Norwich City football steward wins unfair dismissal case
A former football club steward who sent an inappropriate image of two politicians to another staff member has had his claim for unfair dismissal upheld.Norwich City Football Club (NCFC) dismissed Gennaro Romano in November 2023 for breaching its disciplinary policies, a position that the tribunal found to be "unfair and unreasonable".Mr Romano had "repeatedly apologised" for his "genuine mistake" of forwarding images of Diane Abbott MP and Nicola Sturgeon MSP alongside comments about the comedian Russell Brand.NCFC said it would not comment on the outcome of the tribunal which found the club's disciplinary process was "riddled with unfairness".
The tribunal heard that Mr Romano had worked as a steward for NCFC without a contract in his spare time since 2011 and had an "unblemished record". In September 2023 Mr Romano attended a meeting with the club where he was accused of sending "messages of an inappropriate nature" to Neil Hunter, the head of Norwich City's academy operations.Mr Romano said he had not meant to send the messages to Mr Hunter and it had been intended for a close friend with a similar name.He told the tribunal that the pictures were "not nice", that he understood they were "wrong" and had apologised a number of times throughout the process."We don't understand what further or more comprehensive apology [the club] could reasonably expect," the judges wrote in their summary.
The judges added there was nothing in the club's disciplinary policy stating that an employee who sends a private message outside work was potentially committing an act of gross misconduct and described the club's interpretation of its own policy as "Orwellian".Following an investigation at the time, the club accepted the mistake was "genuine" but said "the claimant had not shown sufficient understanding or remorse", a statement that Mr Romano said "he strongly disputed". "It does not define me, these two pictures," he told the club's disciplinary hearing in October 2023.Despite this, the club dismissed him, which he appealed against later that month."[At] both meetings I was confused," Mr Romano said. The tribunal judges agreed and said it was "hardly surprising" as "the approach and questioning of the respondent [NCFC] was inherently confusing".The tribunal heard that a positive character reference had been ignored and that Mr Romano's line manager was not spoken to for context about him and his general conduct. The tribunal agreed with Mr Romano: "We consider [the club's] position to be an unfair and unreasonable one." They upheld his claim of unfair dismissal but dismissed a claim of race discrimination on the grounds of him being Italian and English being his second language."We consider he became confused because the approach and questioning by the respondent was inherently confusing," they said.There was "no evidence" he was treated less favourably on the grounds of his race.NCFC declined to comment when approached by the BBC.
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Thank heavens for Louise Casey. A report this week by the Baroness of Awkward Truths, which found that public bodies covered up horrific evidence about Pakistani-origin rape gangs 'for fear of appearing racist', has forced another humiliating reversal on Sir Keir Starmer. The smell of burning rubber is never far from our handbrake-turn Prime Minister, who has now accepted Casey's recommendation for a national inquiry. He had insisted that wanting such an investigation into those heinous crimes, the worst scandal in British history no less, was evidence you were marginally to the Right of Genghis Khan, or possibly even Tony Blair. Some 364 MPs shamefully voted against a statutory inquiry, including Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips who couldn't do enough for the traumatised victims until she stabbed them in the front. Baroness Casey's findings brought back an emotional encounter I had as I was leaving an event earlier this year. 'Forgive me for asking, Miss Pearson, but what happened to the British men?' The silver-haired American in sports jacket and tie in front of me had a concerned look on his face. I had just appeared on a panel discussing the Pakistani rape gangs chaired by Mark Steyn, who had campaigned relentlessly for their victims when he was a presenter on GB News. Survivors Sammy Woodhouse and Samantha Smith, my fellow panellists, had told the international audience about the ordeal they, and thousands of other British girls, had lived through. Not just being raped and tortured as children, but later stigmatised as prostitutes, criminals and liars in their twenties when they finally plucked up courage to speak out. Sammy recalled that police in Rotherham colluded openly with her abuser, Arshid Hussain, buying his drugs and tipping him off when he was about to have his collar felt. When officers found Sammy in bed with 'Ash', a 24-year-old British Pakistani, they arrested her for possessing an offensive weapon (which was his). The serial rapist with a rumoured string of more than 50 under-age girls in his highly-profitable harem was not held by police. Sammy was 14 at the time and pregnant. Still a child, then, although childhood and the bubbly, bright little girl who dreamed of being a professional dancer were long gone. After those two brave, articulate women up on stage finished telling their stories of almost surreal depravity, Steyn's audience – Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians, Americans, Brits – sat in horrified silence. Not quite silence; a lot of people were crying. A question hung in the incredulous air. How could the UK have allowed such monstrosities to happen to its kids and then allow it to be covered up for years until victims-turned-campaigners, like the two Samanthas, fought tooth and nail to bring it to public attention? Clearly, that's what was bothering the American. He was desperate to understand why British men had not protected their girls. 'See, where I come from, if they'd done that we'd have picked up our guns and…' I nodded. (To be fair, in the UK, when the Pakistani groomers briefly targeted Sikh girls, outraged Sikh men picked up baseball bats and taught them a lesson.) What to say? How do you account for a warped ideology that has taken hold in your country, a fatal blend of cultural incompatibility on the one hand and institutional cowardice and fear of 'Islamophobia' on the other? 