At last night’s Isle of Wight full council meeting (read our live coverage), the UKIP councillor for Wootton, Daryll Pitcher, voted against a motion calling on other elected members to condemn racism, xenophobia and hate crimes.
During the debate on Cllr Dave Stewart’s motion, Cllr Pitcher made a statement that was denounced by other councillors.
‘Controversial’ words
Cllr Pitcher started his speech with a pre-cursor, saying,
“Before I get into the main body of what I was going to say, I think it’s very important given what I’m about to say, that people have no misunderstanding about my views on racist activity and those of my party. We are completely against any racist activity and we would stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone standing against that.
“What I am talking to here is a particular motion. Some may find it controversial what I am going to say. I’m just clearing that up before I start.”
“Supposed increase”
He then went on to say,
“What we’re talking about in the motion is something that has been reported nationally about the supposed increase in the number of racially-related incidents around Brexit.
“Now it’s true to say the number of reports was up on the same period last year, however, it’s also true that in other periods during the course of the year it was as high, so this is not necessarily Brexit related.”
“Bad loser syndrome”
Cllr Pitcher continued,
“Secondly what we must also remember is that there was a concerted effort by certain groups to get every possible issue reported that could be regarded as racist – mostly these came from the Remain side, who were suffering a certain amount of ‘bad loser syndrome’.
“And in order to make the reality of the narrative they were reporting everything under the sun to make it seem racist.
“This is bourne out by a number of incidents that have been reported as racially-related which turned out to be simple robbery attempts and other things and had nothing to do with racism from the person involved. So we have to be careful that we’re not conflating things.”
“No sudden spike”
He went on to suggest there was a “simple increase in reporting the level of existing events” rather than a sudden spike in new incidents.
“The Institute of Race Relations was one of the groups that actually made social media attempts to get people to report things and one of their nine – they managed to find nine in the whole of London – one of which turned out as I said to be just a robbery attempt.
“In light of this, I would say that the total incidents may have been slightly increased during the Brexit period, but not out of all proportion and there was no sudden spike.
“If anything there was a simple increase in reporting the level of existing events which in itself is a worrying trend, because in my view they should have already been reported, but they weren’t.”
Other hate crimes
Cllr Pitcher finished by saying,
“I notice the motion doesn’t mention any rise in any other hate crimes by name, only mentions racism, such as the display of ageism which in certainly been very much on show in the post-Brexit scenario, with one of the thin on placards – I’ll bleep out the first two words … “and die oldie’.”
Cllr Pitcher was then cut off as his time limit to speak had been reached.
Condemned by leader
Leader of the council, Jonathan Bacon, responded by saying,
“It’s sad that we have to listen to the apologist words of Cllr Pitcher. Let’s not let semantics or indeed those sort of mealy mouthed comments diminish the spirit that this motion shows which I am sure we all concur with.”
Voted against
When the motion came to the vote, Cllr Pitcher was the only councillor in the chamber to vote against it.
Cllrs Bloomfield and Bertie both abstained.
OnTheWight has been in contact with Cllr Pitcher and requested the source of his claims.
See our follow-up report, where we fact check his claims.
