The chair of one of Scotland’s largest public relations firms has been forced to apologise after claiming the company does not hire “blacks, gays or Catholics”.
Gordon Beattie, founder of Beattie Communications, made the comments in a social media post intended to show that the business does not discriminate.
However, it sparked outrage on the LinkedIn website, with industry experts saying the comment was “deliberately controversial” and anti-racism campaigners describing it as “tone deaf” and “insensitive”.
The original post, uploaded on Friday, stated: “At Beattie Communications, we don’t hire blacks, gays or Catholics. We hire talented people and we don’t care about the colour of their skin, sexual orientation or religion.
“That’s the way it should be with every company - only hire people for their talent, experience, knowledge and wisdom. We hire people we like, trust and admire and recruit people who have the potential to be better than us.”
The post has since been deleted, with Mr Beattie saying he was “deeply sorry” for causing offence and that the comment was made with the “best of intent”.
However, Barrington Reeves, founder of Black Lives Matters Scotland and the Black Scottish Business Fund, described the post as “tone deaf, insensitive, racist, homophobic and utterly unacceptable”.
He said: “Gordon’s point of view enforces that it’s ok to overlook the struggles that marginalised communities face when attempting to seek jobs in the creative industries.
“His attitude is exactly the hurdle we have been trying to overcome for years.”
Mr Reeves added that the wording was inflammatory and insensitive.
On LinkedIn, senior communications consultant Stef Lach responded: “You wrote a deliberately provocative first sentence, and followed it up with words that you thought were clever enough to have people lauding you for how progressive you thought you were.
“Quite stunning that a communications professional could be so wide of the mark with an attempt at communicating something.”
David Mains, a fellow businessman, added: “You chose those words to get attention. You got that — and the condemnation those words deserved, followed.”
Beattie Communications is one of the largest communications firms in the UK, with the multimillion pound business attracting high profile clients.
Mr Beattie launched the company as a teenager after working at a local newspaper in Lanarkshire for a short time.
Responding to the criticism of his post, the businessman said: “On Friday I published a post on Linkedin to highlight the fact that when we recruit, Beattie Communications does not discriminate on any grounds.
“The hires we make are based on the talent and ability of each individual. My post was issued with the best of intent but I have now removed it and apologised for the offence caused.”
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