Parish councillor David Darling and borough councillor Colin Pease, both in their 70s, provoked each other over a local dispute to the point of punches being thrown. An investigation is set to be held after the incident in Darlington, which reportedly saw scratches, bleeding and a £325 pair of glasses smashed. It was perhaps one of the messiest council meetings ever and joins a growing list of occasions where local democracy has descended into chaos.
Briercliffe Parish Council Allotments Meeting is not a title that screams excitement, so it was shocking to all involved when a full-blown fist fight broke out in 2014. With a Christmas tree in the background, the Lancashire village’s committee was running through some orders of business involving sheep grazing (obviously) when attendees became enraged. The chair of the meeting was accused of “evading” before a member of the public got into a verbal scrap with another councillor. But the real action then broke out at the back of the room when two men squared up to each other and threw punches.
The brawl ended with the chairman shouting “everybody out, meeting’s over!”. Warning this clip does, as you can imagine, contains strong language!. There is something very British about a local dispute at a planning meeting – but the UK does not have exclusivity in this area. Just last year, Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman passionately defended his council’s spending as accusations of racism and sexism flew around the town hall.
When opposition leader Marc Francis was called a “racist”, the speaker could not calm down proceedings and needed to call in security to intervene and remove people. In November 2021, Maldon Council descended into chaos after independent member Chrisy Morris took issue with a minute’s silence being observed to honour late local MP David Amess. He became very angry at not being allowed to voice his point of order. “You have no authority over me,” he shouted. And at the chairman’s threat to remove him, he called members “idiots”.
“You can’t make me leave the meeting, you idiots,” he shouted. The meeting was closed after 20 minutes when the chairman had tired of the constant interruption. And most famously, the parish council meeting to end all parish council meetings. In December 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the Cheshire council had a planning meeting that ended up going viral after the non-elected commissioner, Jackie Weaver, took charge of the Zoom call.
