Although the party is languishing in the polls, and its leader’s obsession with the far-right is bringing it little more than ridicule, the rump of saloon bar propper-uppers otherwise known as UKIP is about to hit the news stands in a way which is already causing that leader considerable discomfort. Because it’s all about him.
I em not a racialist but, und zis is a big but …
The inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker – whether the paper concerned is the Daily Mail or Mail on Sunday is not yet clear – clearly do not have enough on their collective plates with Brexit. So they have decided to delve into the wacky world of Adolf von Batten, and what they have found there has been deemed newsworthy enough for it to be given significant prominence in a weekend edition of one of the two titles.
Exactly what the Mail titles may have in mind was outlined by John O’Connell of Far Right Watch, who told his followers “The Daily Mail or Mail on Sunday, or both, have a take-down prepared on #Ukip’s @GerrardBatten for this weekend. We hear there’s lots of new stuff, including criminality. Expect #Ukip head implosions and tantrums galore”. Criminality? Some may be surprised. They should not be.
It has been put to me on more than one occasion that Batten’s links to bent coppers are long-standing and potentially damaging to at least one Police force. It has also been put to me that he has been able to use these links to damage his rivals and keep the heat off himself. What Batten may not know is that the press also does links to bent coppers, and has done for decades. Why d’you think phone hacking nearly got covered up?
The Met knew it had enough evidence to sink the Murdoch empire. It pretended it didn’t. The Murdoch mafiosi was well in with the Met. They were not the only ones in the press pack to be so favoured. Anyone who thinks their Police contacts trump those of the press establishment is not dealing from a full deck.
So how has Batten reacted to the impending defenestration by the Rothermere goons? Simples. The idiot has admitted it’s on its way. “Not content with sending a ‘journalist’ thousands of miles to harass my wife’s family in the Philippines last week the Daily Mail has sent our Party Chairman a bunch of ludicrous questions about me. They plan more hatchet jobs. Not once have they ever asked me about Brexit”.
Ask yourselves why the Mail should dispatch someone to the Philippines. Clue: it’s not for the purposes of bringing the readers a heartwarming story of love across the national, and indeed racial, divide. Gerard Batten is about to be exposed and ridiculed big time, and there is nothing he can do about it. Except rant about the hated MSM.
If there is nothing in the Mail’s exposé, then he has nothing to worry about, and the story will die a death. If there is, UKIP will become even more of a laughing stock. And if he gets defamed in the process, well, tough titty Adolf. You and your pals don’t fret when you’re all doling that out to anyone else. What’s sauce for the goose, and all that.
Gerard Batten is about to follow Paul Nuttall into becoming the comedy leader of a comedy political party. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bigot.
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
A North Wales AM has called Chuka Umunna a “f***ing coconut” during a foul-mouthed rant against him, Barack Obama and Tristram Hunt.
Michelle Brown, a regional Ukip AM, said the Labour MP for Streatham was “black on the outside, white on the inside” in a telephone conversation with Nigel Williams, who was her senior advisor at the time.
In the exchange on May 14, 2016, Ms Brown also described former Labour MP Mr Hunt as a “t**t” and derided his background, before saying former US President Obama was “exactly the same” as Mr Umunna.
Ms Brown has apologised to anyone offended by her comments and said the language she used about Mr Umunna was “inappropriate”.
During the conversation last year, the AM said: “I don’t say this lightly…but Chuka Umunna is a f***ing coconut.
“He’s got as much understanding of an ordinary black man’s experience as I have.
“He may be black but his mother or his father was British from a very, very influential family.
“He is a coconut – black on the outside, white on the inside, and Barack Obama’s exactly the same.”
A spokesperson for the National Assembly for Wales Labour group said: “This is absolutely outrageous language and lays bare the disgusting racism at the heart of UKIP.
“Anything less than immediate suspension would be a clear endorsement of Michelle Brown’s racist slur.”
Mr Williams worked for Ms Brown for just over a year before being sacked by her in May this year, and was previously a police detective of 14 years in North Wales and Merseyside.
He said he spoke out after recently discovering the conversation among his records.
“I was absolutely appalled,” said Mr Williams.
“It’s bad enough coming from anybody, but to come from a newly appointed Assembly Member is absolutely appalling.
“I’ve seen swearing and I’ve been called all sorts of names myself, but I’ve actually never seen it from somebody in such a position.
“This wasn’t a meltdown. This was just a conversation that Michelle Brown was having, which she thought was OK.
“There was no meltdown going on. She was talking ordinarily about something else and just decided to throw that into the conversation.
“She was being appallingly badly behaved.”
In a statement, Ms Brown said: “The point I was making is that, because of his considerable wealth and privilege, Chukka Umunna cannot possibly understand the difficulties and issues that the average black person faces in this country any more than I can, and I stand by that assertion.
“I do however accept that the language I used in the private conversation was inappropriate and I apologise to anyone that has been offended by it.
“As far as the language I used about Mr Hunt is concerned, it was a private conversation and I was using language that friends and colleagues often do when chatting to each other.”
Mr Ummuna, Mr Hunt and UKIP have been approached for comment.
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
not only does Ukip have a near industrial propensity for stupidity, but now with no credible leader it seems not only Party leadership candidates get in fist fights and their MEPs are repeatedly under investigation for fraud one , Tim Aker, has been under investigation for the rape and sexual assault of numerous young women (some very young!) see:
I Understand Ukip’s MEP Tim (Timur) Aker Has Been Questioned! The full story so far + UPDATES can be found if you CLICK HERE .
Ukip’s endless involvement in racism, such as that of Gerard Batten, which manifests in his constant extreme anti Islamic behaviour, which I feel sure is based on his own Bronze Age superstitions and influenced by his Filipino wife who would have been raise under the aegis of Cardinal Sin the leader of the Catholic Church in the Philipines where there has always been conflict between the two superstitions.
The endless outbursts from so many Ukip members, candidates and members of their leadership from their onetime leader Malcolm Pearson’s outrageos anti Muslim ranting, as covered with accuracy in a double page spread in the News of The World, to the party links with the BNP, Lega Nord, EDL and other extreme groups has did little to help the party’s long term survival or even credibility in the BreXit Campaign, which they did so much to put at risk.
The overt racism of members was such that it even gave credibility to the utterly spurious claims of Nazi style behaviour by Alex Wood in both the Mirror and the Daily Mail which I covered at CLICK HERE & also HERE together with a copy of The Mirror’s apology for their poorly reasearched and false allegations against him.
However to have Gerard Batten endlessly carrying on with his knee jerk reaction is far from helpfull and you will note that due to lack of leadership ability Paul Nuttall seems not to have a clue what to say – all rather similar to the days when Geoffrey Titford as nominal leader failed to act for a considerable time over the fact that his office was being used to produce anti Islamic tracts and publicity, including a pamphlet accusing Mohammed of being a paedophile, completely out of the context of history!
It is of course true that most of the various Bronze Age Gods that were invented have a lunatic fringe of extremism, Muslims do not bear the exclusive blame for such behaviour – consider the huge number of killings in the name of so called christianity, as with the Inquisition, Jones Cult, Waco, German death camps which were all founded on religious superstitions!
