A former Green party councillor who was captured in a picture scrawling ‘Dickens racist’ on the wall of a museum dedicated pleaded not guilty in court as he felt it was a lawful act. Ian Driver who is 63 was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage after graffiti was plastered discovered on the outside of The Charles Dickens House Museum in Kent on Saturday evening.
Mr Driver, who was a Green Party councillor in Thanet until 2015, pleaded not guilty at Medway Magistrates Court to seven counts of criminal damage totalling £2,000 of damage.
UNN’s Oliver Down understands that Mr Driver confessed to targeting the museum, as well as graffitiing other locations, in a blog post. He has said ‘I’ve never hidden the fact that I did it, I grassed myself up – which must be a first!’.
The blog post read: ‘I selected the targets as they represent the deep-rooted institutional racism of Broadstairs Town and Thanet District councils and the Broadstairs Dickens Week and Folk Week charities who openly support, celebrate, and fund with public money, offensive blacked up Morris dancers, Uncle Mack’s blacked up Minstrel show memorial, and genocidal racists such as Charles Dickens and King Leopold of Belgium. My actions are nothing to do with the Black Lives Matter movement, of which I am a supporter, and are purely part of my own individual protest for which I alone am responsible’.
Mr Driver has said: ‘I will go to court and fight my case. If I had my way, the museum would be shut down’.
Editor-in-Chief | Carl D. Pearson has been involved in British politics and media from an early age, with the key knowledge of what it takes to run a news organisation for the 21st century. Mr Pearson, as Editor-in-chief, is responsible for supervising the daily tasks of publishing media and content to UNN’s website and various platforms.
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