SACKED & SİLENCED? SɑIvɑtion Aɾ₥y Woɾkeɾ Bɾeɑks His Silence ɑfteɾ Explosive Migɾɑnt Comment
A Salvation Army worker who was sacked after saying migrants should be sent back home ‘on a f***ing boat’ has broken his silence to insist he is not racist.
Charles Markie said he had been working on the homelessness frontline in Dundee for two decades finding accommodation for the vulnerable and those in desperate need of housing.
But he revealed his job had become more difficult in that time due to the large number of places being taken up in the poverty-stricken Scottish city by migrants.
Mr Markie, 56, was sacked from his role at the Salvation Army’s Strathmore Lodge hostel which houses migrants in Dundee, after telling colleagues: ‘There wouldn’t be a housing shortage if we weren’t taking in 150 refugees,’ and ‘send them all back on a f***ing boat’.
He spoke out after an employment tribunal threw out his claim that he had been unfairly dismissed by the Salvation Army and ruled that the actions of the Christian charity which helps the homeless were justified.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Mr Markie said: ‘I’m not a racist. One of the guys that I work with on a daily basis in the office is from South Korea. He was my friend at work, to call me racist is crazy.
‘My mate from Turkey wanted to come to the tribunal with me. My solicitor said no and we would do it ourselves as we have enough so he didn’t come.
‘I don’t have any affiliation with any racist groups or have any negative views about people from other cultures or races.’
Salvation Army worker Charles Markie, 56, who was sacked after saying migrants should be sent back home ‘on a f***ing boat’ has broken his silence to insist he is not racist
Mr Markie, 56, was sacked from his role at the Salvation Army’s Strathmore Lodge hostel which houses migrants in Dundee after making comments about migrants
Mr Mackie stood by his comments which lost him his job, saying he was merely concerned about how the number of migrants in the city had hampered efforts to help tackle Dundee’s long-standing homeless issue.
He said: ‘When I first started the people were predominantly from Dundee. Around seven years ago we started to get more Polish or African people through the door for various reasons.
‘I would treat all people equally, 100 per cent. Initially we weren’t really affected by migrants who would come via boats. We’d get the odd person and we’d always take them in and support them to get into housing.
‘But over the last couple of years it has got worse and we’ve taken in more and more. I had nothing against that at all, as long as we had somewhere for them to go.’
Dundee has seen around 1,000 refugees or migrants settle in the city in the past five years including more than 500 Ukrainians arriving between 2022 and 2024, according to Dundee City Council Figures.
Around 250 nationals from Syria, Iraq and other troubled countries have arrived as part of resettlement schemes since 2020.
Mr Markie whose job involved supporting homeless and vulnerable people including refugees, said: ‘I’ve supported hundreds of foreign residents over 20 years. Not once was my behaviour towards them ever taken into question.
‘It was stated in the tribunal that it didn’t make a difference to me what nationality someone was.’
Mr Markie said he believed management used his ‘boats’ comment as an excuse to fire him
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EXCLUSIVE
Pictured: Salvation Army worker sacked for saying refugees should all be sent back ‘on a boat’
Mr Markie was sacked in March 2024, despite working for the Salvation Army for nearly 20 years, after fellow staff were shocked by his comments about sending migrants home.
One colleague allegedly challenged him and asked if those he wanted deported included a user of the hostel who was a refugee from Syria.
The staff member claimed Mr Markie responded, ‘Yes, the lot of them’, but he has since vigorously denied saying this.
Mr Markie said: ‘How the conversation went was one of the managers approached myself and another staff member.
‘They said Dundee City Council were changing their policy on homelessness. Residents would no longer get three offers of housing, they would only get one and they’d have to take it.
‘I said that’s not fair as you can’t put somebody that depends on family support at the opposite end of the city. They weren’t even going to be near their GP, a lot of these people needed their support network to get off drugs.
‘Then it came up how Dundee City Council had just taken in 150 Syrian refugees and put them into local accommodation.
‘I asked, ‘Where are we putting them? We’ve not got houses for our own people’.
Mr Markie was sacked in March 2024, despite working for the Salvation Army for nearly 20 years, after fellow staff were shocked by his comments about sending migrants home
‘I was getting frustrated with the conversation and was passionately defending Dundee homelessness.
‘Somebody asked me what would I do with them then? I just said “send them back on boats”. I was asked if I thought it was a racist comment which I refused to admit.
‘I stand by what I said, I don’t think I said anything wrong. The comment they claimed I said, “Yeah the lot of them”, I never said that.’