Ukip MEP’s ‘death cult’ remarks spark new Islamophobia row
Party leader Paul Nuttall refuses to say whether he agrees with views of Brexit spokesman Gerard Batten
Saturday 29 April 2017 08.00 BST Last modified on Saturday 29 April 2017 10.13 BST
Ukip is facing renewed criticism over its attitudes towards Islam after it emerged that one of its senior MEPs said non-Muslims should have a “perfectly rational fear” of the faith, which he described as a “death cult” steeped in violence.
The Liberal Democrats and Greens described the comments, written in a blogpost by Ukip’s Brexit spokesman, Gerard Batten, as “hateful” and “the gutter of British politics”.
Asked twice about the issue at the launch of Ukip’s election campaign on Friday, the party’s leader, Paul Nuttall, declined to say whether he agreed with Batten’s views.
Ukip’s stance towards Islam has been in focus since Monday, when the party announced what it terms an “integration agenda”, including a ban on full-face veils and compulsory medical checks for girls seen as at risk of female genital mutilation.
Later in the week the party adopted as a candidate an activist from the anti-Islam Pegida movement, who has praised the far-right leaders Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders and described Islam as “evil”.
Speaking at Friday’s campaign launch, Nuttall said the candidacy of Anne Marie Waters would be considered by Ukip’s national executive committee. But he did not answer questions about the views of Batten, an MEP since 2004.
In the post on his personal blog written after last month’s terrorist attack in Westminster, Batten said Islam should be referred to as “Mohammedanism – the cult of Mohammed – because that is what it is”.
He continued: “It is a death cult, born and steeped in 1,400 years of violence and bloodshed, that propagates itself by intimidation, violence and conquest.”
Batten wrote: “The terrorists are the vanguard of Mohammedanism. They set out to cow the non-Mohammedan population, so that the ‘moderate Muslims’ can get on establishing sharia courts, forcing halal food in school and works canteens, and making the authorities look the other way regarding criminal activities for fear of being called racist and Islamophobic.”
Saying that a phobia was a fear without a rational base, Batten said: “A normal non-Mohammedan should have a perfectly rational fear of ‘Islam’.”
The Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake said: “[Nuttall] must stop turning a blind eye to this blatant Islamophobic language and make clear it will not be tolerated.
“Ukip’s lurch towards Islamophobia is a desperate attempt to stay relevant after Theresa May has taken over their hard Brexit agenda. This kind of hateful language has no place in a UK political party.”
Caroline Lucas, the Greens’ co-leader, said: “Ukip’s descent into the gutter of British politics is continuing. Their leadership and spokespeople have lurched even further to the right as the Tories do their Brexit work for them.
“The deep prejudice within this hollowed out party is being exposed – and the Green party will continue to challenge this bigotry every time it rears its ugly head.”
Asked about Batten’s comments, Nuttall instead defended his party’s Islam-focused policies, saying these were “somehow perceived as being anti-Muslim”.
He continued: “Actually, it’s all about equality. It’s all about breaking down barriers. It’s all about integrating people into society.”
The start of the event was interrupted by protesters, who shouted that Ukip was racist. Asked later whether this was the case, Nuttall said: “No, they’re not right. It’s disappointing that certain people in politics don’t want to debate. What they want to do is shout people down.”
Batten, who has previously said he has a policy of not talking to the Guardian, was contacted for comment.
I try to make every effort to NOT infringe copyrights in any commercial way & make all corrections of fact brought to my attention by an identifiable individual
Aspects Of Ukip Racism both as published by Ukip & in the media.
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Hi,
it is articles like the one below and the fact that time and time again it becomes apparent that at its very core Ukip is managed and staffed by those with racist views and aims.
We note that the period of rapid growth of membership of Ukip coincides with the collapse of the BNP and despite the claims of a ban on ex BNP members joining Ukip many have been condoned and encouraged and in the last few days a fair amount of publicity has been given to the fact that Nick Griffin who led the BNP for a number of years and was one of their first two MEPs has advocated voting for Ukip and made it clear he will be voting Ukip CLICK HERE
David Coburn one of Ukip’s present MEPs is far from the only one supporting those with racist views and many will be aware that one of Nigel Farage’s election agent was a BNP regional organiser.
A brief read of Ukip’s Immigration policy pamphlet
it shows clearly just how racist Ukip’s policies are especially when one reads some of the other published material, particularly by one of their longest serving MEPs Gerard Batten, some of whose pamphlets can clearly be shown to be likely to incite racial violence particularly on the issue of religion!
Arthur Thackeray, the taxpayer-funded chief of staff for the party’s Euro MP David Coburn, claims to have marched with the English and Scottish Defence Leagues
A top Ukip aide boasted of taking part in far-right demonstrations.
Arthur Thackeray, the taxpayer-funded chief of staff for the party’s Euro MP David Coburn, told of marching with the English and Scottish Defence Leagues.
The revelations will hugely embarrass UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who has repeatedly insisted his party is not racist.
Thackeray, 53, from Glasgow, was put on the public payroll by Mr Coburn, one of 24 Ukip candidates elected to the European Parliament in May this year.
But just two years ago Thackeray boasted on Facebook about taking part in an SDL demo in Glasgow on February 25, 2012.
Months earlier he told how he joined the EDL at a protest in Blackpool on October 15, 2011, with “patriots old and new”.
He spelt out his support for the far-right groups in a post on September 3, 2011, writing: “I personally support the aims and objectives of the Defence Leagues. Ukip has no official party line on this issue.”
A day earlier, on the eve of an EDL demo in east London, he wrote: “To all London-bound patriots… stand proud and stay safe NS (no surrender).”
When another activist urged people to join EDL to stop “Muslim paedophile gangs”, Thackeray replied: “Good post.”
On the day of a highly contentious protest in Luton, Beds, he wrote: “Luton 05/02/11. For all the patriots, infidels, angels and belles… stand proud and stay safe… NS!”
After a 2010 Armed Forces Day event in Blackpool he wrote: “Thanx to the UKIPers, EDLers, RAFers and Infusers I met.”
He is on first-name terms with former National Front chief Patrick Harrington, who sent him an online Christmas card.
And in October 2012 he plugged a book in favour of far-right soccer thugs group Casuals United, writing: “Forget lefty media lies and be informed from inside the patriot protest movement.”
Last year Ukip leader Mr Farage suspended Leicester Parliamentary candidate Chris Scotton, 24, after he “liked” a Facebook page supporting EDL.
Ukip did not respond to our request for a comment last night
>GUEST POST:
Ukip’s Rochester & Strood by election candidate the Tory turncoat Mark Reckless’s Reckless Casual Racism regarding Gaddafi’s killing of immigrants on an industrial level!
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Hi,
I aimed to write of this obscene comment by the turncoat Tory Mark Reckless who is now standing for Ukip, with much expectation of election, in the Rochester & Strood constituency by-election.
In the light of Mark Reckless’ latest ill considered racist remark as detailed, I incline to believe that with an upcoming General Election the Conservatives must be relieved they let him go and he can befoul the reputation of Ukip rather than the Tories!
