A FORMER Basingstoke mayor has spoken out about his experiences of racism, including when he was verbally abused by a police officer.

Dan Putty, who served as the borough’s first citizen in 2013-14 and is still a ward councillor for Hatch Warren and Beggarwood, has spoken exclusively to the Gazette about his experiences of racial discrimination since he moved to Basingstoke from Mauritius in 1970.

Just a couple of years after he moved to the town, Cllr Putty parked his car in Winklebury when he says a police officer confronted him purely because of the colour of his skin.

"He came up to me and started racially abusing me," he said.

"He said who the hell am I to be driving a car. He said the road belonged to him.

"There was no yellow lines, I parked my car really nicely, but as soon as he saw me coming out of the car he went for me.

"You shrug your shoulders with people like this, it puts the fear of God into you and you just want to escape."

As well as serving as mayor, Cllr Putty was the first ethnic minority magistrate to serve in Basingstoke, and was a mental health nurse before then.

He volunteered as a driver for Hampshire social services, and at one point was a member of four school governing boards.

"For me coming from Mauritius, we respect each other and each other's religion. Colour never came into our upbringing.

Coming here, all of a sudden you encounter something like this, it just really made you think that if the police officer is reacting like this then how [will other] people react?"

And it wasn't just on the street that Cllr Putty suffered from abuse - he says he was verbally abused by patients, and staff, during his time working as a mental health nurse.

The councillor, who is in his 26th year as a representative for Hatch Warren and Beggarwood, said that just having a single ethnic minority representative on bodies, including in court, is not enough, saying that when he first started sitting in courts, he was the only one of 87 magistrates in Basingstoke of an ethnic minority.

"I started like that for probably the best part of ten years. Nobody else was appointed from our communities."

And Cllr Putty also revealed that he believes it would have taken less time for him to be chair of magistrates had he been white.

"It took a very long time for me to start chairing courts. After that when we had a full court I found that many a time people said 'he can't be chairing, I'm going to be chair'."

However, Cllr Putty also said that the vast majority of people, including those in the court, council, health service and his community of Hatch Warren and Beggarwood have been "magnificent" to him, and that these isolated incidents showed that more education was needed on different cultures.

"These people have known me, respected me and elected me for 25 years and I will continue to serve them."