Constituent pleads guilty to antisemitic attack on Jon Trickett MP

Darren Mark Lumb, who has previous links to the BNP and EDL, verbally attacked the MP in January this year in West Yorkshire

A constituent has pleaded guilty to mounting an antisemitic verbal attack against Labour MP and shadow communities secretary Jon Trickett.

On 23 January 2015, Darren Mark Lumb, 47, stopped the the MP for Hemsworth in West Yorkshire in the street and launched into an antisemitic tirade against him.

During the trial on Thursday at Leeds crown court, Lumb changed his plea to guilty to one count of religiously aggravated harassment and stalking with fear of violence, and one count of breaching an asbo.

umb – who has been known to Trickett’s office for a decade – was released on bail on the condition that he did not approach the MP or any member of his staff and he will return to court on 3 March for sentencing.

Lumb has previously had links to the British National Party (BNP), the English Defence League (EDL) and the National Front, and served as BNP organiser for Wakefield and later West Yorkshire.

He has previous convictions for assault and disorder and was convicted in 2011 of using racially aggravated threatening or insulting words and behaviour after he reportedly called a petrol station worker “a black bastard”.

Lumb, who lives in South Elmsall, stood as a BNP candidate for South Elmsall and South Kirkby in the Wakefield Metropolitan district council election in 2011, where he won 441 votes, 2.6% below the Conservative candidate.

A friend of Trickett’s said the MP had been left shocked and shaken by the incident and that “he hasn’t experienced rage like it in his life”.

Jon Trickett has been MP for Hemsworth since 1996. He served as the parliamentary private secretary to prime minister Gordon Brown from 2008 to 2010 and was then promoted to the shadow cabinet by Ed Miliband in 2011.

Trickett was one of 36 MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership election and was made shadow secretary of state for communities and local government in the shadow cabinet reshuffle following Corbyn’s landslide victory in September 2015.

The Guardian