Rambling, incoherent and nazi to boot
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HOPE not hate / Searchlight
by Sonia Gable
on: Monday, 9 February 2009
Calling Richard Barnbrook, the British National Party’s London Assembly member, a nazi was not a breach of the Greater London Authority’s Code of Conduct for members. So said the assessment sub-committee of the GLA’s standards committee in December, dismissing Barnbrook’s complaint against John Biggs, the constituency Assembly member for City and East.
Barnbrook’s complaint arose out of a “Healthcare for London: A Framework for Action” meeting on 20 November 2008 at which Barnbrook put a question to the panel about BCG vaccinations and an outbreak of tuberculosis in Barking and Dagenham, where Barnbrook is a councillor.
TB is a subject of great interest to Barnbrook, who was diagnosed with the illness in 2007 and has called for increased spending in Barking and Dagenham on staff to deal with it. The BNP and its councillors seize on any increase in the incidence of TB as an excuse to attack immigration. In December Chris Beverley, the BNP’s councillor in Leeds, used TB screening to claim “systematic discrimination against our people in their own country”, because only teenagers who have links with countries with a high incidence of TB were being offered the BCG vaccination.
No doubt aware of the BNP’s arguments, Biggs accused Barnbrook of working to a political agenda on the TB issue. Barnbrook alleged that he asked Biggs what he was referring to, at which Biggs looked at him and said in a raised voice, “you are a nazi”. Barnbrook claims he twice asked for an apology but Biggs refused. Barnbrook considered he had been the victim of disrespectful, aggressive and unprofessional behaviour.
The sub-committee ruled that no action should be taken about Barnbrook’s complaint, because Mr Biggs’s comment was a “political, throwaway, comment and not personal criticism”, and “could reasonably be construed as a reference to political party, rather than a comment with other possible connotations”.
Barnbrook may have forgotten that we have been here before. Before the last general election the BNP held a rally in Brentwood, Essex, prompting Gavin Stollar, a Liberal Democrat councillor on Epping Forest District Council and parliamentary candidate for Brentwood, to say, “We don’t want nazis in our town”.
Terry Farr, then a BNP Epping Forest councillor, complained to the Standards Board, the local government watchdog, that Stollar’s statement was an insult to his BNP council colleague Pat Richardson, who is Jewish. But the Standards Board threw out Farr’s complaint and in a landmark ruling stated that calling the BNP nazi was “within the normal and acceptable limits of political debate”.
Two weeks before dismissing Barnbrook’s complaint against Biggs, the same sub-committee had decided no action should be taken about another complaint by Barnbrook, this time against Murad Qureshi, a Londonwide Assembly member.
According to Barnbrook, Qureshi had said on his personal blog, “It would be easy to dismiss Barnbrook as a joke figure, and his rambling incoherent contributions at Mayor’s Question Time have certainly reduced him to an object of ridicule”. Barnbrook considered this was “bullying” on grounds of his disability – he is dyslexic. The sub-committee thought otherwise.
Barnbrook blaming dyslexia for his incoherence is odd as dyslexia normally affects the ability to read and write rather than speak. Some have suggested the source of his confused rambling is more likely to be found in a bottle.
Whatever its origin, Barnbrook was on incoherent form in a video posted to his blog on 14 January shortly after a London Assembly Transport for London question and answer session. Barnbrook had asked the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who is also chair of TfL, whether he supported a London-wide rollout of the Urban Light Transport System currently being tested at Heathrow Airport.
Barnbrook does not reveal Johnson’s reply, instead rambling on about this “almost science fiction” new transport system, falling over his words, throwing in phrases such as “green champion” and going forward to the future, and very obviously not understanding the first thing about it. Trumpeting the system’s low emissions, Barnbrook clearly forgets that the BNP does not believe climate change is an issue.
The Urban Light Transport System (ULTra), which is indeed being tested at Heathrow, is composed of small vehicles running on their own guideways, which can be elevated or at ground level, but which must be separate from other forms of transport. While ULTra potentially offers huge benefits, it is rather difficult to see where such guideways might be constructed in crowded London, something which Barnbrook does not explain.
Barnbrook’s two further transport questions received only written replies. One concerned “peak oil”, a BNP obsession not widely shared among energy experts. The other was a return to a subject Barnbrook has raised before, namely “rogue taxi drivers” – minicab drivers who ply for hire illegally.
If Barnbrook is concerned about rogue taxi drivers, perhaps he should look closer to home, namely at Jason Douglas, the BNP’s Redbridge organiser, who drives a London licensed cab despite his convictions for football hooliganism.
To obtain a cab driver’s licence an applicant has to satisfy TfL that he is “of good character” and disclose all convictions and cautions, whenever obtained.
Cab drivers are also required to conduct themselves properly while working and not commit “any misbehaviour”. During the Gooshays by-election for Havering Borough Council last March, Douglas turned up in his cab to help a BNP campaign team and ended up chasing a car containing two women, whom he clearly assumed were anti-fascists, all the way to Dagenham.
Most recently Douglas was spotted in his cab working for the BNP at the East Wickham by-election in Bexley, southeast London, no doubt expressing his gratitude for Richard Barnbrook’s championing of cab drivers by ferrying him around free of charge.
