UK Conservative Party Faces Heat as it Reinstates Councillor Who Made Racist Joke on Asians

British councillor Rosemary Carroll, who had been suspended from the Conservative Party after having shared a racist post about Asians on social media, was re-admitted to the party on May 4 in a move that drew sharp criticism from all quarters, the Hindustan Times reported.

The re-admission of Carroll, a councillor from Earby in Lancashire’s Pendle Borough Council, happened when the votes of May 3 local elections were being counted, and each of the contesting parties got into a impasse with the same number of seats. The re-admission promptly gave the control of the council to the Conservative party by one-seat majority, sparking charges of political opportunism from the opposition Labour Party, the Guardian reported.

Carroll was suspended from the party after she shared a Facebook post on June 4, 2017, that compared an Asian man with a dog. The post, which was embedded on SkyNews, said: “I took my dog to the dole office to see what he was entitled to. The bloke behind the counter said: ‘You idiot, we don’t give benefits to dogs’.”

The post further read: “I argued: Why not? He’s brown, he stinks, he has never worked a f****ing day in his life, and he can’t speak a f***ing word of English!’ The man replied’ His first payment will be Monday.”

Carroll was suspended for three months in August last year, and continued to sit on Pendle council as an independent councillor for Lancashire afterwards.

Lancashire has a significant population from the Indian subcontinent, with the 2011 census recording Asian/Asian British as the largest minority ethnic group in both Lancashire-12 and Lancashire-14 areas.

The Conservative Party has sought to temper criticism of her re-admission, saying that Carroll had apologized and had meant to delete the post, but ended up publishing it by mistake, Sky News reported.

Local Conservative leader Paul White said that Carroll had “learned from her mistake,” BBC reported. “Rosemary is a good Councillor for Earby. A popular Councillor. She made a mistake, people make mistakes,” he was quoted as saying.

Promising to look into the matter, Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis on May 6 said on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge program that the case had been reviewed locally and the councillor had been disciplined. “She was suspended, she has been through diversity training, the punishment she had was endorsed by the Labour party and the British National Party who supported them on that council at the time, so we need to be very clear about what the facts are,” he told the channel.

However, Conservative Party’s business secretary Greg Clark suggested on BBC’s popular Andrew Marr Show on May 6 that Carroll may face an investigation. He said: “I haven’t seen that, but I have seen the reports of it, and it seems to me that if they are the views of this person, she has no place in the Conservative party, and I’m sure the party authorities will have to investigate that.”

He added: “If they are her views then they are incompatible with the Conservative party, but it is for the party authorities to investigate that.”

Labour leader John McDonnell called for her suspension again, saying her re-entry is “unacceptable.” Another leader Mohammmed Iqbal said reinstatement to the party is “a damning indictment of the Conservatives. She was welcomed back with open arms. They should have done the decent thing and distanced themselves from her. I’m appalled. The suspension was a gimmick.”

Anti-racism organization Hope Not Hate’s chief executive Nick Lowles said that the move was “clearly motivated by political arithmetic,” Sky News reported. “Coming so soon after the Windrush debacle, the admittance that the Home Office had deliberately created a hostile environment for immigrants and the prime minister’s refusal to allow visas for foreign doctors to work in the NHS, it is easy to see why support for the Conservatives amongst minority communities is so low,” he was quoted as saying.