High Court sees off Councillor Dennehy's challenge

Some good pre-Christmas news to report...

Councillor Benjamin Dennehy has been refused permission to proceed with his judicial review challenge of the Standards Committee decision, by the High Court, which found he had breached Ealing Council's Code of Conduct for Councillors and had not treated others with respect.

Myself happy with the High Court's decision

My complaint stemmed from a blog post that Councillor Benjamin Dennehy wrote where he wrote comments about Indians and those living in Southall. Councillor Dennehy referred to Southall being the “home to the worst concentration of illegal immigrants in the UK”. Councillor Dennehy then referred to gambling, drinking, drug, prostitution and crime issues “unlike many other parts of London” and asserted that it is “a largely Indian community who say they deplore this behavior but yet it is that very community that harbors and exploits their own people in squalid third world living conditions”.

Part of the documentation read: "There appears to me to be no justification for such a sweeping statement, which would be likely to cause legitimate indignation and serious offence to those members of the group referred to who have no involvement with illegal immigration or any other form of criminality. Furthermore, I find it hard to accept that any reasonable Councillor could have believed that such a sweeping statement was justified."

Another section of the legal documentation read: "…I am satisfied that the tone, style and choice of wording in the post was written in such a way that it did cause offence to some residents and councillor Dennehy could reasonably have expected that to be the case had he reflected on the particular way in which he chose to raise the issues.”

In this type of litigation case the loser is likely to pay the costs and this will be worked out in the future.

Thank you to all those who have given me the support to take up the initial case against Councillor Dennehy.