After years of ‘terrorist sympathiser’ accusations, a Tory councillor calls for Corbyn’s execution

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Wilson Belshaw


Conservative councillor Roger Patterson has called for Jeremy Corbyn to be ‘hung like Saddam Hussein’. His statement also described Corbyn as a traitor and someone who supports terrorists. Patterson’s comments come following years of figures in the media and politics making similar statements about Corbyn being a ‘terrorist sympathiser’.

 

Roger Patterson

Patterson is a Conservative councillor for Scampton, Lincolnshire. Patterson has previously been linked to what was described as an “Islamophobic Facebook group”. The Lincolnite reported at the time:

posts on the closed group described Shadow Home Secretary Dianne Abbot as a ‘gorilla’ and talked about how ‘Islam should be banned.’ Other comments levelled at pro-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller described her as a ‘damn foreigner’, an ‘immigrant pipsqueak’… Another member called Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who is gay, ‘sick’ for becoming pregnant.

The outlet also noted that the ‘Conservative Debating Forum’ group had 2,500 members and was invite-only. Patterson responded at the time, saying:

I was a member of the group but I’m not any more. The group was mostly for serious political discussion on topics such as Brexit and was good for debating people with a range of opinions, but a few idiots ruined it. Some of the comments on the page were sickening to see, and I reported them quite a few times. Unfortunately the administrators of the page failed to crack down hard enough.

I would like to clarify that I believe in a free and tolerant society, as those that follow me on Twitter can confirm. In my opinion the members of the page who held those views are not real conservatives or a reflection of the conservatives that I know. It’s similar to the way that anti-semites on the left do not reflect the Labour Party.

Socialist Voice highlighted another recent tweet from Patterson:

Locked

When calling for Corbyn to be hung, Patterson was replying to this tweet from George Aylett:

The councillor has since locked his account, although not before several people screengrabbed his response.

The tweet follows several other incidents in which Corbyn or people on the left were depicted as treacherous. In 2015, sitting PM David Cameron branded Corbyn, and anyone voting against airstrikes in Syria, as “terrorist sympathisers”. In 2016, Labour MP Jo Cox was assassinated by a far-right terrorist who cried “Britain first” as he murdered her. And in 2019, sex offender and neo-Nazi Jack Renshaw was convicted of planning to assassinate Labour MP Rosie Cooper. The sentencing judge said:

You praised the murder of Jo Cox in tweets and posts in June 2017. In some bizarre way you saw this as a commendable act and set out to replicate that behaviour.

Also in 2019, British soldiers were filmed shooting at a picture of Corbyn.

The Canary contacted the Office of the Conservative Party Chairman for comment, but had received none by the time of publication. The Canary also asked if new chairman James Cleverly has plans to combat this sort of rhetoric, but again has not received a response.

Featured image via Wikimedia – flip-a-coin

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