Lawyer fined after reportedly writing that Scottish town is like Auschwitz “but without the social problems”

It has been reported that a solicitor from Ayrshire has denied posting allegedly antisemitic comments on social media, but has been handed a fine by the Law Society of Scotland.

Criminal defence lawyer Neil McPherson, 64, is reported to have compared Auschwitz to Paisley, thirteen miles west of Glasgow. Mr McPherson is alleged to have written in a Facebook post that the concentration camp was like the Scottish town “but without the social problems.”

Mr McPherson is said to have claimed that the posts were written by someone else. The Law Society of Scotland’s professional conduct committee, however, found that it was “more likely than not” that the solicitor made the comparison, posted under another Facebook user’s photograph of a visit to Auschwitz.

Mr McPherson has been fined £2,000 and ordered to pay a further £100 to Arnon Nachmani, a Scottish-Israeli lawyer who was born in Paisley and who lost family in the Holocaust, who stumbled across the comments some months after they were posted.

Mr Nachmani said he would donate the money to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem.

Campaign Against Antisemitism continues its robust engagement with social media companies over the content that they enable to be published, and we continue to make representations to the Government in this connection.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has long called for tougher regulations on social media sites and that social networks proactively search for and remove hate speech from their platforms.