Councillor kicked out of union for threats

Sonia Gable | Saturday, 13 January 2007 Source: Searchlight

The National Union of Rail Maritime and Transport Workers has thrown out a British National Party councillor for threatening its general secretary during last year's local election campaign.

Rodney Law, who was among three new BNP councillors elected to Epping Forest District Council last May, was expelled "for conduct inconsistent with membership of the union and for acting in a manner contrary to the interests of the union and its members". The RMT executive found that Law acted in a threatening manner towards Bob Crow, the union's general secretary, while Crow was campaigning against the BNP in Debden last April.

A journalist from the London Evening Standard was among several witnesses to the exchange, part of which was reported in the newspaper. Law was charged with misconduct under RMT's rules and was expelled after twice failing to attend to answer questions as part of the disciplinary process.

Since their election, Law and his colleagues have been busy scaremongering about crime, with fictitious claims that gangs of "inner city youths" – a barely veiled reference to black youths – are invading the area and mugging people. When they tried this tactic in the BNP's campaign in the Grange Hill by-election in December, residents on the Limes Farm estate pointed out that the only gangs roaming the estate are local, including several youths from the BNP councillors' own wards in Debden which are subject to a dispersal order.

He has also tried to stir up anti-Muslim hysteria by opposing the building of a mosque at the international scouting centre at Gilwell Park. Usually the main tenet of BNP campaigns against mosques is the cost to council taxpayers. This time when Law asked at a residents' meeting about the cost of the mosque he was stopped in his tracks: the Saudi Arabian government will pay for it. This inconvenient fact did not, however, stop the BNP using the issue in a leaflet in Grange Hill.

Scouting is a great British invention that brings people of all faiths together for peace. But you would not expect the BNP to appreciate that.