A bus driver was lawfully sacked when he was dismissed for being a member of the far-right Britsh National Party, an employment tribunal has ruled.
Arthur Redfearn had claimed racial discrimination when he was sacked after West Yorkshire Transport Services (WYTS) found out he was standing for election to Bradford Council as a BNP candidate.
WYTS’s parent company, Serco, welcomed the decision but Redfearn described it as “scandalous” and said he would consider an appeal.
The tribunal, which heard the case in Leeds last November, upheld Serco’s decision to sack Redfearn on health and safety grounds last June because the company feared that WYTS buses, which carry disabled children and adults, could be attacked when the association with a BNP activist became widely known.
It did, however, acknowledge that Redfearn may have suffered indirect discrimination by the company’s policy of not employing members of the BNP, because a condition of party membership is that members must be white.
But the tribunal ruled that this issue was secondary to health and safety concerns.
Redfearn claimed racial discrimination under the Race Relations Act. He could not claim unfair dismissal because he had only been employed by WYTS for seven months. The legal minimum for an unfair dismissal claim is 12 months emloyment.
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