The Conservatives have suspended their candidate in an upcoming Havering Council by-election following a Romford Recorder investigation.
Ed Green was suspended by Conservative Party’s national headquarters after concerns were raised over his social media activity.
Havering Islamic Cultural Centre had called for his deselection over “Islamophobic” material posted on Facebook.
Mr Green’s posts included an image of a Muslim woman, edited to give her a black eye and a missing tooth, which said: “I did not want a hijab, then my husband convinced me.”
He also shared a post about two Muslim men being charged with offences, captioned: “Import Muhammad; gets Muhammad.”
Other posts included offensive caricatures of Muslim men and repeated messages linking Muslim men to rape and paedophilia.
He wrote that the criminal justice system was “siding with racist paedophile rape gangs against the indigenous population”.
Tahir Sharif, from the Havering Islamic Cultural Centre in Romford, said: “It’s an indictment of the selection process of the Conservative Party.”
Suspended
The posts came to light on the same day that the author of a report on Islamophobia in the Conservative Party said the party was taking “forever” to tackle the problem.
Conservative headquarters acted swiftly when the Recorder asked questions about Mr Green’s selection for next month’s Upminster by-election, following the death of councillor Linda Hawthorn.
He was immediately “suspended from the party pending investigation”.
It was too late to remove him from the ballot paper, but if elected he will not be allowed to sit as a Conservative councillor.
“I think it’s abhorrent that somebody with his views can be selected,” said Mr Sharif. “I can’t understand the screening process that would let that happen.
“Our concern is that this is a changing borough. How is he going to represent us all if those are his views?”
Gillian Ford, deputy leader of Havering Council, echoed those concerns, saying: “We have different groups within the workforce. I’m not sure how this would sit with them, hearing these sort of comments and having to work with the person who made them.”
The Hornchurch and Upminster Conservative Association did not respond to the Recorder’s questions about its vetting processes.
All mention of Mr Green has disappeared from its website, but he was listed in December as the association's “deputy chairman political”.
Covid
“It’s not just Islamophobia,” said Mr Sharif.
“The Conservative Party suspended an MP for his views on Covid, so how can the same party let somebody like this stand for election?”
Mr Green has repeatedly posted in opposition to the Covid-19 vaccination.
When Tory MP Andrew Bridgen had the whip removed for spreading Covid misinformation, Mr Green shared a “Justice for Andrew Bridgen” petition.
He said most people hospitalised with Covid-19 were to blame because they were “fat and lazy”, adding that it was “more flan-demic than pandemic”.
He posted a photo of himself at a Covid protest and twice used the online hashtag #NoAmnesty, popularised by Covid-19 conspiracy theorists, demanding prosecution for those who colluded in what they call the “scamdemic”.
Mr Green wrote on Facebook that people who “promoted” Covid mitigations “should be made [to] pay the price.”
He also wrote: “The architects of lockdown and of coerced vaccination should all be in jail with their assets seized.”
When a gay journalist criticised anti-vaxxers, Mr Green suggested he lived “a monkeypox prone life”.
“Totally inappropriate”
Other comments on his social media pages have drawn criticism.
He referred to climate activist Greta Thunberg as a “little autistic messiah” and shared other posts ridiculing her.
The Havering mother of an autistic child, who volunteers with an autism charity, called the comment “totally inappropriate”.
Mr Green posted on his Facebook in 2021 that he was “exposing friends to extremist content”.
When a black woman was insulted at a royal event and received an apology, Mr Green wrote online that she was “a race baiting attention whore”.
He also posted laughing faces alongside the comment: “Wondering if any whiners in former colonies are going to threaten to dig up their railways and send the [SIC] back?”
He has shared an image of 12 white women with European flags painted on their faces, captioned: “Nationalism is beautiful”.
Embarrassingly for the Conservatives, Mr Green has also written online that prime minister Rishi Sunak is “clueless and filled with contempt for those who actually work”, and “isn’t fit to serve as an MP, let alone as our PM.”
Mr Green did not respond to requests for comment.
The Upminster by-election will take place on Thursday, August 10.
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