A FORMER SNP councillor who won a £40,000 defamation payout last week has criticised party bosses for failing to tackle the toxic infighting in North Lanarkshire’s bitter Monklands McMafia turf war.
Julie McAnulty, a music teacher and church organist, was suspended by the party in February 2016 after being accused of racism.
Activist Sheena McCulloch, who works for MSP Richard Lyle, complained to SNP HQ that the councillor said the party needed to get rid of the “Pakis”. That complaint, written in Lyle’s constituency office before being sent to HQ and a dozen other people was leaked, almost immediately, to the Daily Record.
As soon as McAnulty was suspended by the party she was forced to stand down as a candidate in that year’s Holyrood elections.
There was an immediate backlash with furious supporters of McAnulty telling this paper the councillor was the victim of a ruthless smear campaign. It was, they believed, an attempt to damage her reputation and to intimidate her.
Last week, Lord Uist, sitting at the Court of Session, agreed, calling it “outrageous”.
Speaking to the Sunday Post, McAnulty said the SNP should never have let the clearly malicious complaint get this far.
“It should never have got to the stage which it did and could have been very easily dealt with by the SNP’s own internal procedures. For whatever reason they were not willing to do that, so I had no option but to take the action that I did to clear my name.”
McAnulty said: “It has been very rough. It has been three years and I never thought I was going to see the end of it.
“I knew politically I was finished at that point, but I had to consider that any decent employer has an equality and diversity policy and if I am accused of racism, it was going to affect my future and being able to go and get a job.
“The stress of it has been unbelievable. It has been such an unpleasant, such a public thing.”
In his judgement Lord Uist said he found McCulloch “to be an unforthcoming witness” who was “not averse to acting dishonestly”.
The SNP declined to comment.
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