No place for racism in local government

For a number of years the north east has faced the challenge of the British National Party. The BNP put much resource and considerable effort into seeking to secure electoral success, standing hundreds of candidates and exercising both misleading and intimidating tactics to try and convince the people of the region that they were a decent, legitimate organisation. We were not fooled by them and election result after election result consistently rejected their racist and intolerant policies - and the people of the north east are rightly proud that we remain free of racists in our town halls.

Racism is back on the public agenda. The conviction at last of some of the killers of Stephen Lawrence is a significant achievement so long after the murder - with the strongest sentences possible a demonstration of the zero tolerance approach to racism. Meanwhile Liverpool Football Club find themselves in difficulties with how they manage the communications around Luis Suarez' FA imposed punishment for racially abusing Manchester United's Patrice Evra while rightly taking quick and decisive action to deal with a fan who allegedly shouted offensive, racist remarks at one of the Oldham players in their FA Cup tie.

Against that backdrop it is appalling that the Liberal Democrats have failed to take any action at all against their candidate in the local Newcomen Ward by-election in Redcar and Cleveland.

Dave Stones may well have apologised for his offensive remarks, but that does not change the fact that he made them. Stones suggests that putting a topless bar and a 'pork rib' restaurant opposite a Mosque at Ground Zero in New York would be an appropriate response and would demonstrate which religious group were most tolerant. This is juvenile commentary, but it is underpinned by clearly racist views and exposes the Liberal Democrat candidate as highly irresponsible and totally unacceptable for public office.

I hope that the voters in the Newcomen ward demonstrate their opinion to these clearly racist views decisively in the by-election on the 19^th of January. Perhaps what is a more major concern is that a so-called mainstream party, the Liberal Democrats, has failed to condemn or even criticise the candidate or the views he has expressed.

At a time when racism demonstrably continues to be a live issue and a major concern all decent people and all progressive organisations should stand up to condemn it; it only takes inaction for tyranny to succeed. The silence of the Liberal Democrats exposes their complicity in these racist views.

Source: TUC Website http://www.tuc.org.uk/social/tuc-20462-f0.cfm