Having lost my telephone and broadband connection from Sunday evening until late yesterday afternoon, due to the antiquated aluminium cables in my local exchange, I have been struggling to catch up with the follies of Ukip & bringing them to the attention of readers and the media – I therefore have no qualms in dealing with Mark Reckless’ crass and casual racism by copying / Guest Posting an article from another blogger on the subject, with which I largely agree, to assist you in keeping abreast of facts pertaining to Ukip.
Spread throughout several newspapers today are the comments from Mark Reckless, former Conservative MP and now UKIP candidate for the Rochester and Strood by-election.
At a rally in the Kent constituency, Reckless – by name and nature it would seem – referred to the growing numbers of migrants trying to make the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. “Whatever people say about Gaddafi”, he remarked, “one thing is he didn’t allow those boats to come across”.
“He had an agreement with Italy that stopped it. Since he’s gone we have no idea what’s going on in Libya, it’s too dangerous for anyone to go there”, he added.
According to the Mail, these remarks are being compared to the famous last excuse for Fascism, “say what you like about Mussolini, he made the trains on time”. But they are far, far worse than that comparison would imply. They are more like applauding Hitler for keeping Jews out of Britain by putting them in the camps – for that is precisely what Gaddafi was doing with migrants passing through his territory – with the complicity of the EU.
Parallels are in many ways absolute. Huge volumes of well-founded evidence, not least from Amnesty, the Global Detention Project and Human Rights Watch attest to the fact that Gaddafi set up many death camps where immigrants were unlawfully detained, tortured and murdered. Many others were trucked into the Sahara and abandoned without food and water.
Altogether, the Gaddafi regime was responsible for the deaths of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of migrants. Yet – despite that – Italy in 2008 concluded a “Friendship Agreement” which had Gadaffi agreeing to step up border controls and to take back “expelled foreigners” from Italy, all in exchange for Italy agreeing to provide Libya $5 billion in infrastructure projects over 25 years.
Italy was already paying for charter flights for Libya to send the people “home”, and had between August 2003 and December 2004 transported 5,668 people to Libya, despite known human rights abuses.
On the back of the agreement, in May 2009, Libya and Italy also launched joint naval patrols in Libyan territorial waters for an initial period of three years, the controversial practice of “push-backs” (respingimento) which was subsequently condemned as breaching human rights law.
Thus, while no one is going to argue with Reckless’s general theses that things are no better in Libya now, after western intervention, to applaud a dictator for his human rights abuses is not the most sensible thing for a politician to do – unless, of course, he represents UKIP.
Enter now Mr Farage who was given the opportunity to implement a deft piece of damage limitation, only for him to agree with Reckless (and incidentally support EU policy), bemoaning the removal of somebody, “albeit an Arab nationalist dictator, who actually gave a level of stability to the area”.
Thus we have senior UKIP politicians applauding a dictator’s use of death camps – a means of immigration control which clearly has the approval of Messrs Reckless and Farage. And with that, it is perhaps unsurprising that UKIP is reluctant to commit its policy to writing – unless, of course, it is waiting for the translation from the original German.
Interestingly there are similarities between certain aspects of Gaddafi’s treatment of immigrants and the published policy of Ukip as shown in their official pamphlet on the subject published by the Ukip MEP Gerald Batten:
Understanding the behaviour likely to cause Incitement To Racial Hatred In UKip as presented due to the ignorance & bronze age superstitions of Gerard Batten & the evils of Zionism & racial hatred of Malcolm Lord Pearson.
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Hi,
superstitions & the ignorance of the bronze age has no place in the governance of man as shown and proven by the evil racism of Gerard Batten
where like Malcolm Pearson he makes comments likely to encourage racial hatred.
I understand that there is now an inquiry into the corruption, dishonesty and collusion to pervert the course of justice which now, due to the intervention of the head of the Metropolitan Police, is being carried out by the Professional Standards Department as it is alleged Gerard Batten has acted in abuse of his position to corrupt together with named police officers.
Gerard Batten’s apparent racism likely to incite racial hatred must surely be a part of this case – as was Lord Pearson’s in a double page spread in the media some time ago!
Sam Solomon, Christian Concern and Gerard Batten by Steven Rose
A few months ago, the “proposed charter of Muslim understanding” resurfaced. UKIP MEP, Gerard Batten, had commissioned it in 2006.
Batten recently told the Guardian that he could not see why “any reasonable, normal person” would object to signing it. The document proposes that British Muslims sign a declaration against violence. In a speech delivered to the House of Lords in 2007, Batten stated:
“The Proposed Charter has now been very slightly revised with one major change, to which I draw your attention, of the insertion of an Affirmation on page 29 that asks individuals, groups and organisations that represent Muslims to affirm their belief in certain basic values, these are: The equality of all before God and the law; equal rights for women; the rejection of intimidation and violence in the name of religion; religious freedom – specifically the right of Muslims to convert to other religions if they wish; and the tolerance of other religions and non discrimination against non-Muslims.”
Ukip maintain that asking Muslims to sign this ‘code of conduct’ had never been one of its policies. Yet, in 2007, the party website published a press release to promote Batten’s House of Lords event.
Another noteworthy quote from Batten’s speech:
“In 2006 I commissioned Sam Solomon to write an analysis of those Islamic texts that can be used by extremist Muslims to justify terrorism. That analysis developed into the Proposed Charter of Muslim Understanding, which was initially launched in Strasbourg in December 2006. It got little coverage in the UK but did get extensive coverage elsewhere, particularly in the USA.”
“Show us that Islam is not at war with America by requiring that a Proposed Charter of Muslim Understanding be signed by those who profess a peaceful Muslim faith before entering the U.S. military”
Yet, few focus upon the charter’s author, Sam Solomon. Various sources state that he is a former Islamic jurist who fled to the UK after converting to Christianity.
In 2004, Sam Solomon worked with Andrea Williams, co-founder of Christian Concern, against the Religious Hatred Bill. At a 2008 conference, Andrea Williams confirmed that Solomon influenced her understanding of Islam. One year later, Christian Concern linked readers to a free PDF of the Muslim Charter. (Christian Concern founder, Andrea Williams, according to the Independent newspaper, angered gay rights campaigners after giving a speech in Jamaica and reportedy suggesting that the Olympic athlete – Tom Daley – is in a relationship with a man because his father died.)
Towards the end of that year, the same Nashville church hosted an event about the ‘threat’ of Sharia. One notable guest was Paul Diamond, of Christian Concern, who stated that his organisation might work with the Tennessee Freedom Coalition.
Paul Diamond also has links to Gerard Batten, as he defended Batten’s wife over an alleged unpaid television licence fee in 2010. A year later, Batten sent Christian Concern a document that suggested a ban on religious slaughter.
Christian Concern maintains a working relationship with Sam Solomon. But any connection to the Tennessee Freedom Coalition remains tenuous.
