Councillor's racist death threat callsent hate mail

Cllr Jan Cosgrove was told by an abusive telephone caller to get out of town or be killed.

The chilling message also made reference to Cllr Cosgrove's Polish heritage.

The warning was received by Cllr Cosgrove's former wife, Pat, who was in his Longford Road home with their eldest son, Matthew, at 5.15pm on Tuesday.

Cllr Cosgrove, who is a Labour member of Arun District Council for Bognor Pevensey, was out at the time. He said the caller was a man with a voice which soundly '˜reasonably local'.

He has reported the sinister call to council chief executive Ian Sumnall and to the Arun district's top police officer, Chief Inspector Brian Bracher.

'I am annoyed, obviously, by this but not cowed,' stated a defiant Cllr Cosgrove yesterday. 'The debate will go on even more intensely now.'

The phone call intensified the ongoing discussion about the impact on Bognor of an estimated 6,000 eastern Europeans in the past three years.

Cllr Cosgrove has been among the main contributors about the issue to the Bognor Regis Observer's letters page in recent months.

His death threat dramatically increased the tension which surrounds May's local government elections in central Bognor. The launch of the right-wing British National Party earlier this month with four candidates in the Orchard and Pevensey wards has focused attention on the arrival of the economic migrants.

But there has been nothing in Bognor's political history to compare with the unpleasant drama of the past three days.

It began at noon on Sunday when Labour town councillor Roger Nash (Marine) was the subject of an abusive phone call. His wife, Pauline, answered the phone. She was met with what Cllr Nash described as a barrage of words which were '˜pretty abusive, very upsetting and very racist'.

Monday night saw his fellow Bognor town councillor Michelle White (Pevensey), as well as Cllr Cosgrove, receive vile hate mail.

Cllr Ms White has been another frequent contributor to the Observer's letters pages defending the rights of eastern Europeans to settle in Bognor.

Both the councillors' envelopes and contents have been passed on to the police, through Arun's electoral officials, for investigation. Cllr Ms White opened her hate mail while the town council's meeting on Monday was starting. She was visibly shocked and upset as she read the contents of the envelope which had been sent to the town council's offices at the town hall.

The sheet of A4 paper stated: '˜Ethnic cleansing coming soon to this area!' in stencilled capitals and depicted a Nazi swastika.

An anti-semitic remark was also featured along with the website of an American neo-Nazi group.

She immediately handed over the message to town council officials to forward to Mr Sumnall, who also is the returning officer for the local elections. Cllr Ms White said afterwards: 'This is not only shockingly anti-semitic and racist, it is also a barely veiled threat on my personal safety.

'I refuse to be intimidated by threats. I owe a duty to speak out on behalf of the residents of Bognor and will continue to speak against racism and fascists who believe everything contrary to what hard-working people believe.

'This sort of thing regrettably happens when the BNP appear. Even if they are not directly responsible for this piece of hate mail, wherever they preach their message of hate the bigots and racists come out of the woodwork.

'Their presence, as this clearly demonstrates, is damaging to our community and is a wake up call to all decent working people of Bognor that no one can stand by and let these people get a foothold in Bognor.'

She vowed to carry on her electoral campaigning: 'The intention was clearly to scare me into silence but this only re-inforces my determination to do all I can to work for Bognor's good, and if that means me taking on the BNP that is what I'll do.'

Cllr Cosgrove's identical envelope was sent directly to Arun to be passed to the police without any excess fingerprints.

He said: 'It's not the first time it has happened to me. I received similar sort of stuff when I was a councillor in the north west 30 years ago for expressing my democratic opinions in public.

'This is exactly what I would expect when the BNP appear. They are a public face which hides a load of splinter organisations, many of them very dubious indeed.

'The BNP attract a motley crew of individuals and that's why they are not welcome in this town and should be totally rejected by local people.'

Mike Witchell, one of the BNP's election candidates, said: 'We certainly do not encourage people to send hate mail. That is outlawed in our party and not what we stand for.

'It's disgraceful and disgusting that someone should send hate mail. Certainly, nobody in the BNP would dream of doing that.

'We will be fighting our elections on our policies and making a positive contribution to the elections. The people of Bognor deserve better than gutter politics.'

l Arun District Council's senior member for community safety, Cllr Roger Elkins, said the council was doing all it could to help Sussex Police with its investigation into the racial incidents. 'We will pass all relevant mail or other evidence that comes to our attention immediately to the police,' he stated.