Former SNP councillor wins £40k for ‘racist’ claim

A FORMER SNP councillor has won £40,000 in damages from a party activist who falsely claimed she made a racist remark during a car journey.

Julie McAnulty brought an action for defamation against Sheena McCulloch after she sent an email to senior party figures alleging she had made a derogatory remark about Pakistanis.

Details of the email were leaked to a newspaper and Miss McAnulty was suspended from the party and dropped as a potential Holyrood candidate.

In the email, Miss McCulloch, then an assistant to Nationalist MSP Richard Lyle, claimed that Miss McAnulty had said they needed to get rid of ‘the P**is’ from the party during a car journey while canvassing for a local candidate in 2016.

In the email, Miss McCulloch wrote: ‘I outlined immediately that I was not happy with her comment as I know and respect many Muslim members locally.’

Miss McAnulty, of Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, launched a defamation action against Miss McCulloch at the Court of Session, saying the comments attributed to her were ‘false and calumnious’.

Miss McCulloch said the content of her email was substantially true, but Lord Uist said it was ‘implausible and inherently unlikely the pursuer would have made the statement attributed to her’ to someone she knew was aligned with an opposing faction in the local party.

The judge said he considered the email was circulated to others out of malice and ill-will ‘in order to cause as much damage as possible to the pursuer’.

He awarded Miss McAnulty, a North Lanarkshire councillor between 2012 and 2017, £40,000 in damages. She had initially sought £100,000.