'Many of the girls were in care or they came from troubled homes, so often they didn't have fathers to help them,' I began falteringly. 'Sammy's dad did try to rescue his daughter from a house where she was trafficked and police threatened to arrest him, not the groomers.' 'What the hell?!,' exclaimed the American. 'Exactly. What the hell. It's really to do with political correctness,' I went on. 'The Labour Party, which ran most of the towns where the grooming gangs operated, became dependent on Muslim votes and they were very reluctant to have the Pakistani community criticised. So the white, working-class girls (' who must have been asking for it') were not believed even though what was happening to them was evil. And anyone who dared to speak up for them was damned as 'racist', which was hugely damaging obviously, so mainly people stayed silent. Essentially, white kids were sacrificed on the altar of multiculturalism. It was Votes for Girls, that was the deal.' (Revealingly, in an interview for this week's Planet Normal, Sammy Woodhouse told me that her abuser, 'Ash', was fully aware of the protected status he enjoyed as a British Pakistani Muslim, and happily exploited it. 'I'll just play the race card,' he used to say.) One thing I didn't mention to that American guy was the complicit role played by the media, notably the BBC, and others in the metropolitan bubble. Until 2013, when Andrew Norfolk of The Times revealed Sammy Woodhouse's story (with characteristic courage the Yorkshire lass waived her anonymity), the overwhelming evidence that Pakistani Muslim men preyed on 11-year-olds whom they disdained as 'white slags' was simply not admissible in polite society. (Even the heroic Norfolk, who sadly died a few weeks ago, initially held back on publishing because he feared the story was catnip to the far-Right). But Sammy had lifted the lid on child sex exploitation cases in her home town, prompting the Alexis Jay report which identified at least 1,400 victims in Rotherham alone. I vividly recall some of the hostile media reaction two years later to a previous take-no-prisoners Louise Casey report into opportunity and integration. The one in which the Baroness criticised public institutions that 'have ignored or even condoned regressive, divisive and harmful cultural and religious practices for fear of being branded racist or Islamophobic'. The Rotherham child abuse scandal, Casey concluded, was 'a catastrophic example of authorities turning a blind eye to harm in order to avoid the need to confront a particular community'. In the impeccably-liberal Prospect magazine, reviewer Oliver Kamm shuddered fastidiously. He condemned Casey's striking honesty as a 'vapid and ill-conceived intervention' which might have been designed to appeal to – quick, pass the smelling salts! – Farage and anti-immigrant tendencies. 'It warns that segregation and social exclusion are at 'worrying' levels,' Kamm complained. 'And it does so… without indicating what it would accept as countervailing evidence.' Such wilful blindness by members of a liberal elite to the problems posed by 'a particular community' continues to this day. Not long ago, in an interview for The News Agents podcast, former BBC maven Emily Maitlis attacked Rupert Lowe (ex-Reform MP, now an independent who has set up a separate inquiry with Sammy Woodhouse) for obsessing about Pakistani grooming gangs 'because probably you are racist and you don't believe there are white perpetrators'. It is Maitlis's sneering brand of superior ignorance, her arrogant stigmatising of critics of failed integration, that created the climate that allowed Pakistani perpetrators to continue violating the Samanthas and tens of thousands of other young girls with almost total impunity. Racism being a far worse crime than child-rape in the best circles, darling. The Home Office data which Maitlis drew on – saying most group-based child sexual offenders are white – always seemed absurd. (A quick look at the police mugshots for most grooming-gang trials quickly told you that white men, although heavily represented among paedophiles, were not the major villains in the trafficking of pre-teen and teenage girls.) How marvellous to see our Islamist-friendly Home Office thoroughly debunked in this new report from Baroness Casey. 'This audit found it hard to understand how the Home Office [2020] paper reached that conclusion, which does not seem to be evidenced in research or data.' Oops. Astoundingly, in our interview, Sammy Woodhouse recalled that 'in council safeguarding meetings, when I was a child who was being raped by a 24-year-old Pakistani man, there was an anti-racism co-ordinator'. That tells you everything you need to know about the priority of Labour authorities – and it sure as hell wasn't protecting innocent little girls. Keir Starmer must have had high hopes that Louise Casey would save him from the acute political embarrassment of the authorities in Muslim-voting Labour areas coming under scrutiny. (She had indicated she opposed a national inquiry.) What Labour really fears, I suspect, is that the discovery of a widespread cover-up of the industrial-scale rape of British children will pose existential questions about the ability of certain British Pakistani men to ever integrate into a society where women and girls are created equal. That's what Sammy Woodhouse thinks – she says any dual-national child-rapists must be deported. And which of us would disagree? 'I don't think this inquiry is going to get the justice that we need,' Sammy told me, 'because it's Labour investigating Labour. They're just chucking this out there to keep us quiet.' I pray that she's wrong, I pray that all her passionate campaigning for the ones who couldn't fight as she has fought pays off. Let's hope we will need to build new jails to house all the cowards who covered up for the rape gangs. Police, councillors, social workers, MPs, community leaders. Grown men who allowed little girls to endure such fathomless depravity. At least they will be sleeping less well tonight thanks to the Baroness of Awkward Truths.
