UK: MP Forced to Stand Down After Attending Fancy Dress Party Where Friend Dressed as SS Officer

Daily Mail
February 7, 2014

Mr Burley takes a seat at the stag party alongside his friend in the Nazi uniform
Mr Burley was not even wearing a Nazi uniform himself, but just being in close proximity to someone who was has cost him his career.

The Tory MP who organised a Nazi-themed stag do for a friend and then tried to downplay his role in planning the party, last night announced he would step down at the next election.

Aidan Burley was allowed to remain as MP for Cannock Chase after pictures were published in the Mail on Sunday of him attending the distasteful event – despite a party inquiry last month which called his actions ‘stupid and offensive’.

The Oxford graduate always insisted that the stag do, which took place two years ago in the French ski resort of Val Thorens, was not anti-Semitic.

Mr Burley, 35, issued a grovelling apology after details of the party were revealed, and said he wished he had left ‘as soon as I realised what was happening’.

But it later emerged that – as the best man – he had bought a Nazi uniform for the groom.

And he did not leave straight after the meal as he initially told the inquiry, but went on to a local bar with the group.

Aidan Burley is seen over the shoulder of Mark Fournier in a Nazi style SS uniform at a venue in Val Thorens in the French Alps in 2011
Here he is seen over the shoulder of Mark Fournier in a Nazi style SS uniform at the venue. In the seventies, which was much closer to the war, Nazi uniforms were worn by comedians all over the country and nobody even batted an eyelid. The fact that it is now taboo and it wasn’t back then proves two things. One, the Nazis were not perceived as being so evil back then when people actually remembered the war, and two, the people who are frightened by Nazi uniforms (the Jews) are now so powerful that they are deciding for everyone what is offensive and what is not.

Labour frontbencher Jon Ashworth said: ‘It shows huge weakness that David Cameron wasn’t prepared to take action against his disgraced MP, but it’s right that Aidan Burley has finally done the right thing in stepping down.

‘After his behaviour at a stag party where a Nazi uniform was worn and the names of Nazi leaders were chanted, his position was completely untenable.’

Mr Burley was apparently unaware that donning the outfit was an offence in France, the document claimed.

He also said the choice of costume was inspired by the British comic association with aspects of the war’ and denied any ‘political motivation’.

Guests chanted ‘Hitler, Hitler, Hitler’, while one raised a toast to the ‘Third Reich’ during the dinner party in December 2011, a police tribunal in Albertville heard.

Mr Burley later visited Auschwitz concentration camp but courted more controversy when he was seen using his mobile phone there.

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