BNP man loses appeal over racist leaflets

| Thursday, 8 September 2005 Source: The Lennox, Dunbartonshire

A BRITISH National Party member, jailed for four months for distributing race hate leaflets, failed to overturn his conviction on Friday.

Appeal judges backed a Glasgow sheriff who found David Wilson, 34, guilty of a breach of the 1986 Public Order Act.

Wilson, formerly of Alexandria, Dunbartonshire, had been picked up with other BNP members in St Andrew's Drive, Glasgow, handing out leaflets warning of possible tension between whites and Muslims in Pollokshields.

The area has the highest ethnic minority population in Scotland — 95 per cent of them Muslims of Pakistani origin, the Court of Justiciary Appeal in Edinburgh heard.

Wilson tried to argue that the Public Order Act made it illegal to stir up racial hatred on grounds of colour, race or nationality — but made no mention of religion.

Sheriff Linda Ruxton, in a report to appeal judges pointed out that in Pollokshields the words "Muslim" and "Pakistani" would be taken to mean the same thing. She said the inaccurate leaflets about events, which had supposedly occurred in Northern England during the summer of 2001, were sure to cause offence.

At the time there had been a number of attacks on asylum seekers in the Sighthill area of Glasgow, but no actual violence in Pollokshields, although worried police were closely watching the situation.

Lord Osborne, sitting with Lords Philip and McEwan, also rejected Wilson's claim that the leaflets were political tracts which did not contain abusive material. Wilson even tried to invoke the European Convention on Human Rights, saying his freedom of speech was being unlawfully curtailed, but his move was rejected on procedural grounds.

After his arrest in July 2001, Wilson denied the offence but was convicted following a trial in November 2002.