Turkeys vote for Christmas

Sonia Gable | Tuesday, 13 February 2007 Source: Searchlight

BNP members on Epping Forest District Council showed typical BNP ineptitude when the council received the annual report of the Epping Forest District Standards Committee, the body that ensures councillors comply with their code of conduct.

The document, which covered the committee's work in the municipal year 2005/06, reported, without giving names, that two cases had been referred to it by the Standards Board for England. In one the adjudication sub-committee had held a formal hearing, which found that a breach of the code of conduct had occurred and suspended the member concerned for three months.

The BNP councillors voted in favour of the report without objection. It seems they did not realise that the suspended member was their very own Terence Farr who was investigated after he wrote racist letters to Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

The Standards Committee also suggested he undertake training in the application of the code of conduct, the council's policies on equal opportunities and the race equality scheme, which he refused. At the time the BNP objected strongly, claiming Farr had been victimised. His tribulations now seem to have been forgotten.

Meanwhile councillor Rod Law, recently expelled from the RMT union, has started posting on the nazi Stormfront gossip website, where he repeats BNP lies about Loughton being "invaded by youths coming in on free travel from inner London areas to do no more than rob and assault the residents". Residents of Grange Hill ward rejected similar BNP claims in a by-election late last year.

Law also uses the forum to continue his attack on Essex Police Inspector Morrissey, who seems to have attracted his ire because she refused to take seriously the BNP's lies about local crime.

A third BNP Epping councillor was one of those who formed a BNP heavy mob outside the London Coliseum last month, where he was seen engaged in deep discussions with the police. Peter Turpin is himself a former Metropolitan Police officer who was asked to leave many years ago because of his activities with the National Front. His former senior office later condemned him in the local press when Turpin tried to start a vigilante group in Redbridge. Turpin is always going on about law and order but according to Essex Police seems to have a problem distinguishing truth from fiction.