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A top Tory councillor has issued a grovelling ­apol­ogy for forwarding a series of sexist, racist and ­pornographic emails.

Messages from Peter Batty – the leader of a local Conservative party – included “jokes” ­containing the n-word.

He passed on gags about black women being involved in a plane crash, using a string of derogatory terms about them.

The crude emails also poked fun at Indian taxi-drivers as well as Irish and Jewish people.

The councillor now accepts the messages were “completely ­inappropriate” and were “a ­terrible error of judgment”.

Another email forwarded by Cllr Batty, who also sits as a ­parish councillor, was titled “A**e of the Year”.

Readers had to scroll past seven pornographic photos of a naked woman in a bubble bath.

At the end of the message were the words: “And ... I’ll bet you thought this was going to be about Nick Clegg.”

The emails – too offensive to repeat in a family newspaper – have resulted in severe criticism about his conduct.

The messages were sent from a private email account he is also believed to use for council business.

Cllr Batty’s seat is in Groby, six miles from Leicester – which has large and diverse black and Asian communities.

He forwarded at least nine offensive emails which have been seen by the Sunday People's reporters .

Colleagues in his party are thought to have complained about his behaviour.

One angry female recipient contacted our newsroom to tell of her disgust.

“The joke ones are racist and sexist,” she said.

“I feel that it is totally inappro­priate for the leader of our Conservative councillors to send emails such as these. And I am not the only one to speak about this either.”

Another person who has received the messages said: “They’re sent from his private email address but he also uses that for council business.

“He sends these so-called jokes to an undisclosed list of people so I don’t know exactly how many get them.

The man added: “Some of what he has sent is just porn. The racist jokes are far worse than anything Ken Morley said on Big Brother earlier this month.

“As local Tory group leader he really should know better. The emails are offensive and insulting and the so-called gags are just not funny.”

Cllr Batty has sat on the Lib Dem-controlled borough council since 2006.

In December 2013 he was banned from sitting on Groby parish council for a month after an independent committee found he breached the code of conduct requiring councillors to treat all races equally.

That row centred on a leaflet sent out by the parish council – then led by him – about rumours of an unauthorised travellers’ site in the village.

He des­cribed the episode at the time as a Lib Dem-led “witch-hunt”.

On the emails storm, Cllr Batty said: “I am very sorry for sharing the contents of these messages. They are completely in­appropriate and it was a terrible error of ­judgment on my behalf.

“I hope my apology will be ­accepted by both my constituents and the wider public.”

He insisted: “I do not believe in racism or sexism in any form."