The Labour party has warned MP Jack Dromey about using potentially offensive language after he referred to a postal worker as "the pikey" on Twitter.
The shadow police minister and husband of Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman tweeted a picture of himself with a postal worker. His caption read: "With Gareth Martin, the Pikey from the Erdington Royal Mail Sorting Office. A great guy!"
Since 2007 it has been an arrestable, racially aggravated offence to use the word "pikey", which is an offensive and derogatory word used to refer to Irish or Romany travellers.
After receiving criticism online, Dromey later tweeted that "Pikey" was Martin's nickname within the postal office and was a reference to the Dad's Army character Corporal Pike. But Tory MP David Morris has written to Metropolitan police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe claiming it was an "incident that may constitute incitement to racial hatred" and asking him to launch an inquiry.
A Labour source said the party had spoken to Dromey after being contacted by journalists who had picked up on a growing Twitter storm about the comment.
"It was a stupid thing to do and he should not have said it," the source added, but he insisted it was "an innocent mistake".
He said the MP had been referring to the Dad's Army character rather than using a derogatory term for "somebody of Romany extraction".
The photo was taken as Dromey met staff at a delivery office in his Erdington, West Midlands, constituency. Several photographs were posted from the depot after he had toured the facility. Dromey had agreed to issue a clarification after the potentially offensive nature of the tweet was pointed out to him, Labour sources claimed.
The second message read: "Don't panic, Mr Mainwaring. This morning's meeting was with Gareth, a Postie nicknamed after Corporal Pike from Dad's Army."
Labour sources said the incident showed how important it is to think before tweeting, in case words are misconstrued. "It is an offensive word and it just shows how everybody should be extremely careful with language on Twitter," said a spokesman.
But one senior Conservative said they would like to hear from Martin and other postal workers if his nickname really is "Pikey" and whether his nickname is a nod to Dad's Army. "I do not think that Garent Martin looks at all like Ian Lavender. And wouldn't Jack have referred to him as 'Pikey', not 'the Pikey', if this was the case?" the MP said.
This is not the first time that Dromey, a former trade union leader and a shadow communities and local government minister and chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on migration, has created difficulties for himself with Twitter.
In November, Dromey linked to a tweet about well-endowed black men. The link showed a picture of two men engaged in a sex act. Back in September, he also favourited a link to a Tweet on a similar theme.
Dromey blamed the messages on a "technological mix up". Labour sources told the Telegraph that he had been trying to block the pages when he pressed the wrong button.
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