A FORMER council leader’s controversial Mosque speech likely ‘swayed’ some people to vote Conservative, it has been revealed in a report that was heavily redacted for years until now.
Most of the redactions of an independent investigation into former Royal Borough leader Simon Dudley and former acting chief executive Russell O’Keefe’s conduct during the 2019 local election have been withdrawn following a three-year legal fight.
Richard Lingard, who conducted the probe in 2019, was looking into a wave of code of conduct complaints about Mr Dudley after he gave an infamous speech at the Maidenhead Mosque on April 26 during the pre-election period.
Mr Dudley, who suddenly resigned after May’s election, said to the members of the Mosque that they should vote Conservative as the council was negotiating with the neighbouring Ivy Leaf Club to surrender their lease and would give it to the Mosque in order for them to expand.
This was factually incorrect as talks with club members ceased in September 2018 due to a lack of suitable relocation sites.
However, Mr O’Keefe was producing a strictly confidential draft agreement for the Mosque to acquire that land if ever the Ivy Leaf surrendered their lease to the council. This was sent to the Maidenhead Mosque’s Islamic Trust just two days before the speech.
Mr Dudley was accused of using private council information he had access to and had ‘conspired’ with Mr O’Keefe to mislead a specific community to obtain votes for the Tories.
Mr O’...
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