Conservative Association President suspended for comments about Muslims

Carola Godman Irvine, President of the Conservative Association in Lewes, has been suspended by her party after a series of comments she made about Muslims on her blog last year came to wider attention.

PoliticsHome reports:

Writing in the wake of the Manchester arena suicide bombing that killed 22 people just days before the general election last year, Ms Godman Irvine said: “Already they are raping and impregnating British girls and young women, ‘creating’ Muslim babies; just see what is happening in Rochdale.

“Let us hope that the 22 victims of the Manchester bomb have not died in vain. Perhaps this was the wake-up call which was needed…

We have been too cautious, polite, even perhaps afraid to act, while turning a blind eye and allowing vast areas of our cities to become unrecognisable as Britain.

Local planners have much to answer for by allowing vast mosques to be established which hold thousands. Would Christians be allowed to build vast cathedrals in Muslim countries? No, of course not.”

(As you might guess, her claim about Christian places of worship in Muslim countries isn’t true. It’s really not that hard to find examples of new places of Christian worship, and even other rather dramatic Christian religious symbols, being newly built in Muslim countries, including in the Gulf. Not to mention the touching story of Muslims paying for their Christian neighbours to have a new place of worship.)

But back to Carola Godman Irvine’s comments about Muslims:

In another post from January 2015, she shared an article said to be by German academic Dr Emanuel Tanay, which she said was “chilling but should not be ignored”.

The shared article claimed: “In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now dozens of ‘no-go’ zones within major cities across the country that the police force dare not intrude upon.”

And in a March 2016 post ahead of the EU referendum, she said 75 million “Muslim Turks” were set to be allowed into Britain “no questions asked”.

Untrue, and untrue again.

Bizarrely:

Ms Godman Irvine insisted she did not “write anything to offend anybody” and insisted the posts were historical.

I’m not sure how untrue things written within the last five years count as “historical”, and it’s pretty impressive to string together repeated insults of Muslims and then say you weren’t offending anyone.

As of current writing, the words all look to be still up on her blog.

Credit is due in one corner: on the news breaking, the Conservative Party promptly suspended her. A reminder again, given the ongoing debates about reforming the Liberal Democrat disciplinary processes, about the value in having a system that allows action to be swiftly initiated when something hits the media.