Of the seven books listed in Christian Concern’s online store, six are about Islam. Sam Solomon authored five (including the Muslim Charter). (A You Tube transcript of Andrea Williams on Halal labeling and foods is listed below and can be found through this link:
Because actually it’s a sign of a society subjugating herself to Islam, to the rules of Islam, and it’s been done very subtly. It’s extraordinary isn’t it, that we, in the United Kingdom, now in a chain of pizza restaurants are unable to have meat that’s non Halal. That’s an incredible situation to find ourselves in. In our banks, we’ve got Sharia compliant financing – a dual system, we’ve got the law society saying that wills should be made compliant to Sharia rules. We’ve got the reality that Sharia courts are operating, and what I say to that is this: there’s a dual system of law; Sharia law and English law, and although English law may not yet absolutely recognize Sharia law, or says that it doesn’t recognize law, once operational it’s going to be very hard to challenge it. We need to boycott those food outlets, so we need to write to Pizza Express, we need to write to the executive body there and say we will not frequent your restaurants. We need to write to our supermarkets and we need to say we won’t buy your meat. Or we need to say you need to clearly label your meat, we need to be given choice. We actually need to find our voice, otherwise we are just handing ourselves over to what the Muslims will see in a sense as being subjugated. It’s political subjugation. That’s what we’re currently – it’s very subtle – we’ve got Halal meat only in hospitals, we’ve got Halal meat only in schools – in certain hospitals and certain schools – Halal meat in certain areas of London, Halal meat in certain areas of the United Kingdom, and we – the people of Great Britain – think that that’s not real, but it is real. And we need to wake up and understand that that’s what we’re being served, and understand that it is a form of ideological take over.
The Overt Racism Seemingly Inciting Racial Hatred of Gerard Batten, in UKIP’s name, displays not only his personal extremism but also his ill educated ignorance which due to lack of education or work experience – having started out as a trained bookbinder and advanced to a shop based sales rep for BT.
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Hi,
the Overt Racism, Seemingly Inciting Racial Hatred, of Gerard Batten, in UKIP’s name, displays not only his personal extremism but also his ill educated ignorance which due to lack of education or work experience – having started out as a trained bookbinder and advanced to a shop based sales rep for BT shows his fear of what to him is the unknown based on his superstition’s antipathy and ignorance not just of Islam but for those of Islam and their Middle East foundations.
Gerard Batten is untrustworthy and has little or no understanding of the basic tennets of British Justice and is all too willing to lie and pervert the course of justice for his personal gain. I understand his association with police officers and others allegedly corrupt and his corrupt abuse of the police and his status as an elected official are a matter brought to the attention of senior police, The Metropolitan Police, Sir Bernard Hogan Hunt, The Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Prime Minister Cameron.
I am perfectly happy to attest to Gerard Batten’s extremism and also his dishonesty, corruption and lack of understanding of duty and responsibility – you need only seek and read the many examples of this unpleasant little man’s behaviour on this blog and his vindictive and dishonest efforts to silence those who expose him.
That Gerard Batten makes a nonsense of the various denials that UKIP makes of their racism, extremist links, anti Islamism and xenophobic hatred – one should remember he has held the highest offices in the party and has stood as one of Nigel Farage’s longest standing colleagues.
Meet Gerard Batten, The UKIP MEP Scare-Mongering About Islam, Immigrants And Bilderberg
Posted: 21/05/2014 12:23 BST
He believes the European Union was conceived by Nazi Germany, suggests the Bilderberg Group is a “shadow world government”, and wants to ban the building of new mosques.
Meet Gerard Batten, senior Ukip MEP and top lieutenant to Nigel Farage.
In recent weeks, Farage has tried to dismiss the string of “unpleasant” and “appalling” remarks – to quote the Prime Minister – made by various Ukip candidates by stressing how minor they are within the party. Batten, thus, poses a particular problem for his party leader.
A founding member of Ukip in 1993, he has been the party’s chief whip in the European Parliament since 2009 after being appointed by Farage to the post. Batten was also Ukip’s mayoral candidate in London in 2008 and came second in the party’s leadership election in 2009.
Yet the London MEP, first elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2009, has a wide range of controversial opinions, as colourful as the pink suits he is known to wear.
“Gerard is much more hardline than many of his colleagues in the party,” a party insider says. “He’s got very strong views, with many of them too strong for a lot of people.”
HuffPost UK spoke to a dozen sources, including current and former colleagues of Batten, both on and off the record, to find out more about the controversial top Ukipper.
The MEP also argued that some Muslim texts also required updating, particularly those bits he claimed say “kill Jews wherever you find them”. He said: “If they say they cannot revise their thinking on those issues, then who’s got the problem – us or them?”
Ex-Ukip MEP Nikki Sinclaire, who joined the party in the 1990s, calls her former colleague an “incredibly paranoid person”.
“Gerard talks about the gradual takeover by the Muslims of Great Britain and sharia law. He has been hell-bent on attacking Muslims.”
Sinclaire claims that Batten is “very good friends” with far-right European politicians like Dutch MP Geert Wilders and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, adding: “I often see him in the parliament with those MEPs.”
Although, Farage and Ukip have rejected joining up with far-right parties led by the likes of Wilders (in Holland) and Marine Le Pen (in France) at a Europe-wide level, Batten nonetheless invited Wilders to the European Parliament in December 2008 to screen his controversial film ‘Fitna’ to MEPs, praising him as “a brave man trying to defend western civilisation”.
Gerard Batten with Geert Wilders at a press conference in 2008
The 17-minute film, featuring shocking imagery of the attacks on New York in 2001 and Madrid in 2004 combined with quotes from the Quran, Islam’s holy book, was called ‘offensively anti-Islamic’ by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Wilders has called for a ban on the Quran and claims “there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam'”.
One party insider admits that Batten has very “strong” views about Islam, quipping: “It’s not like he wants to kill all Muslims.”
Simon Cressy, from the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, describes Batten as “on the far right of Ukip”, adding: “He’s very senior. People like him prove the reality about Ukip when they insist they’re not racist and Islamophobic.
“He has got lots of links to various anti-Islamic group over the past few years, he has spoken at meetings where there has been various sorts of dodgy-anti islamic politicians.”
Batten has himself made contact with the English Defence League, admitting to meeting EDL funder Alan Lake in 2011 as he wanted to find out more about the “phenomenon”.
He explained: “Mr Lake gave me his assurances that the EDL were a non-racist, non-violent organisation and that is only concerned with combating the ideology of extremist and fundamentalist Islamism and had no prejudice against Muslims as such.”
For Muslim imam and activist Ajmal Masroor, Batten’s presence in the top tier of Ukip proves it is not “a political party that is fit to serve the 21st century multicultural and multi-faith Europe”. Masroor, a former Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, accuses the Ukip immigration spokesman of “espousing outright discrimination” and “spreading hate”.
Batten’s political opponents agree. “I find his past association with far-right extremism, no matter how much he tries to deny it now, totally reprehensible. It exposes the close relationship between Ukip on the hard-right and extremist parties,” says Labour MEP Richard Howitt, who calls Batten “boorish” and “slightly aggressive”.
The Tory MEP Sajjad Karim, who is a Muslim himself and vice-president of the European Parliament’s anti-racism group, compares Batten’s views on Muslims to the Nazi treatment of the Jews. “The vast majority of Britons find his views on Muslims repugnant and reminiscent of another era where a whole religious community was stigmatised and targeted in this very same way,” he told HuffPost UK.