He added: ‘I was really arguing for one guy that I was supporting at the time. His elderly parents lived in Fintry and needed support.
‘He was homeless and was going to get an offer on a property in Menzieshill six miles away so would need to get the bus.
‘He said he was unemployed and hardly getting any benefits so how could he get there every day, he didn’t have the means. They weren’t giving him the option of the local connection to that area.
‘That’s not fair, we’re trying to help these people not set them up to fail. But we’re still able to bring in 150 Syrian refugees, who I do feel sorry for. But they changed the rules just to accommodate the refugees.’
The tribunal was told Mr Markie was ‘aggressive and angry’ when he made his comments after being told of changes to the council housing policy.
Mr Markie claimed for unfair dismissal, direct sex discrimination and harassment but all three were dismissed at a tribunal held in Dundee
A colleague informed his line manager, Tracey Young, about it because she hoped ‘the claimant would be ‘pulled up’ as what he said was racist’.
After being warned by Miss Young about his behaviour, Mr Markie began complaining that the staff ‘couldn’t even joke or take part in banter’.
He added: ‘I was there for 20 years, I was never in trouble once and always kept to the rules and regulations. I’ve never been in any trouble in my life, no criminal convictions or anything like that.’
Mr Markie said he believed management had used his ‘boats’ comment as an excuse to fire him.
He said: ‘I got sacked for having an opinion and defending Scottish homelessness and Dundee residents.
‘In reality I think I got sacked for a different incident a couple of weeks before. I was having a conversation with two colleagues where I made some remarks about the current management team and how they were never there, we never got support yet they wanted to be involved in every decision. But if they were never there, how could they be?
‘They came in late, went home early and half the time were never on shift. I think I said ‘you lead by example’ but if I followed theirs, I’d be in my bed. I think this is why I was sacked, that I spoke up against their poor management skills.
‘Unbeknown to me one of the colleagues I was speaking to went straight to management and passed on what I said. Management took offence to this but never came to me directly about it.
‘But there was a team meeting, and it came up there where management ridiculed me for what I said. They used my boats comment to sack me, it’s as simple as that.’
Mr Markie claimed for unfair dismissal, direct sex discrimination and harassment. But all three claims were dismissed by Employment Judge James Hendry at a tribunal held in Dundee in September last year.
Publishing his ruling on December 31, Judge Hendry said: ‘The evidence showed that the claimant’s colleagues were shocked at the comment made, betraying, as they saw it, a complete insensitivity towards those that they were duty bound to help.’
Mr Markie said: ‘My solicitor was confident they’d find in my favour. I was sacked after 20 years of never being in trouble and saying one thing.
‘I would cover the night shift at a moment’s notice after doing a dayshift, I stood in and did the on-call shift when needed, there was no job I wouldn’t cover.
‘I still support the charity, they do great things and I would never want to put them down. It’s not the Salvation Army but the management team at Strathmore Lodge that was the problem.
‘When I made the statement, no one was upset. I worked with one of the staff that evening and not once did she say anything.
‘We had a relationship where she would’ve said something if it bothered her. We worked perfectly that night with no animosity or ill feeling.
‘My colleagues were all told at a staff meeting not to contact me. The management was obviously trying to tie everything together, it was a very toxic place in the end.
‘Due to the impact on my mental health I’ve been signed off long term. So now I’m unemployed. I spent the last of my life savings on the hearing hoping I’d win and get it back but obviously I lost.’
The tribunal was told how Mr Markie initially appeared at a Salvation Army disciplinary hearing after his migrant comments
He said: ‘I didn’t say the F word. I said send them all back on a boat. I didn’t swear. Later in the investigation I did swear and put hands up to that.
‘It was my point of view, wasn’t directed at anyone. We are letting too many people in when we don’t have facilities or housing to give them’, he said.
Asked how he would deal with an increase in refugees, Mr Markie told the hearing: ‘It wouldn’t bother me.’
He then told managers that he could ‘get carried away’, adding: ‘I do make stupid comments but don’t mean any harm.’
The tribunal heard that Salvation Army service manager Karen Good who chaired the disciplinary hearing that she believed his comment was racist and ‘undermined any trust she had in the claimant’s ability to carry on with his role, which involved helping refugees based on their needs’.
She concluded he had committed gross misconduct by expressing these views and that he should be summarily dismissed.
The tribunal was told Mr Markie emailed Miss Good, taking issue with the suggestion that he was aggressive, and claimed that everyone was ‘laughing’ during the conversation.
Mr Markie wrote to Miss Good: ‘Sack me, but don’t sack me for gross misconduct.’
