A councillor has said he was “horrified” when he was accused of racism over comments about Cardiff Council’s leaders.
Ralph Cook yesterday said he meant no personal insult when he compared the city’s Lib Dem-Plaid administration with “Nazi stormtroopers”.
He had likened the council’s executive to Hitler’s elite troops for censoring the opposition by cutting a debate on the budget during a stormy meeting in February.
Mr Cook, 51, yesterday told a judicatory panel the fact council leader Rodney Berman, who is Jewish, may interpret his comments differently, “went right over my head”.
If the panel finds the Labour councillor breached the code of conduct it could reprimand him; suspend him from duty on the council for 12 months or bar him from public duty for up to five years.
Speaking at the hearing at the Mercure Holland House Hotel, in Cardiff yesterday, Mr Cook said he had lost members of his family in World War II and that he was horrified when his remarks were wrongly taken as racist.
He said: “Those who know me would say I’m a little pedantic.
“So when Rodney wrote to challenge me about stormtroopers and blitzkrieg being synonymous with Nazis my reaction was: ‘No they’re not’.
“I saw it as a philosophical or factual disagreement.”
Mr Cook, who was referred to the Local Government Ombudsman, said he had used the “commonplace military terminology” referring to blitzkrieg and stormtroopers in relation to hardened activists who pursued an electoral advantage.
He told the hearing he simply wanted to remind members that democratic processes had been used to crush debate in pre-war Germany, as he said had happened at the budget meeting.
He said: “I had not even considered or thought about Rodney being Jewish, but thinking about it now I understand this thin line.
“But I was clearly aiming my comments at the Liberal Democrats of the party, not at an individual.”
Mr Berman earlier told the hearing the remarks followed correspondence with Mr Cook about his production of leaflets using the terms “blitzkrieg” and “stormtroopers” to describe the Liberal Democrats.
During that correspondence, Mr Berman said he had reminded Mr Cook of his Jewish background and of the pain caused by the insensitive remarks.
The council leader told the hearing: “I was brought up in the Jewish faith, knew people who had survived concentration camps and had conversations with relatives who believed they had lost someone close in those camps.
“As a child I suffered abuse about my religion, so anything that suggests you are like a group who persecuted, murdered and tortured millions is extremely distressing and inappropriate.”
Mr Berman said it was totally improper to compare the coalition with the Nazis as it had trivialised what Adolf Hitler’s regime had done, particularly as Cardiff is home to the largest Jewish community in Wales.
The hearing was told Mr Berman demanded an unreserved apology but Mr Cook insisted he had done nothing wrong and argued his comparisons predated the German Nazi era.
The hearing is expected to last three days.
Wales Online