However, a Ukip insider dismissed Howitt and Karim’s Howitt’s remarks as “hyperbolic nonsense”, adding: “Has Mr Karim never heard of Godwin’s law? Well, you lose.”
The source added that Batten “may come across as obsessive” because he is “single-minded”, but that he “very hard-working, utterly committed to the cause of Britain leaving the EU.”
‘IMMIGRATION? HE IS TO THE RIGHT OF UKIP’
It isn’t just Muslims who have been targeted by the Ukip immigration spokesman. Batten wrote a provocative paper for Ukip in 2010 titled “Immigration – Action Overdue!” which laid out his thoughts at length on the effect of immigrants on Britain.
He claimed that “the English will become a minority in their own land”, warning that most Brits “within a few decades” would be “immigrants, or the children and grandchildren of immigrants”.
While Farage squirms about what he meant when linking Romanians with criminality, Batten does not beat around the bush, writing: “Apparently Romanians are cornering the market in hole-in-the-wall-fraud.”
Batten also warns that many parts of Britain are now “more like enclaves of Pakistan, Bengal or India than English cities”, blaming the “phenomenon of ‘White flight'”.
Former Ukip deputy leader Mike Nattrass MEP, who was a member of the party until 2013, said Batten was “to the right of me and other people in the party” on immigration, but added: “He thinks and believes what he says. As an Englishman, he perfectly has the right to say what he thinks.”
Former party leader Dr Alan Sked, who founded Ukip in 1993 alongside Batten, said he was surprised by the latter’s hardline stance on immigration as the Ukip MEP’s wife is from the Philippines.
Sked, an international history professor at the London School of Economics, has previously caused controversy for suggesting he had heard Farage use racial slurs in his presence – but the former party leader has a much rosier verdict of Batten.
“He was always hard working and had a good sense of humour. I never heard him say anything extreme in my time.”
‘THE SHADOW WORLD GOVERNMENT’
Batten has gained particular renown for campaigning about the Bilderberg Group, which hosts an annual conference discussing international issues which is attended by world leaders and business chiefs. For conspiracy theorists, these secretive gatherings have long been used by unnamed ‘elites’ to further their nefarious, global agendas.
As protesters gathered outside 2013’s meeting at the Grove Hotel in Watford, Batten was on hand to give an interview to US radio shock jock and 9/11 ‘truther’ Alex Jones about the Bilderberg “conspiracy”.
Batten told Jones he had regularly been writing to politicians to ask them why they attended the conference and who paid for them, saying: “If you are really here to talk about things in the public interest, who do you think you can do it in secrecy? Why not in public?”
Asked if he thought it was a “conspiracy”, he responded: “What’s the definition of a conspiracy? It’s two or more people meeting in secret to achieve an end which may be illegal or legal. In the strictest use of the word, it is a conspiracy.
“The bigger conspiracy has been the fact that the media hasn’t spoken about this for 59 years and haven’t allowed it to go on without any reporting.”
He also said: “Look who owns the media, it is owned by powerful people and they go to powerful meetings like this.”
Batten’s focus on media ownership draws concern from Jewish groups for its undertones. Mark Gardner, from the Community Security Trust (CST), told HuffPost UK: “Gerard Batten stresses that he does not believe the more extreme conspiracy theories about the Bilderberg Group, but any notions of secret political and media power can risk echoing well-worn anti-Semitic ideas.”
Proving he is no stranger to conspiracy theories, Batten suggested to Jones that the European Union had been originally proposed by the Nazis, pointing to a plan by high-ranking Nazi official Dr Walter Funk in 1942 that sketched out “how are we going to run the economy after we have won the war”.
The Ukip chief whip also claimed that in 1975, when the UK was debating whether to stay in the European Union, the CIA funnelled money into the Yes campaign and the BBC “had meetings to ensure the Yes vote was delivered.”
Batten described the alleged CIA involvement as an “instrument of American foreign policy at the time” and complained that “the No vote was totally outspent and outclassed” by US intelligence.
He told other reporters: “[Bilderberg] has been called a ‘shadow world government’, whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but nobody else does either.”
Cressy, from Hope not Hate, says: “People see Gerard as being an anti-Bilderberg campaigner and this anti-establishment guy, when he’s not really. He’s like the embarrassing uncle you don’t want to talk about.”
Former colleagues, such as ex-Ukip deputy leader Nattrass, look at Batten’s obsession with Bilderberg with bemusement. “There’s always someone who turns up at hustings and goes on about Bilderberg – it’s like going after the freemasons.”
Ex-Ukip MEP Sinclaire recalls attending leadership hustings alongside Batten in 2009: “We did several hustings and he would talk about Bilderberg and all these kind of things – and you’d think, ‘Really?'”
A Ukip insider played down Batten’s interest in Bilderberg, saying: “Gerard has his own side-interests as everybody does in politics. They’re not Nigel’s but when it comes to the key issues, they’re as one.”
THE GREAT SURVIVOR
Having worked as a salesman at British Telecom for 28 years, Batten helped found Ukip and then rose up the ranks, eventually standing for the party leadership in 2009 and coming second to Lord Pearson.
Today, he is one of the most senior and high-profile members of Ukip – which has its downsides. Earlier this month, Batten reported that a brick was thrown through his living room window in the middle of the night.
His party leader was quick to offer his support and blamed the attack on “the media campaign against UK”.
Relations, however, are said to be pretty poor between the two men. A well-placed Ukip insider said the pair “are not socially close and never have been”, adding: “they’re not drinking buddies”.
HuffPost UK repeatedly contacted Farage and Batten for comment, but at the time of publishing, they have yet to respond.
Ex-Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom says Batten is not “clubbable”, but adds: “I’ve always found that what you see is what you get.” Bloom declines to endorse Batten’s more “out there” views on Islam and Muslims.
Sinclaire describes Batten as the “official controlled opposition” within Ukip to Farage, explaining: “Anyone who has ever questioned or stood up to Farage has basically been destroyed. Gerard Batten challenges Nigel and always survives. My belief is that he’s the one who Nigel puts up [with] and controls.
“I know him and Farage don’t get on. I question how he can survive in Ukip. They’re not good friends. My only conclusion is that he controls him.”
Gerard Batten and Nigel Farage
Nattrass says that Nigel “does not like” Batten and “has said some disgusting things about him before”.
“Nigel tried to sideline him in the 2009 European elections and stop him being top of the candidates’ list in London. Gerard is where he is because Nigel can control him. Anyone he can’t control, he shoves out of the party.”
Sked recalls Batten and Farage have been at odds for much longer, claiming that the London MEP even backed a vote to kick Farage out of Ukip back in 1997, but quit the party’s national executive when “threatened with having to share the subsequent legal bills.”
Batten left the party in 1998 in protest at Ukip’s decision to change its position on sending its MEPs to Brussels, after previously having adopted a position of refusing to attend the European Parliament once they were elected to it.
“Nigel was one of the prime movers of the change at the party policy,” a party insider recalls. “Gerard was dead set against the policy and wanting it to keep to its core values.”
