A CORNISH parish councillor has been caught on film delivering what has been dubbed as an “anti-semitic, holocaust denying rant” at a far-right protest in Truro on May 24.
Protester took to the street of cities and towns all over the UK at the weekend as part of the Great British National Strike, a campaign against the Labour government.
The national strike participants gathered on Lemon Quay, Truro, on Saturday where they were met by ‘anti-fascist’ demonstrators, who attended to protest against the strike gathering.
Video footage from the protest captured Cllr Peter Lawrence telling members of the anti-fascist group Cornwall Resists that technically antisemitism didn’t exist and that the Holocaust had been “massively over-exaggerated”.
When asked if anti-semitism exists he responded: "Technically, no".
Cllr Lawrence represents the British Democrats on Mylor Parish Council after he took the seat unopposed earlier this year. His electoral victory marked the British Democrats’ first in the South West region. He also formerly tried to be elected as the area's MP.
In the video, Lawrence went on to say: “World Jewry declared war on Germany in the Second World War. They were bankrupting them from the Treaty of Versailles, they were blockading the food and everything.
“They were starving them. The Jews, who are communist, were responsible for a lot of problems in the Weimar Republic, were frustrating the efforts of the restoration of the German people to have self-determination. Hitler didn’t have a beef with the Jews. He just didn’t want them to disrupt what was going on.”
When asked whether “Hitler was right to kill so many Jews”, Cllr Lawrence replied: “From what I’ve read and the revisionist historians I have read cannot find a single order from Adolf Hitler calling for the execution of the Jews”.
Reacting to Cllr Lawrence’s comments, a spokesperson for Cornwall Resists said: “This is the ugly and dangerous racist hatred that was on display in Truro today. No-one in the crowd challenged or disagreed with Lawrence’s antisemitism. It was truly sickening and it was particularly sickening for the Jewish members of our group.”
Cllr Lawrence has been asked for a response.