So said senior conservative councillor Keith Myers-Hewitt to a librarian upon entering a library in Stowmarket in August 2004. The librarian in question said he knew it was a reference to race "because as he spoke, Cllr Myers-Hewitt glanced at two black gentleman sitting near an oriental couple who were using the library's computer.
This all went to a tribunal recently, and although they ruled that Keith Myers-Hewitt did in fact make an offensive remark about 'darkies', he did not bring his office into disrepute. One presumes this is because it isn't considered disreputable for his office to be racist.
Of course, he trots out the usual excuses, for example:
1) He claimed he did not speak to [the librarian] but said he had made a remark to his wife which could have been mistaken for the alleged comments. (I welcome examples of possible remarks which could have misconstrued, e.g. it's dark in this library, looks like they have a couple of chinks in the electrical wiring", -Ed)
2) He was ill at the time, and has just been released from hospital. Of course, I sympathise entirely with this, I often find after an extended illness I go round being offensive to coloured gentlemen.
3) The remarks were out of character.
4) He claimed he was a sci-fi fan, and that the words "people from the dark side" were not a racial slur, but a reference to the evil side of the 'force' famous for turning Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. Quite, and I'm sure he thought we were all born yesterday. Fortunately the tribunal investigating the claims said the evidence of Keith Myers-Hewitt and his wife had been implausible. That's "bullshit" in laymans terms.
Sadly, this kind of behaviour from conservative councillors is not a one off. Two of the editors on this site were most suprised to hear a conservative councillor from Cambridgeshire tell us once that he was applying to become a Justice of the Peace, and I quote "God help any women and niggers that come up before me". Fortunately he didn't get selected for the post. There are plenty of other examples of such comments.
Anyway, these people do nothing for the cause of the conservative party in this country, and as a member of the conservatives since my youth, this kind of behaviour really irks me, and is obviously one of the reasons why the tory's have such a poor reputation amongst an extended part of this countries population.
Still, we can hope that as bigoted racist dinosaurs like this die out, these kinds of attitudes will die with them.
References:
http://www.buryfreepress.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=843&ArticleID=1064832 - 'Racist' remark was sci-fi quote
http://www.buryfreepress.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=843&ArticleID=1127711 - No action over 'Darkie' remark
This is dreadful! I don't see when people will learn!