Batten’s own core values are controversial, to say the least. His political opponents call him a supporter of the far right, and see him as an anti-Islam, anti-immigrant extremist. The fact that he is a believer in CIA and Nazi conspiracies don’t help his credibility, either.
Clearly UKIP Couldn’t Organise A Carnival In Croydon so why do people think they have a serious role inpolitics where they can’t deliver either – 21 years and still no Exit & Survival Plan!
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Hi,
as ever UKIP’s desperate efforts to pretend to inclusivity leaves them with Winston McKenzie as a ticking time bomb who as so often happens with UKIP under Nigel Farage’s inept attempts at leadership has yet again ‘blown’!
Just as in almost every election UKIP participates in issues overtake policies and as ever this time the overt racism of Farage’s chosen campaign where we note that the only publicity UKIP has received in the election run up has either been that which they purchased or bad publicity, which to be fair has indeed drawn support but sadly, as can be seen in these photos, amongst the elderly and those who previously supported the BNP and other xenophobes.
You will note how the UKIP racist issue has totally subsumed any reasoned rational promotion of policy to Leave_The_EU. This is hardly surprising in the ligyht of their inept and ill considered damaging campaign that gained so much bad publicity to add to the baggage that UKIP has attracted that has largely lost them the core vote from genuine EUroSceptics and has so damaged the EUroRealist movement such that if they continue to pretend to represent those opposed to membership of The EU that there is a danger that in the next year or two they will manage to lock Britain into membership and vassal status in the EU.
Astonishingly after 21 years UKIP still has absolutely no viable Exit & Survival Atrategy and clearly have very little understanding of just how the EU works, its foundations or its aims. UKIP has failed to explain just how Britain would be better off out of The EU or how it could be achieved – nor of the bigger picture and whilst they have a line of denigratory & childish rhetoric they would seem to have absoluitely no strategy or tactics that encompass the facts – just ya boo rhetoric.
UKIP quite clearly has no understanding of the background of the EU and their actions in placing their impramature on the negotiated edicts of The WHO, CODEX, Davos and other International bodies that oil the wheels of International trade and relations – The EU instigates almost nothing of consequence merely taking our place at the negotiating tables seeking a one size fits all concept making no allowances for the needs, aspirations and values of many of the constituent Nation States.
UKIP has displayed its ineptitude and lack of gravitas on a seriak basis – many may adulate them but few respect them whilst a clear majority despise their cheap style and fundamental lack of any candidates of note in any serious terms.UKIP lacked even the competence to put forward an entry for the BrExit Prize, clearly having no one of competence to research and write such a paper – though I concede that with 20/20 hindsight we now know that the BrExit Prize devolved into farce due to the corrupt management by The IEA and the ineptitude of the judges, which must have been disapointing for the 15 year old, who unlike UKIP, was actually able to present an entry for judgement.
Clearly UKIP is hugely out of its depth – it is not just Nigel Farage ducking out on attending meetings and being unable to cope with hard/combative interview by a well versed interviewer, as shown by James O’Brien on LBC CLICK HERE One need only read through their list of largely low life and nobodies they have fielded as candidate to represent them (for they sure won’t represent me and millions of others like me who seek competence) there really isn’t a single individual of competence, gravitas and integrity amongst their 60 or so candidates.
Then look at their candidates for the 4,000 local Council seats as they lurch from idiocy to irelevance as they are clearly such low grade – I look at my own Council and even in comparison with Labour who I have zero affinity with and the Lib.Dims. I have little but contempt for or even Tory who are so smugly inept UKIP are little more than an embarrassment – as shown by the publicity they have attracted as they follow in the footsteps of general failure of those who went before them.
UKIP may well have polled well for the EU election where we can expect 30% or less participation although it is clear the mask is slipping as the public see through the facade and UKIP has clearly peaked too early and they face every danger of a collapse in their vote, though the low turnout favours minority parties, there is still a chance they will come a close second with around 25 MEP seats but the danger they may only manage to hang onto a close third witha dozen seats only, which becomes ever more likely day on day and were it a further two weeks to the election they might do even worse.
Of the 4,000 local government seats up for election I very much doubt UKIP will top 200 and the number is also falling as the days pass and UKIP’s low grad candidates lurch from bad publicity to offensive behaviour!
Little wonder that Nigel Farage has to lay claim to his crass comments being due to being tired – let us not forget that interogators use sleep deprivation as a means to expose the truth! That Farage is living in 3 different Countries staying either in hotels or The East India Club rarely visiting his alleged home where he has been paying his ‘wife’ some £30K a year of public money – presumably either as hush money or to keep the house aired we know not though we do know for certain that to originally get himself onto the gravy train he promised never to employ family members!
Perhaps he no longer considers Kirsten to be a relation in the light of the clear estrangement of their relationship!
Ukip scraps ‘carnival’ to prove it’s not racist after steel band refuses to play in front of ‘Love Colour’ sign and Farage stays away
Members of the steel band say they are ‘embarrassed‘ to be there – and leave
Ukip planned ‘bold and vibrant’ event in Croydon to dispel racism claims
Steel band told to set up in front of a shop window with ‘Love Colour’ sign
Party members clashed with angry protesters as police looked on
Croydon council candidate Winston McKenzie brands the town ‘a dump’
Nigel Farage pulled out of attending the event amid security concerns
Published: 18:45, 20 May 2014 | Updated: 18:45, 20 May 2014
Nigel Farage was forced to pull the plug on his latest attempt to prove Ukip is not racist, after a steel band refused to play at a bizarre ‘Carnival’ in Croydon.
The Ukip leader hoped it would be a ‘bold and vibrant’ event to defy his critics, but organisers were confronted with protesters likening the party to Nazis.
Mr Farage abandoned plans to attend after opponents clashed with party members, the steel band walked out and a Ukip candidate branded Croydon a ‘dump’.
Ukip supporters clash with opponents in Croydon town centre where their leader Nigel Farage was due to speak, but didn’t turn up
A steel band booked to play at the event instead packed up before Mr Farage had arrived
Band members said they were ’embarrassed’ to be there, and packed up before Ukip leader Nigel Farage arrived
Ukip yesterday paid for a full-page advert in a national newspaper insisting it was not racist.
Today’s event, staged in front of a shop window with the slogan ‘Love Colour’ was a follow-up to a rally Mr Farage held featuring candidates and members from ethnic minorities.
In an apparent admission that the party had to do more to prove it was not racist, the street rally was organised in Croydon.
But Ukip candidates and supporters clashed with protesters and campaigners. Romanians carrying banners about Nazis argued with party members about Nigel Farage’s remarks last week about Romanian neighbours.
Ukip leader Nigel Farage, who sparked controversy with comments about Romanians during an interview on LBC last week, was forced to abandon plans to visit Croydon
The event was supposed to draw a line under recent controversies over comments made by Ukip candidates
Instead the ‘carnival’ descended into a stand-off between protesters and Ukip members, with journalists looking on
Organisers seemed unprepared for the number of protesters accusing Ukip of being Nazis
Ukip strategists cancelled Mr Farage’s visit at the last moment, claiming there was a security threat
Ukip are expected to top the European Parliament elections on Thursday, which Mr Farage says will trigger a political earthquake
See the highlights of Nigel Farage’s car crash interview on LBC
Winston McKenzie, a black Ukip candidate in Thursday’s election, clashed with black teenagers in a debate over whether he was a leader of the community while also being in the party.
