Richard Barnbrook

"In view of the Tribunal’s finding that the Code of Conduct had not been engaged any findings reached by the Standards Committee (and whether or not adjudged by this Tribunal as being supported by evidence) are now without basis. The Appellant’s appeal against the findings and sanction are therefore upheld."

Born in Catford, Barnbrook had his first public art exhibition – of landscape watercolours – in 1971 at the age of ten. He attended an art foundation course for a year at Grimsby College of Technology in 1981.

When Barnbrook's term as a member of the Greater London Assembly expired in May 2012 he did not seek re-election.

Barnbrook challenged for the leadership of the BNP in July 2010 but, like the other challengers, Butler and Adams, failed to obtain the very large number of nominations required of a challenger to trigger an election. Barnbrook resigned the BNP whip in August 2010, following his demand for an inquiry into allegations of corruption and fiscal mismanagement against the party leadership. He was then expelled from the party and, from August 2010 to 2012 sat in the London Assembly as an independent member. While a member of the BNP he voted in favour of allowing minorities to join the party membership.

Richard Barnbrook appealed against the outcome of the earlier hearings. He was represented by Patrick Harrington (the General Secretary of Solidarity – The Union for British Workers, acting in a personal capacity) at the appeal and Mr James Goudie QC acted for the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham. The appeal was heard on 21 January 2010 and the decision announced on 18 February 2010. At the hearing, Harrington made a number of submissions on behalf of the appellant. Two cases were cited:- Mullaney –v- The Adjudication Panel for England [2009] EWHC 72 (Admin) and Livingstone -v- The Adjudication Panel for England [2006] EWHC 2533 (Admin).

As a member of the Greater London Authority, Barnbrook was invited by Her Majesty the Queen to the Buckingham Palace garden party which he attended in 2009.

A hearing held by the standards committees of both the assembly and council was adjourned on 21 July 2009 when Barnbrook failed to appear, after being given sick leave on grounds of stress. He had also failed to provide written evidence. On 24 September 2009, Barnbrook was suspended for one month from Barking and Dagenham Council for bringing it into disrepute. Barnbrook said he had made "unintentional inaccuracies" in the interview on knife crime due to his dyslexia and background noise. He subsequently posted an apology on his blog which stated: "I apologise for giving out this information based on anecdotal reports and thereafter for not ensuring that the videos were removed or at least amended, once I knew the information to be incorrect. I have a passionate interest in the scourge of knife-crime which affects our whole community and will continue to speak out on the issue. I have no wish, however, to stoke fear of crime and realise the importance of conveying accurate information. I will seek to work far more closely with the Police and other agencies in future to ensure that I am able to do this".

Barnbrook was the BNP's candidate for the 2008 London mayoral election, receiving 69,710 first preference votes (2.84% of the total valid first preference votes cast) and 128,609-second preference votes (5.23% of the total valid second preference votes cast).

In September 2008, Barnbrook appeared in an interview in which he was asked about knife crime. The interview appeared on his website, YouTube and his blog on the Daily Telegraph website. Barnbrook states during the recording that "In Barking and Dagenham alone three weeks ago, there was a murder of a young girl. We don't know who's done it, her girlfriend was attacked inside an educational institute. Again, two weeks ago there was another attack by knives on the streets of Barking and Dagenham where two people were murdered." Councillor Valerie Rush subsequently complained to the Greater London Authority that she knew the statements to be false as the alleged murders never happened, and accused Barnbrook of bringing his office into disrepute. In May 2009, a joint investigation by the Greater London Authority and Barking and Dagenham council concluded that Barnbrook had brought "his office and the respective authorities into disrepute" as a result of the interview.

Barnbrook was engaged to the ballerina Simone Clarke. However, in August 2008 it was reported that he had been seeing a Finnish nurse, Annika Tavilampi, whom he had met over the Internet. The relationship has since ended. In statements made before he met Clarke, however, Barnbrook was quoted as saying, apropos her relationship with Yat-Sen Chang and their daughter, Olivia, "I'm not opposed to mixed marriages but their children are washing out the identity of this country's indigenous people." He later said that, should he and Clarke get married, "her child will be my child." In November 2008, he stated that they were no longer engaged.

He then worked as an artist and art teacher/lecturer. His art projects included writing and directing the theatre piece Human Soup and the film HMS Discovery: A Love Story, the latter of which received substantial media coverage as a result of its scenes of male nudity and homoerotic themes, and which was described as "gay pornography", but which Barnbrook insists was nothing more than an art film and certainly not homoerotic. In 2000, Barnbrook set up and was appointed managing director and artistic designer to the Jubilee Woods Trust, which he established to create new woodland plantations with the theme of environment, education and art, one for every county in the UK, to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee, to which Sting was one of the principal benefactors and Sir David Attenborough showed support. Barnbrook received royal acclaim for his designs for heraldic planting formations, but only one of these came to fruition in Sefton, north Liverpool. When Barnbrook's connections with the BNP came to public notice, Barnbrook was dismissed before the project could be completed, and none of his other designs got off the drawing board.

Previously an activist for the Labour Party, Barnbrook joined the BNP in 1999. He was a BNP candidate in the 2005 general election. He received 4,916 votes (16.9%) in Barking coming third and only 27 votes behind the Conservative candidate, Keith Prince. The constituency was won by Margaret Hodge.

Barnbrook married an American in 1998; the couple separated in 2004 due to personal differences and were divorced in 2008.

Film, theatre and video installations between 1993–1988 include:

From 1982 to 1985, he studied at the Royal Academy of Arts, where he obtained a first class diploma,. During that time he attended Limoges College of Art and Craft on a minor scholarship and while there gained his first lecturing position (1984). He was awarded an interim Master of Arts degree from the California Institute of Arts and a PGCE from Greenwich University. In 1985, Barnbrook won a research and lecturing UNESCO scholarship to Silpakorn University in Thailand. He went on to lecture in Thailand, Europe and across the USA. In 1989, he was awarded an EC Film Award (fellowship) from Braunschweig University of Art in Germany. He completed his studies in 1995.

Barnbrook's major painting and installation exhibitions between 1971 and 2009 include:

Richard Barnbrook (born 24 February 1961) is a British politician and a former member of the London Assembly. He was elected as a British National Party (BNP) list candidate in the 2008 election, though he resigned the BNP whip in August 2010 and subsequently sat as an independent. Barnbrook was a councillor, and leader (2006–08), then deputy leader (2008–10), of the BNP group on Barking and Dagenham London Borough Council. He represented Goresbrook ward. Barnbrook retired from politics in May 2012.