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A Conservative councillor and the party’s former Chair in Cornwall has been accused of “old-fashioned racism” after suggesting that Britain cannot sustain the “volume of young black males” she claimed was “flooding” the country and “jeopardising” safety.
Cornwall Conservative Councillor Pauline Giles backed a petition for “mass deportations” on Wednesday by expelled Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe. Cllr Giles is also a previous chair of Cornwall Council.
In her Facebook post endorsing his petition, she wrote: “If you want mass deportation of illegals in dinghies sign this petition! We cannot sustain the volume of young black males flooding our country. It jeopardises the security of our country and is slowly bankrupting us!”
Asked why their skin colour mattered, Cllr Giles stood by the comments and told Byline Times: “Because they are [black], aren’t they? I mean, they are coming over in boats, and I’ve seen the boats. I’m not making a big thing of this. I’m not prejudiced because I have friends of many colours. You see what’s coming across on the boats, and that’s what I am sort of registering.” However, shortly after Byline Times called, the Facebook post was deleted.
She went on: “I have helped a lot of people in my past. When there was the Ukrainian war [sic], I was one of the ones that spearheaded helping them and everything else. This is not about being prejudiced. This is about my concern for what is happening. And I really worry about young girls. If you have a look, it looks like these girls are being attacked by people from these boats.”
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Asked if there were any ‘small boats’ coming into Cornwall or if it was an issue in her ward of St Blazey, she said: “No, it’s not a problem for Cornwall at the moment. But the thing is, they’re coming in at such a rate that at some point they’re going to get put here somewhere, aren’t they?”
And asked if she’d commented on recent cases of sexual assault and rape by white people in Cornwall itself, she replied: “No.”
Presented with several such cases of assaults by white people in Cornwall itself, she said: “Anybody that gets assaulted is bad, and I’m not going to make a big issue with this [post]. The fact remains, they are coming over in masses and in totals, and that is my main concern – that we don’t have any background checks on these people. They’re just appearing and they’re not adhering to our laws or systems or beliefs.”
She added that the post was from her “personal” page, though it is public. “What I put on there is my belief and nothing to do with any other members of the Conservative group in Cornwall,” Cllr Giles said.
But she also said that her Facebook feed was full of stories of assaults by black people, as was the news.
“Whilst you say that, you know, there are white people and yellow people and everybody else [doing crimes], on Facebook and on social media, it is pushed all the time in front of us, isn’t it?”
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“A lot of the newspapers are the ones that are putting these stories up. And foolishly, I believe them, because they are a national institution in our country and they should be reporting the truth,” she said. The Conservative politician added that she had not seen the reported cases of assaults in Cornwall by white people
Noah Law, the local Labour MP for St Austell and Newquay, told Byline Times: “In the 1960s a young black male ca…