He used a megaphone to make a speech urging people to make Britain great again. Mr Farage was due to attend the event, dubbed a carnival or street party, on Croydon High Street.
In his speech, Mr McKenzie said: ‘I want to thank all of the patriotic people in this country who are fed up, let down by the situation.
‘I’m sick to death… of hearing the same rhetoric come from the same stale political parties.
‘It’s time people woke up and realised this country is being disenfranchised.’
Protesters waved placards branding Ukip the ‘modern Nazi party’ as they disrupted the street event
Ukip officials struggled to maintain control and eventually cancelled Mr Farage’s vist
Ukip council candidate Winston McKenzie tried to shout down opponents on Croydon High Street
Mr McKenzie said Mr Farage would not be attending because as a family man and party leader ‘certain situations you have to avoid’
Mr McKenzie said there was no choice but to cancel the event, adding: ‘Croydon is unsafe and a dump’
Police officers watched over the peaceful but heated clashes outside the Whitgift Shopping Centre.
The Endurance Steel band, which included black members, told reporters they were ’embarrassed’ to be there because they did not think that people should vote for Ukip.
Winston McKenzie, a Ukip council candidate in Croydon, tried to silence critics using a megaphone. Standing in front of a Ukip battlebus he addressed a small group of party members.
But as he was shouted down by opponents, it emerged that Mr Farage had cancelled a visit to the town. Mr McKenzie confirmed Mr Farage would not be attending, citing security concerns.
He told reporters: ‘He’s a responsible family man and political party leader. Certain situations you have to avoid.’
Mr McKenzie added: ‘Croydon is unsafe and a dump.’
Protesters told Ukip to ‘f*** off’ and challenged them over remarks by one council candidate who said comedian and actor Lenny Henry should emigrate to a ‘black country’.
At an event on May 7 Mr Farage posed with black and Asian supporters to insist: ‘Don’t call us racist’
Amjad Bashir, the party’s small and medium size business spokesman, is pictured shaking Mr Farage’s hand after telling the rally: ‘Take a look at all the faces and skin colours represented on this stage and tell me Ukip is a racist party’
It came after Mr Farage was condemned by politicians from the three main parties after declaring in a radio interview last week that everyone knows ‘the difference’ between Romanians and Germans. Mr Farage’s second wife Kirsten is German.
The Ukip leader yesterday attempted to backtrack, saying the vast majority of Romanians were ‘good people’.
‘If I gave the impression… that I was discriminating against Romanians then I apologise certainly for that,’ the Ukip leader said on a campaign visit to Ramsgate. He said people would – rather than should – be concerned about Romanian neighbours.
He added: ‘Can we just have an honest appraisal of what has happened to post-communist Romania? Across the whole of the European Union, amongst all 28 member states, 7 per cent of all crime is committed by 240 Romanian gangs.’
UKIP Discovers: When You Depend On Stunts Await A Falling Star! As their conference star Sanya-Jeet Thandi has proved.
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Hi,
as one Asian woman said when she quit UKIP:
“Ukip is exploiting the stupidity of ignorant anti-immigrant voters for electoral gain, While the party deliberately attracts the racist vote I refuse to be associated with them.”
Ukip’s ‘rising star’ is rising no more; she’s quit in disgust
Ukip ‘rising star’ says party is ‘exploiting the stupidity of ignorant anti-immigrant voters’
Back in November 2011, Ukip posted a video on YouTube in which Nigel Farage tried to knock on the head the notion that Ukip was a “whites only” party – propagated, he said, by The Independent and The Guardian – which was peopled by “very angry old men.” As evidence, he produced an 18-year-old named Sanya-Jeet Thandi, who had taken that autumn’s Ukip conference by storm. “A rising star of the party,” he called her.
As such, she was on Channel 4 only this month defending Ukip’s immigration policies, on the grounds that Ukip would give equal treatment to all would-be immigrants while the EU favours EU citizens.
But Sanya-Jeet Thandi is a rising star of Ukip no more. She has quit in disgust at the anti-immigrant campaign Ukip is now running. “Ukip is exploiting the stupidity of ignorant anti-immigrant voters for electoral gain,” she wrote. “While the party deliberately attracts the racist vote I refuse to be associated with them.”
Ukip’s garagistes
The events of the past couple of days have also raised questions about how much certain members of Ukip value free speech. Janice Atkinson, who chairs the party in the South-east, thinks protesters who shout “fascist” at Ukip members should be arrested. And an unidentified councillor:
sent for the police because he objected to a tweet posted by a Green blogger, Michael Abberton, lampooning Ukip policy.
Finally, the Camden New Journal recorded a Ukip candidate in West Hampstead, Magnus Neilsen:
reflecting that the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1888, which extended the vote to working-class men, may have been a mistake.
But there is a group of Ukip activists who value free expression – their own, if no one else’s. Protesting against the treatment of “hard-working, right-thinking, garage-owning Brits”, they have been busy in Cambridge decorating the doors of a row of garages with large black vinyl letters spelling out the words “Farage garage” – which they presumably pronounce so that the two words rhyme, though some of us make Farage rhyme with barrage and garage with carriage.
The letters were easily removed without damage to the doors, but when Cambridge News asked Ukip’s Cambridge branch chairman, Peter Burkinshaw, what he thought of this stunt, he replied: “I hate graffiti of all kinds. I think these messages should be illegal.” Spoken like a true Ukipper.
The Apparent Racism of UKIP is best shown by its associates & behaviour, Upheld By Example!
This does NOT mean every member is a racist but it does show that racism is endemic in UKIP, hidden by lies and spin!
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The Great Ukip Racism Debate – Debunking the Six Main Myths
Posted: 06/05/2014 15:43
Is Ukip racist? Or is it merely a party that is especially attractive to what David Cameron once called “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”?
Or, perhaps, is it neither? Has it been unfairly smeared and demonised? On Sunday, Ukip leader Nigel Farage told the BBC’s Andrew Marr he was “adamant that we’re a non-racist party”.
Guess what? Plenty of influential people on the liberal-left agree with him. Former Labour home secretary Jacqui Smith says she is “uneasy about the suggestions that they are racist and the implication that, therefore so are the likely Ukip voters”. Liberal Conspiracy blogger Sunny Hundal attacks those on the left “offering up blanket accusations of racism” aimed at Ukip. “Do the majority of Ukip voters endorse racism and is Ukip an openly racist movement?” asks academic Matthew Goodwin, author of a new book on the anti-Europe party. “No.”
In an attempt to shield Ukip from the charge of racism, these liberal-lefties have, wittingly or unwittingly, joined with both Farage and sections of the right-wing press to promulgate some pretty dodgy arguments, some pretty dangerous myths, that are worth tackling head on:
1) Only left-liberal, metropolitan-types in Hampstead think Ukip is racist
Not quite. A quarter of voters (27%), according to a recent YouGov poll, say Ukip is a party “with racist views” and “with many racist members”.
