A London Underground manager who posted “offensive, inflammatory and racially divisive” posts on social media was “unfairly dismissed”, an employment tribunal found.

Tracey Webb, who worked as a train manager at the Seven Sisters depot, was sacked over her online comments relating to the death of George Floyd and calling to “bring back the death penalty” over the death of Lee Rigby in 2013.

An employment tribunal decided on December 12, 2022, that Ms Webb was unfairly dismissed and unlawfully deducted three weeks’ pay.

However her claims that she was racially discriminated against were rejected after she stated her belief that she would have kept her job if she was not white.

Ms Webb had been working in the company for about 32 years and was made trains manager at the depot in 2003.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 after George Floyd was killed, Ms Webb shared posts on Facebook such as one reading “The media and the left made George Floyd into a martyr. But who was he really?”

The post then listed alleged criminal convictions against him including armed robbery and drug offences.

Colleagues were shocked and took the matter to HR, who found the post “racially divisive” at the time of a sensitive global topic.

Responding to a comment, she referred to Floyd as “scum” and said: “I for one am not sorry [he’s] no longer here to hold a gun to another pregnant ladies stomach while robbing her in his own house.”

While the employment tribunal agreed the right to freedom of speech, the report states she chose to ignore the “important issue” of what the death revealed about historic and systemic racism.

She shared another post in 2020 referring back to the death of Lee Rigby that had happened years ago, saying “no one rioted in the UK when two black men hacked Lee Rigby to death”.

Employment Judge R Wood wrote: “This post too we find was offensive and inflammatory. We thought it especially concerning that she chose to use a rather historic incident, of a very different nature, involving as it did an act of terrorism.”

The judge explained that Ms Webb’s bosses were obliged to act as the white manager in charge of a large ethnically diverse team caused “furore” and there was no apology from her.

However her dismissal was deemed unfair as the person managing her appeal, union representative Daniel Howarth, did not review any of the material other than the four main Facebook posts.

The judge wrote: "Mr Howarth had predetermined the appeal, and that it was his opinion that it was a box-ticking exercise.

“He repeated, time after time, in response to all questions, that had the claimant shown remorse, then matters would have been different. This may well be true. However, it was not the only issue in the case for him to determine.

"The union rep's demeanour may well have been robust, but his submissions should have been heard fairly and with an open mind.

"Accordingly, we find that the procedure, and therefore the dismissal was, by reason of the flaws identified, unfair. In coming to this conclusion, we have regard to the size and administrative resources. It is clearly a very large organisation, with access to in-house human resources and legal advice."

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