'Racist song' councillors cleared

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Two councillors from the British National Party have been cleared of wrongdoing after singing a "racist" song outside the office of a Muslim MP.

Kirklees BNP councillor Colin Auty sang the song outside the office of Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik, while Burnley BNP councillor Derek Dawson filmed him.

Mr Malik said the lyrics were offensive to British Muslims in the area.

The Standards Board for England ruled the pair were acting "outside their official capacities" as councillors.

'Common sense'

Mr Auty welcomed the ruling, saying his song was not racist but made "an observation" about drug dealing in an area of Dewsbury largely populated by Muslims.

Mr Malik had put in an official complaint to the board, saying the two men had brought Kirklees and Burnley councils, on which the BNP councillors sit, into disrepute.

I didn't say anything derogatory in that song Councillor Colin Auty, BNP member

But the ethical standards board said a legal precedent had been set in 2006 over an incident in which London mayor Ken Livingstone compared a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard.

In this case the High Court ruled the code of conduct which councillors must follow only applied when they were acting in their official capacity.

A spokesman for the board said: "Following that decision, we now cannot take action against councillors if their alleged conduct occurs when they are acting in their private, rather than their official, capacity."

Mr Malik said despite its ruling, the Standards Board had left him in "no doubt that they shared my concerns about the disgraceful and false remarks about paedophilia and drugs in Savile Town which are clearly part of the BNP's Islamaphobic agenda".

He said: "Mr Auty and his friends may have escaped the Standards Board for now but their abhorrent and divisive remarks will not have escaped the ordinary decent people of Dewsbury."

But Mr Auty said he was angry that Mr Malik had made the allegations.

He said: "I think common sense has prevailed... it wasn't done to insult anyone but to bring things to the fore.

"I didn't say anything derogatory in that song."