Only a quarter (26%) of voters give Ukip a clean bill of health and say Ukip is “not racist at all”. A pretty damning figure, I would argue. Meanwhile, a plurality of voters (35%) agreed Ukip wasn’t “racist”, in their view, but did “seem to attract some candidates or supporters with racist, extreme or odd views”.
Also, Michael Heseltine – who, last time I checked, was a Conservative peer and former Conservative cabinet minister – has said he believes Ukip is a racist party. Jeremy Hunt, a serving Conservative cabinet minister, has attacked Ukip for “attracting” racist candidates.
Oh, and the founder and former leader of Ukip, Dr Alan Sked, told the Sunday Times in September 2013 that, under Nigel Farage’s leadership, the party he created had become “anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual and racist”.
2) It’s unfair to blame Ukip as a whole for the racist comments of a tiny minority of candidates
First, is it really only a ‘tiny minority’? A few ‘rotten apples’? The last few weeks alone have revealed a bunch of Ukip candidates and activists who, among other things, told Lenny Henry to go and live in a ‘black country’; said the UK has a “pro Islamic” media; called Islam an “organised crime under religious camouflage”; “liked” the BNP on Facebook; described EDL members as “honest, normal people”; implied the case of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence had received disproportionate amounts of media coverage; suggested Nigerians were criminals; declared Mo Farah to be African and not British. As a Spectator blogger noted: “[T]he scandals are so frequent you have to conclude that it is not the rotten apple that needs throwing out but the whole stinking barrel.”
Second, it isn’t just a bunch of fringe figures in Ukip saying awful, bigoted stuff. Racism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry seems to be tolerated at the top, and not just the bottom, of the party. Why, after all, did Ukip’s leaders, and hundreds of members, “roar with laughter” and “clap” as comedian Paul Eastwood “took swipes at Indians, Muslims and Poles” at a gala dinner at the party’s spring conference in February?
In fact, consider the following four individuals and their remarks:
(a) Gerard Batten, Ukip’s chief whip and immigration spokesman, has demanded Britain’s Muslims sign up to a special code of conduct and called for a ban on the building of new mosques – which is a policy backed by both the BNP and the EDL.
(b) Godfrey Bloom, the party’s former economics spokesman, who served for almost a decade as a Ukip MEP and shared a flat with his friend and ally Farage, referred to the developing world as “bongo bongo land”.
(c) Lord Pearson, the senior Ukip peer and former party leader, has said the UK faces a “growing threat of Islamism” because “the Muslims are breeding ten times faster than us”. He added: “I don’t know at what point they reach such a number we are no longer able to resist the rest of their demands.”
(d) And, of course, then there is the party’s current leader, cheeky-chappy, beer-drinking, ‘regular guy’ Nigel Farage. Asked in a recent Guardian interview whether or not people should be “wary” of Romanian families moving into their street, the Ukip leader replied: “Well, of course, yeah.”
Change the word ‘Romanian’ to ‘Nigerian’ or ‘Indian’ or even ‘Jewish’ and ask yourself whether or not you’d consider Farage’s answer to be racist or not.
3) Romanian is a nationality not a race, so being rude about Romanians isn’t racist
Yes, it is actually. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), in its guidance on “racist and religious crime”, defines a “racial group” as “any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin”. [Emphasis added.]
As it happens, even Farage agrees with this definition – when the Ukip leader was heckled and attacked by Scottish protesters on a visit to Edinburgh in May 2013, he described his opponents as “deeply racist with a total hatred for the English”.
Hello, kettle? This is pot. You’re black.
4) You can’t call Ukip racist as they have black and ethnic minority (BME) candidates and activists
This is what I’d call the political party’s equivalent of the ‘My best friend is black/gay/Jewish’ defence. And it is an equally hollow and absurd method of trying to deflect or rebut charges of racism.
Consider: the BNP has had both Sikh and Jewish members. Does anyone sane seriously believe this inoculates Nick Griffin’s gang from the charge of racism or anti-Semitism? Really?
(On a side note, the father of the Ukip candidate who denied his son was racist – despite the latter’s tweets about “foreigners and weirdos” and rape by “Asian boys” – on the grounds that he came home “at 10.30pm with a curry ” can’t be topped in terms of originality – or bizarreness.)
5) Ukip has gone out of its way to reject overtures from the far-right in Europe
So far, maybe. In today’s Telegraph, however, Geert Wilders, leader of Holland’s far-right Party for Freedom, predicts that Ukip will join his party and France’s National Front (FN) in a new ‘European Freedom Alliance’ in the wake of the Euro elections later this month. FN’s Marine Le Pen has said she could happily work with UKIP, with “open arms”, and declared Farage’s ideas and views “very similar” to those of her (far-right) party.
Then there is the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group in the European Parliament, in which Ukip sits and of which Farage is co-chair. The EFD group includes representatives from a variety of unsavoury, immigrant-bashing, far-right parties, including the Danish People’s Party, the True Finns Party and Italy’s Lega Nord. Farage’s fellow co-chair, Francesco Speroni of Lega Nord, has described far-right terrorist and mass murderer Anders Breivik as someone whose “ideas are in defence of western civilisation”. Lega Nord leader Umberto Bossi has referred to non-white immigrants as “bingo bingos” and suggested the police should open fire on boats bringing African asylum-seekers to Italy. Does Farage have a view on Bossi? Or Speroni? Or his alliance with both?
6) To call Ukip the ‘BNP in blazers’ is unfair and unwarranted
Really? Then why has Farage called on BNP voters to “come and vote for us” and boasted of his pride in having “taken a third of the BNP vote directly from them”. Since when did the attracting of voters from a far-right, racist party become a source of pride?
As academics Heinz Brandenburg and Anders Widfeldt, authors of a recent study on the overlap between the BNP and Ukip, have pointed out: “Nobody has a more positive view of the BNP than UKIP voters, and nobody has a more positive view of UKIP than BNP voters.” They conclude: “[T]he BNP and UKIP fit rather neatly into separate subgroups of the same, extreme right, party family – the BNP into a more radical one and UKIP into a more moderate grouping.”
Also: why did the BNP approach Ukip in 2008 and propose forming a pact between the two parties – a potential alliance which Farage, to his credit, rejected? What made Ukip so attractive to the BNP high command? And what made the BNP so attractive to the two members of Ukip’s national executive committee who were in favour of the pact?
Is there any other mainstream party in the UK that the BNP has asked to do a deal with? And which has BNP sympathisers on its national executive committee?
In conclusion, whether or not Ukip is a racist party, rather than, say, a party containing racists, is a debate for the pedants and the literalists – the bigger questions are: what is it about Ukip that attracts so many racists and bigots in the first place? How do senior party figures justify their racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic comments? Why does Ukip sit in the European Parliament with race-baiting, Muslim-baiting parties? Why are BNP voters – and, previously, the BNP leadership – so keen on Ukip? Why did the EDL endorse Ukip? Why does Le Pen want to welcome Farage with “open arms” into her far-right, pan-European alliance?
To turn a blind eye to such questions is not just irresponsible but dangerous.
Posted: 21/05/2014 12:23 BST