A Reform UK councillor in Sunderland has been sentenced to a 12-month community order with 150 hours of unpaid work for a Facebook post about Nigerians that a district judge found grossly offensive.
Glenn Gibbins, 66, was elected to Sunderland City Council in May. In March 2024 he wrote on Facebook: “Carnt believe the amount of nigerians in town… should melt them all down and fill in the pot holes!!”
At a trial before District Judge Zoe Passfield at South Tyneside Magistrates’ Court in South Shields on Monday, Gibbins said the remark was meant to be “cheeky,” “naughty” and “tongue in cheek.” He said the post was not meant to be taken literally. “It was just a bit of fun,” he told the court.
Prosecution and defense agreed that the social media post was offensive. The question before the court was whether it was grossly offensive. Passfield ruled that it breached the Malicious Communications Act and crossed that threshold. She said Gibbins’ “intention was to be grossly offensive to Nigerians as a result of his displeasure at the number of them in the city.”
Prosecutor Emma Dowling said the post was talking about “exterminating” a group of people. “To say that it’s not to be taken seriously is to disregard history,” she said. “The comment about melting them down conjures up despicable images.”
Adam King, defending, said his client would appeal the decision to the crown court. He argued the post was not politically motivated and described it as a “stupid, unfunny joke. We come across stupid, unfunny jokes all the time.” He pointed to jokes by professional comedians that did not lead to criminal proceedings: Jo Brand on the BBC in 2019, who joked about throwing battery acid on Nigel Farage, and Jimmy Carr, who made a joke about the Holocaust and Gypsies on his Netflix special. King said courts in the UK had also asserted the importance of free speech in “full-throttled, uncompromising terms.”
Godwin Ejeh, leader of the Nigerian community in Sunderland, was called as a witness and recalled calling an emergency meeting of Nigerians after the post came to light. He said the mood of the meeting was “chaotic” because of the “level of distress.” People were concerned for their own safety and the safety of their children. They wanted an apology and decided a protest should take place outside the city hall. Ejeh, a Liberal Democrat council candidate in May, said the comments should never have been made. “We are talking about humans. It’s not something people should play with,” he said.
Gibbins, who ran a mobile personalized gifts and T-shirt kiosk in a Sunderland shopping center, said he would not have described himself as a political person before this year. He said he believed he was approached by Reform in March to stand as a councillor because of a T-shirt bearing Nigel Farage’s image that he had displayed on a mannequin at his stall. He had been asked to print the shirt by someone who had been drinking all day in a nearby pub. That person was “clearly intoxicated,” Gibbins said, and forgot to collect the shirt, so he put it on the mannequin.
When Reform called to ask whether he would run as a councillor, he saw it as a way of getting some income during the usual summer lull in his business. “They explained they were looking for a candidate. I didn’t even know councillors got paid. I thought it would tide me over,” he said.
King told the court that Reform “would do well to pay more attention to the people they put forward for election.”
Gibbins said he wrote the post after a couple of beers and that the words were not his own. He had been trying to repost something he had read but failed, so he typed the words himself. About six friends responded with laughter, thumbs up and heart emojis.
Gibbins said he had been suspended by Reform, then reinstated, and is now suspended again.