I was hounded out by a Left-wing witch-hunt, says ‘race-slur’ adviser
‘Right-wing voices are demonised’
A GOVERNMENT adviser who was sacked over alleged racist slurs yesterday claimed he had been the victim of a Left-wing ‘witch-hunt’.
Sir Roger Scruton was sacked from his unpaid role as a housing adviser earlier this month after a magazine interview reported him making Islamophobic and anti- Semitic remarks, as well as offensive comments about the Chinese.
However a tape of the full interview with the New Statesman has now emerged, which Sir Roger claimed shows the extent to which his words have been misrepresented.
The conservative thinker said he was unfairly accused of ‘thought crimes’ and warned Right-wing voices like his are being ‘caricatured and demonised’ in an attempt to silence them.
He also claimed he was abandoned by the Government and Conservative MPs without any attempt to check if the accusations levelled against him were correct.
Ministers are now facing growing pressure to reinstate Sir Roger to his role at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
In the wake of the interview, deputy editor of the New Statesman George Eaton – who wrote the piece – admitted he had truncated some of Sir Roger’s remarks in his Twitter posts, but defended the article.
He also deleted an Instagram post which showed him drinking from a bottle of champagne, with the caption: ‘The feeling when you get Right-wing racist and homophobe Roger Scruton sacked as a Tory government adviser.’
Sir Roger had accused the New Statesman of taking his comments out of context and demanded a tape of the interview be released. The magazine refused.
But the recording then emerged and was played in segments to Sir Roger on BBC Radio 4’s Today yesterday morning. Sir Roger told the programme he was ‘ not very impressed’ by his treatment, but warned it was symptomatic of a wider movement to marginalise Right-wing thinkers.
He said: ‘There has been throughout this country and throughout Europe an attempt to silence the conservative voice. We get identified, caricatured and demonised and made to look like we are some kind of sinister fascist, racist kind of people.’
The 75-year-old said he was devastated by the accusations of racism, saying he had faced the ‘complete destruction of my career and identity and personality’.
He added: ‘This kind of witch-hunt of people on the Right is something that has got worse in our society.’
He said he did not think his remarks were ‘intemperate’ but conceded his description of ‘huge tribes of Muslims from the Middle East’ was ‘not a very good phrase’ if taken out of context.
Several of Sir Roger’s supporters have called for him to be reinstated. Historian Niall Ferguson tweeted: ‘Now that the mendacity of George Eaton has been exposed, will the Government reinstate Sir Roger and apologise for the shameful way he was treated?’
The New Statesman, which previously said it had launched an internal review over the alleged misrepresentation, declined to comment.