There were fresh demands for the resignation of former Conservative councillor Benjamin Dennehy for offensive comments he made about the Indian community Southall in a blog post in 2012.
Cllr Dennehy lost his judicial review at the Royal courts of Justice to overturn a Ealing council standards verdict that found him in breach of the council’s code of conduct for his comments on 20th December.
Councillor Dennehy was found to have had brought the council into disrepute and ordered to apologise by the council’s standards committee in May 2013. He has refused to apologise and took court action to overturn the decision. He lost the court action with the judge stating “the tone of much of the content [of the blog] had been inappropriate and unnecessarily provocative”.
His blog post from 2011 claimed the Indian community in Southall “harbours and exploits their own people in squalid third world living conditions.” It went on to claim that “crime in endemic in Southall” and that the community is engaged “scams”.
Cllr Dennehy was kicked out of the Conservative party after the post and currently sits as a UKIP councillor.
Leader of Ealing council Cllr Julian Bell said:
“I am glad that the standards board verdict has been upheld. This action and Cllr Dennehy’s refusal to apologise has wasted public money and council officers time when he should have apologised immediately.
His blog was an outrageous slur on the people of Southall and this kind of incendiary right wing rhetoricnot welcome in our borough. It is time for Cllr Dennehy to resign as a councillor and if he refuses to do so it is time for UKIP to withdraw their backing from someone who has shown absolutely no remorse for the offence he has caused.”