Thank you for donating to our crowdfunder. We used your donations to get relevant and experienced legal advice and send a legal letter. Jack Deakin defended with his own legal letter at no cost to him. These actions revealed that it would be too expensive to proceed to court – around £50,000.

Meanwhile…

•    Your donations and messages of support lifted our spirits high and far

•    The issues were covered in media such as Birmingham Mail, CounterCut and Skwawkbox. 

•    Jack Deakin has not repeated his slur, although he hasn’t deleted his original tweet. 

•    He is no longer a councillor on North Warwickshire Borough Council. 

•    Birmingham Council has declared bankruptcy, which means Deakin’s powers as a Labour councillor are quite limited. 

•    Both Councils refused to progress our complaints under the Councillors Code of Conduct (citing freedom of expression) and returned nothing in response to our Subject Access Requests. 

•    Councillor Kevin Frea retired at the end of his term.

•    Councillors Heather Skibstead and Jo Bird made Green history by winning re-election as Green Councillors in last May’s local elections. 

•    Ekua Bayunu  was unsuccessful in her  campaign for re-election to Manchester Council on May 2 2024. She has been selected as the Green parliamentary candidate for Manchester Central. 

•    Jo Bird has been selected as the Green candidate for Birkenhead MP. 

Thank you again

Ekua, Kevin, Heather and Jo

Media coverage:

https://bright-green.org/2022/08/28/four-green-party-councillors-crowdfund-for-libel-case-against-birmingham-labour-councillor/

https://www.countercut.co.uk/p/disgraced-labour-cllr-jack-deakin

https://skwawkbox.org/2022/08/26/greens-crowdfunding-legal-action-vs-labour-right-councillor-for-antisemitism-smear/

https://skwawkbox.org/2022/08/27/right-wing-lab-councillor-who-smeared-left-wingers-as-antisemites-steals-from-bar/

If you see any coverage locally or nationally. Please post links in the comments.

Also please pass on to the journalists in your networks.

Thank you. 

We’re half way to our extended target!

£6,500 is the amount we need to ensure we can follow up quickly and with precision after Cllr Deakin receives our first action.

We hope he sees sense and responds quickly to our demands to have a public apology for his outrageous defamation. 

But with your help, we will be ready to move quickly forward piling on the pressure.

We have had so much support. With over £3,000 pledged in 3 days.  We can now truly see how much we have all needed to to see grassroots members like us stand up to these types of outrageous and frankly racist behaviours. 

Thank you ,

Ekua, Jo, Heather & Kevin

Here as promised all 4 of our videos. 

Kevin: https://youtu.be/icB-GTvNBtw

Heather: https://youtu.be/-m_viwEUnqg

Jo: https://youtu.be/N7v0Btg0F_c

Ekua: https://youtu.be/52y5oK-C54s

Thank you everyone who helped us reach this massive milestone.

Adding this money to the money we’ve each put in individually means we can instruct the solicitor to act immediately!

We shared the cost of the first action as £3,600 and with your help we hit the £2,500 contribution towards it in 48hours.

We are uplifted by this support.

Now if we get an immediate positive response from Councillor Deakin.

Removing the Defamatory Tweet.

Issuing a retraction AND an apology on Twitter 

That will be an end.

If we reach £6,500 on here, we can get some of our money back and our solicitor can do the follow up work.

So we have set an expansion target of £6,500.

However we will close this campaign as soon as we are satisfied that our message (and we take from your messages of support, that it is now All OUR Message) has been heard!