has, though, been more than six months since the court ruling.

Norman Pender is philosophical about the dispute, though he will admit, if pushed, that there are still a lot of open wounds that are going to take far longer than one year to heal. ''The women are taking part in four rides out of 14 this year, six out of 16 next year. We are moving on, not quickly enough for some, too quickly for others, but you can't change all this overnight.

''The way forward has to be through gradual integration. I think in years to come people will look back and say, 'what was all that stupid carry-on in Hawick in 1996 and 1997?' Aye, all that stupid carry-on.''