ITV News Exclusive: Dossier exposes more than 100 accusations of Islamophobia and racism from Conservative Party members

Conservatives
Racism
Politics
Friday 17 May 2019 at 5:13pm

Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand

ITV News has been passed a dossier of more than 100 alleged cases of Islamophobic or racist content posted online by people claiming to be Conservative Party members.

Nineteen of the 110 cases passed to ITV News are fresh allegations, not yet in the public domain. The list is the first comprehensive dossier of allegations made so far.

The comments made by people alleging to be Conservative Party members include:

"We are letting our children down by allowing this cult to take over our country"

"We don’t have a politician strong enough in the UK to lead us away from this infestation"

"They cause mayhem wherever they decide to invade"

Other quotes in the dossier, passed to ITV News by social media user MatesJacob, called Muslims "aliens" and "radicals", with one saying "their plan is to turn this country into an Islamic state".

Having repeatedly called for an independent inquiry into Islamophobia in her party, Conservative peer Baroness Warsi told ITV News the allegations show "the party has something to hide".

She said: "Last month, I spent four weeks speaking to the party privately and I started by asking them to bring to the table the number of complaints that they had received - and that I too would bring to the table the number of complaints that I had received to try and at least understand the scale of the problem.

"The fact that the party refused to do that, and the fact that we have these revelations today that this issue is widespread and deep, clearly shows that the party has got something to hide."

She continued: "The party have to first and foremost acknowledge the extent of the problem. They then have to transparent about the process that is being adopted.

"They need to have a measure, a definition of Islamophobia against which they measure these vile comments, and then they need to send out a very clear signal that racists and bigots will have no home in our party."

Labour MP Wes Streeting told ITV News the Conservative Party is heading down the same route as Labour did with its approach to anti-Semitism.

He said: "I've got to say with some humility as a Labour politician, the Conservative Party is making all the same mistakes as the Labour party has done on tackling anti-Semitism, and this is not a good place for British politics to be when both of our main parties are struggling to tackle very real evidence there in black and white of racism within our ranks."

He added: "Frankly, both of our main parties are in a pretty sorry state of affairs and when you look at those comments made by Conservative members about Muslims, senior Conservatives can no longer deny that there is a very serious problem they're failing to tackle."

In a statement, a Conservative Party spokesperson said: "A substantial number of these people are not members.

"Any other party members on this list have either already been suspended, expelled or are under investigation.

"Our complaints process is rightly a confidential one but where we find evidence of members making abusive or discriminatory posts, we take swift action."