LONDON, 20 October 2006 — Controversial London Mayor Ken Livingstone conjured up another Houdini act yesterday when he won a High Court appeal against a finding that he brought his mayoral office into disrepute over comments made to a Jewish journalist working for the London Evening Standard last year as he left a reception at City Hall, likening him to a Nazi concentration camp guard.
High Court Justice Andrew Collins berated the Adjudication Panel for England over its verdict in February 2006 when it found the mayor’s outburst breached the Greater London Authority code of conduct, finding him guilty of being “insensitive and offensive” and suspending him from his office for four weeks starting March 1. At the time Livingstone said that the decision to suspend him “strikes at the heart of democracy” and that “elected politicians should only be able to be removed by the voters or for breaking the law.”
Last week, Justice Collins quashed the four-week suspension from office the panel imposed on Livingstone. He also ordered that Livingstone’s full legal costs of 250,000 pounds be paid by the Office of London’s Ethical Standards. The mayor earlier warned that he faced bankruptcy if he were to lose the case. The case could have been avoided had the mayor apologized to reporter Oliver Feingold. But it was blown out of all proportions largely due to the politics of Livingstone and his relationship with certain sections of the right-wing media and the London Jewish community.
Justice Collins said that although the mayor’s remarks were offensive and insensitive, he had the right to express his views “as forcibly as he thought fit.” In addition, the mayor at the time of making the remarks was not on official duty.
“Surprising as it may perhaps appear to some, the right of freedom of speech does extend to abuse. He should have realized it would not only give great offense to him but was likely to be regarded as an entirely inappropriate observation by Jews in general, and those who had survived the Holocaust in particular,” the judge said.
“There is a danger in regarding any misconduct as particularly affecting the reputation of the office rather than the man,” he added.
The judge said a decision to suspend the mayor for four weeks was “clearly wrong”, stressing the importance of recognizing the distinction between “the man and the office.”
He said people were entitled to expect Livingstone would conduct himself “to a high standard suitable to his office.”
“That may well be so, but it does not mean that, if he falls below that high standard, the office as well as he are brought into disrepute,” he added.
As such, he was not persuaded the office had also been brought into disrepute.
Livingstone all along protested that he is not anti-Semitic and would have apologized if the Board of Deputies of British Jews had asked him to.
The Board instead filed a complaint about his comment to local government watchdog the Standards Board for England, which precipitated the panel hearing.
“I think it is an incredibly sensible judgment. It brings a lot of common sense to approaching the balance between freedom of speech and the various roles of the authorities in all of this,” commented the mayor after the verdict.
