Ex-Royal Marine BANNED from coaching daughter's football team over right-wing views: 'I am shocked!'

Mr Michael, an Iraqi war veteran, was barred after he posted a video online following the Southport murders, where he described some migrants as "scumbags".

Despite being cleared by a jury within 18 minutes and Mr Michael admitting he had spoken clumsily in the video, a local safeguarding board has ruled that he is "unsuitable" to work with children.

Sharing his reaction to the ruling, the veteran told GB News: "It was a shock to me, after being found not guilty, just to find weeks later in a letter from the safeguarding board that they felt their decision to ban me was substantiated, even though the evidence they looked at in that meeting was incorrect as well.

"They didn't seem to have even looked at my video, didn't seem to take into account the court case itself and the acquittal within 17 minutes."

He added: "None of that was taken into account when they made that decision. There were numerous errors in the evidence, one of the police officers that were attending the meeting actually said that the racial element of the charge got dropped and that I had been charged with distribution of threatening, abusive and insulting words or images that were likely to cause harassment, alarm, distress.

"I don't know where she's got that from, but there were multiple errors actually during my court case as well. There was errors in the transcript and for my first two solicitors, the video wouldn't even work, the video was unworkable, it was just buffering on this portal."

Revealing that the board said Mr Michael would be "monitored" if he came to watch his daughter play football, he explained: "They actually said that I was still allowed to come and watch my daughter training, but my behaviour would be monitored on the side of the field, and I just thought that was absolutely ridiculous.

"I've been coaching there for three years, there'd never been any prior problems leading up to that. They said that I had been a good coach, I was good with the girls, there was nothing. I passed all the DBS checks, there was nothing."

He stressed: "And even in the panel meeting that decided that I wasn't suitable anymore to coach children, all the coaches that knew me all said good things about me and never, never once said that it was a problem with myself."

Hitting out at the "establishment" for "punishing" him despite being acquitted, Mr Michael stated: "The establishment didn't really didn't like my decision, because it proves that if you put someone like myself in front of a jury, you're likely to get that not guilty verdict, and now they're just trying to punish me in other ways, just through the safeguarding board.

"It's taken a lot away from me, taking the opportunity to be in football with my daughter. I've got another daughter that will be coming through soon, then she'll want to be playing football and that's taking that away from me. I've put a lot into football myself, I've been an ex-semi professional footballer, signed with Manchester, and I did that as a kid.

"I still play for the Welsh veterans now, and it's just a massive overreach. To me, it feels like they're acting like spoiled kids that didn't get their own decisions. So they're trying to fight and punish me in other ways."

Asked by host Martin Daubney what impact the case and the ban has had on him and his family, the ex-Marine said: "I've got three operational medals, I've been willing to put my life down on the line multiple times to this country, and then to have this happen to me... the ironic thing was that I was looking out for the children in the first place.

"I just wanted to try and get a community meeting so that we could try and implement some security on the schools and parks. Because last summer, we had the Southport riots. But leading up to that, we had riots in Leeds and Manchester. And I just felt things were getting out of control.

"So the first thing I was thinking about was the kids, how we can keep the kids safe because they were the ones that got attacked in the Southport murders and they're easy targets, kids. So that's what I was thinking to achieve."

A spokesman for the Safeguarding Board told the People's Channe;: "This the Safeguarding Board and its multi agency partners take its responsibilities very seriously.

"It'd be inappropriate for the board or its partners to comment any further at this time."

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