Kingswinford Labour Party has apologised after an image depicting hotel protestors as Neanderthals appeared on its social media.
The picture, which was posted on the Kingswinford and South Staffordshire Labour Party Facebook page but has now been removed, features a number of human skulls with captions like ‘male’ ‘female’ ‘gay’ and ‘straight’.
The final skull, a Neanderthal, has the caption ‘Paints roundabouts, shouts at hotels’.
The post outraged Reform UK’s Marco Longhi who said: “This kind of post says everything about today’s Labour Party: sneering, divisive and contemptuous towards ordinary people who dare to protest or think differently.
“Reform believes in free speech, mutual respect and standing up for local communities, not mocking them.
“The Labour Party should spend less time insulting voters and more time listening to why so many are turning away from them.”
Anil Singh, chair of Kingswinford and South Staffordshire Labour, said: “As soon as it was seen we took the post down as we consider it insulting and demeaning people who are patriotic.
“Our sincere apologies for any offence caused as it was posted without our authority.”
Dudley Council’s leader, Cllr Patrick Harley, who represents the Kingswinford South ward on the authority, also ferociously attacked the post.
Cllr Harley said: “They say at a national level through Starmer they want to see flags flying but deep in their psyche we can see where the left are positioned.
“They say they don’t want hotels full of illegal asylum seekers then clearly, by this tone, we know that they are not on the side of normal right-minded people.
“These people protesting about hotels are not Neanderthals but law-abiding patriotic people. Now we know what Labour think of the vast majority of Dudley people.”
Labour’s Kingswinford branch launched an investigation into who posted the image. Mr Singh promised the culprit would be disciplined and added: “It represents a personal insult to people who have genuine concerns about hotels which Labour is planning to end the use of.
“It is contrary to our social media policy although this relates to inappropriate direct personal attacks on people. This post is outrageous and simply unacceptable.”
The post also attracted critical comments from people on Facebook.
Paul Homer said: “Not a good way to win votes from people who are fed up with the way the British-born person is treated and the country has gone even worse in the last 16 months.”
Rob Thomas asked: “Is it Labour Party policy for its local areas to mock and insult the electorate?”
The Natural History Museum says far from being primitive cavemen the Neanderthal species, which lived in Europe and Asia around half-a-million years ago, were intelligent and had larger brains than modern humans in proportion to their body size.
Modern humans evolved in Africa and share around two percent of their DNA with Neanderthals.
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