A member of the Reform UK cabinet that runs Warwickshire County Council has ripped into "woke" methods of denouncing historical British slave traders.

Cllr Mike Bannister, the county's portfolio holder for customer and localities, unleashed his views while introducing the council's modern slavery statement during Thursday's meeting of cabinet – the panel in charge of major service areas.

He readily acknowledged that he had "never heard of a modern slavery statement before", a document councils are legally required to produce to show what measures have been taken to ensure that modern slavery and human trafficking practices were not present in any of its business or supply chains over the previous financial year, including forced labour, people being made to work to pay off debts, child slavery and forced marriage. 

Cllr Bannister made clear his support for the statement and the council's work in this area, but only after a monologue in which he insisted moves over recent years to stop glorifying historical slave traders were wide of the mark.

In his address to cabinet, Cllr Bannister said: "I would like to speak plainly to you. I feel deeply angered by the way our history is being treated.

"Statues being torn down, buildings renamed and the reputations of those people who have helped to build this country trashed by people who wouldn't last five minutes in their shoes.

"This woke culture is an attack on common sense. We don't fix the present by destroying the past, we learn from it. 

"Britain led the world in abolishing slavery, not just in law but in action. We enforce that principle across the seas at our own expense and that is a legacy to be proud of.

"Slavery existed long before us, across Africa, Asia and particularly in the Arab world. It wasn't here but now, many of those same critics want to erase the very people who helped fund schools, hospitals and universities in this country. We won't have it."

As for the council's ongoing work on modern slavery, Cllr Bannister did not waste the opportunity to bring illegal immigration into the debate. 

He said: "As William Wilberforce, whose historic bill to abolish the slave trade passed in March 1807, said: 'You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say that you did not know.' 

"And we do know. We see it in people trafficked into the UK in the backs of lorries and in small boats crossing the channel, run by organised gangs who trade in human lives. 

"These criminal networks endanger lives every day, sending people out into unsafe, overcrowded vessels with no regard for whether they live or die. 

"These gangs must be hunted down, broken up and shut down for good. There can be no compromise, no turning a blind eye and no tolerating the industry of human exploitation that they run.

"The statement we have today is Warwickshire's local commitment to fight back, to tackle exploitation, protect the vulnerable and to do it without gesture politics or posturing, just common sense and results." 

Cllr Keith Kondakor advocated a broader focus.

"A large number of people came to the UK on work visas which were sponsored but came to an end and they are still here because of various failures in the Home Office," he said. 

"One shouldn't assume everyone who is working here and has been coerced into carrying on working has come on a boat. It is a very complicated matter and the vast majority of people who come to the UK come on planes with visas. 

"It is far more complicated than the picture given."