Worthing decides to remove ceremonial robes and accessories

At a Worthing Borough Council meeting on Monday July 18, a motion passed removing the ‘use of all ceremonial robes and accessories, in all public and council engagement’, with the exception of mayoral badges and the chains of office.

Russ Cochran (Con, Northbrook) felt removing members’ ceremonial robes from use was robbing councillors of the freedom of expression and choice celebrated in last month’s Pride event.

Mr Cochran said: “I found this motion quite disturbing since we’ve just been through a whole week or so of Pride.

“I’m not going to be homophobic about this, cause there’s a phobia about everything, but this is vestiphobic, I’ve just looked it up, vestiphobia [the irrational fear of clothing] is a thing.

“We have an identity from these robes, if we lose that identity we are eroding it and it just becomes cancel culture.”

This elicited a strong reaction from both the gallery and the Labour side of the chamber. When Mr Cochran said he didn’t see what was wrong with the comparison he had made, Emma Taylor Beal (Lab, Heene) suggested him not being able to see the problem with the comments, was the problem.

One member of the public in attendance stated she would be filing a complaint directly to the council as a result of the comments, saying they were offensive.

After the meeting Mr Cochran said his comments were misinterpreted by the public and other members during the meeting, and that he was drawing the comparison since Worthing Pride had happened only very recently.

Samuel Theodrini (Lab, Castle) said the comments ‘brought down the level of the debate’, and had ‘diminished’ the other arguments against the motion, while one Conservative councillor put their head in their hands after the comments were made.

Other Conservatives had argued that the motion was taking away from tradition within the council, which was a source of pride for the Worthing borough.

Their main arguments were a lack of public consultation on the decision, lack of any public support and that the council were forcing this decision through.