Five Conservative councillors standing for the party in this week’s local elections in England, have been suspended for alleged racism and Islamophobia in recent years – including one who suggested banning mosques and another who accused Muslims of being on a “quest to turn the world Muslim”.
They are among 13 councillors identified by the Observer, drawing on research by the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate, who have been suspended over racist comments and social media posts in the past four years before being reinstated.
Among the five standing again is Danny Scott in Blackpool. He was one of 25 former and sitting Conservative councillors accused of making offensive comments online named in a 2019 dossier released by an anonymous Twitter account. Scott posted on Facebook at least two years earlier that “Muslims have been terrorising anyone who isn’t Muslim for 1,000 [years],” and that “it is their quest to turn the world Muslim”.
Scott was subsequently suspended from the party, but he has since been reinstated and is listed as the Tory candidate for his council ward at this week’s election.
The dossier also revealed Beverley Dunlop, a councillor in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, commented on Facebook that “Until [Muslims] are more frightened of the British government (because they and their families might get deported) than they are Isis nothing will change”, and separately posted, “I hate to ban anything really but I’d suggest we start with mosques!”.
After the dossier was published, the Conservatives said they had suspended anyone who was a party member, but Dunlop, who was suspended in 2019, is listed as the Tory candidate in her ward for the ballot on 4 May.
Three others are running again. Portsmouth councillor Lee Mason was suspended in 2020 after a leaked photo from his Snapchat account showed a hot cross bun with what seemed to be a swastika baked on it.
Robin Popley, a councillor in Charnwood, Leicestershire, was suspended in 2019 after describing Enoch Powell as “the greatest prime minister we never had”. Ian Stokes, a councillor in South Kesteven, Lincolnshire, was suspended in 2021 after using a phrase about there being an N-word “in the woodpile” at a meeting. He subsequently apologised, had diversity training, and his membership was restored.
None of the five responded to a request for comment. Dunlop has said her comments were “written in jest” and taken out of context “to make me appear something I am not”. She also subsequently recieved death threats. Stokes has said he meant to say “needle in a haystack”. Mason has claimed at the time he baked nothing with a Nazi symbol.
Georgie Laming, director of campaigns at Hope Not Hate, said: “There is an alarming trend of Conservative party candidates and councillors who have been exposed for racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism and as crank conspiracy theorists. Their vetting and disciplinary systems either don’t work or are inconsistent. All mainstream parties must have a zero tolerance policy. The Conservative Party has a long way to go to prove this.”
In 2019, the Guardian revealed the Tories had quietly reinstated 15 councillors suspended for Islamophobia or racism. Under internal and external pressure, tThe Singh investigation found anti-Muslim sentiment remained a problem in the party and said the complaints procedure was under-resourced and lacking in transparency, but denied the party was institutionally racist.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has so far decided not to conduct its own inquiry into Islamophobia in the Tory party, having dropped plans to do so in 2020.
The Conservatives have been repeatedly accused of failing to deal with racism and Islamophobia in their own ranks, with concerns raised by former Tory cabinet minister Baroness Warsi and Mohammed Amin, a former chair of the Conservative Muslim Forum who left and joined the Lib Dems when Boris Johnson became party leader.
“Once the individuals are exposed, they are typically suspended and then quietly reinstated a few months later,” Amin said. “Because the party is non-transparent about almost everything, including its disciplinary processes, the public is never told about what re-education the suspended councillors have received, or whether they have given adequate assurances that they have changed their ways.”
The Conservative party did not respond to a request for comment.
It comes as Suella Braverman is accused by a Tory MP of “emboldening the far right”, after she repeatedly pointed to the Pakistani ethnicity of grooming gang members. The home secretary said she was only citing “unfashionable facts” after a backlash to her suggestion that grooming gang members are “almost all British-Pakistani”.
However, Rehman Chishti, a former foreign office minister, writes in today’s Observer that he doesn’t know why Braverman seeks to “zero in on a particular ‘string of cases’ that received extensive media coverage, rather than acknowledging the full scale of the problem based on the data we have about all such cases”. He writes: “Braverman’s comments aren’t ‘unfashionable truths’, they’re simply inaccurate – and emboldening the far right.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “As the home secretary has said, the vast majority of British-Pakistanis are law-abiding, upstanding citizens, but independent reviews were unequivocal that, in towns like Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford, cultural sensitivities have meant thousands of young girls were abused under the noses of councils and police.”
