DAILY MAIL (London)
June 9, 2004
UKIP’s UGLY SECRET
BYLINE: NICK CRAVEN
PERHAPS for the first time in her life, Joan Collins looked a tad uneasy in the limelight.
‘I am not a political person,’ said the usually outspoken actress when asked about the policies of the UK Independence Party, to which she was very publicly lending her support.
Ms Collins, 71, who once said ‘the secret of having a personal life is not answering too many questions about it’ was clearly adopting the same approach with her new political life – though she did admit to having never bothered to vote before.
After a few comments about ‘eroding ourselves to Brussels’, the ageing screen diva grandly swept out of the Nottingham photocall to promote her appearance at the city’s Theatre Royal. Maybe that was the real agenda all along.
Enter, stage left(ish), Robert Kilroy-Silk, erstwhile ex-Labour MP, former daytime TV star and the UKIP’s newest and most high-profile candidate in the European elections, who was only too happy to speak on Joan’s behalf.
‘Joan Collins has very clear political views. She is very proud of her country. There is no messing about with Joan Collins. She is in favour of being governed by her own people, and she wants Britain to come out of Europe,’ he said, without apparently drawing breath. Perhaps Joan is a little more political than she thought.
With or without her support, the European and local elections tomorrow will mark something of a watershed for the fledgling UKIP, whose votes will come mostly from disaffected Conservatives, rather than political virgins – even very wellpreserved ones such as Ms Collins.
THE latest polls show it forging ahead of the Lib Dems and nipping at the heels of the Conservatives in the European elections.
Kilroy-Silk, 62 – heading the UKIP’s East Midlands list under the proportional representation system – is on course to win a seat in Brussels.
He is also tipped as a new leader of the party which unites around two themes: getting Britain out of the EU and blocking virtually all immigration, even from EU countries.
Paradoxically, the party is campaigning to get as many MEPs as possible into Europe first to ‘report back’, it says, on the wasteful Eurocrats though, as we shall see, the UKIP’s existing MEPS clearly enjoy the Brussels champagne lifestyle.
It’s a simple message, and the UKIP has run an amusing slapstick party political broadcast where a figure in lederhosen (symbolising the EU Fisheries Commissioner from landlocked Austria) is assaulted with a huge cod.
It also has a Pounds 2million fighting fund, largely from wealthy donors such as retired Kent bookie Alan Bown and Yorkshire property millionaire Paul Sykes, a former Tory Eurosceptic, to boost its appeal and profile.
But just what is it that unites the mixed bag of supporters ranging from astronomer Patrick Moore to ex-England cricket captain Geoffrey Boycott, along with possibly millions of others, if the polls are correct?
Can a single-issue party really present any more than an opportunity for a protest vote which might backfire? Is it a Trojan horse for more extreme far-Right groups like the BNP, or a political lightweight relying on gimmickry rather than policies?
The UK Independence Party was formed in 1993 by a loose grouping of anti-EU politicians, most of whom were former Tories. Its early campaigning was largely drowned out by the larger and better-funded Referendum Party, founded by the late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith.
FOLLOWING Goldsmith’s death in 1997, many of his former supporters transferred their affections – and money – to the UKIP. The 1999 Euro elections brought the first taste of success at the polls when three MEPs were returned, but a period of brutal infighting followed, which appeared to weaken the party considerably.
But perceived Tory dithering over plans for an EU constitution has been an effective recruiting sergeant for the UKIP, and the financial backing of several businessmen who formerly bankrolled the Conservative Party has allowed it to get its message to a much wider audience.
Its creed is simple, and designed to capitalise on the powerlessness felt by Britons in the face of the encroaching European superstate: everything wrong with Britain is the fault of Brussels, and once we’re free of the shackles of the Rome, Maastricht and Nice treaties, Blighty will be as good as it used to be. At that point, with its job done, the UKIP says it will melt away and let others get on with ruling Britain. It accepts that its ambition of a Britain free from Europe is unlikely to be realised in the foreseeable future so, to help further its message, it is contesting seats in tomorrow’s local elections as well as the London Mayoral race.
So who are these little-known patriots giving the Tories a run for their money?
Many are high-profile defectors from Right and Left, such as Kilroy-Silk and the former Tory party member Sir Richard Body.
Five Tory peers have now joined Lord Pearson of Rannoch and signed up to the UKIP’s brand of nationalism.
But, as the Daily Mail has found, they are joining a party with a distinctly unsavoury hinterland.
Several key members of the UKIP have past associations with far-Right groups whose policies have either verged on racism, or clearly crossed the line.
New party members are required to renounce any affiliation with extremists, but perhaps the UKIP would do better to examine those already in its ranks, for the -questionable political baggage of some members could cause voters to pause before they put a cross next to UKIP on the ballot form.
Its leaders claim to be alive to the risk of infiltration from the extremist British National Party, and say such a plot was unmasked and dealt with earlier this year when six members were expelled, after alleged emails between certain members of the group and BNP sources were discovered.
There are, after all, two key similarities between the manifestos of the two parties: both are anti-European Union and anti-immigration. Neither has much of note to say about any other issue.
At one stage there was talk – admittedly, most of it from the much weaker BNP – of a merger, or at least a gentlemen’s agreement whereby the parties would not stand against each other. Nothing came of it, but doubts remain about just what really motivates the UKIP.
AND two of the most influential figures in the UKIP – national chairman Mike Nattrass and Jeffrey Titford, an MEP and former Party Leader – are past members of a fringe group called the New Britain Party. Another of the UKIP’s MEP candidates, Bryan Smalley, was on the national committee of New Britain.
Let us cast our eyes back to a 1977 by-election leaflet for the New Britain Party. It demanded that ‘coloured immigration to this country must stop completely and immediately’.
That year, its founder, former City businessman Dennis Delderfield, stood at a London by-election on such a racist ticket, and advocated a return to National Service and gave fulsome support to Ian Smith’s Rhodesia and the Apartheid-era South African government.
All three of the UKIP men freely admit their involvement with New Britain, but all claim to be unaware of Delderfield’s racist propaganda in the past.
Questioned recently about his candidature for New Britain in the 1994 Dudley by- election, Sutton Coldfield businessman Mr Nattrass began wearily: ‘Do we have to go into this?’ Of the New Britain Party, he said: ‘It isn’t what you’re thinking it might be. It’s not racist. It’s more interested in celebrating the Queen’s birthday and things like that. It still exists, and it’s a Eurosceptic party, but the UKIP is electable and New Britain isn’t.’
Jeffrey Titford, a onetime member of the Referendum Party, told the Mail his involvement with New Britain was ‘very fleeting’.
‘It was after Sir James Goldsmith had died in 1997 and I was looking for an anti-European Party,’ he said. ‘Mr Delderfield said if I wanted to come to a meeting, I had to join, so I did. It was a shambles and I didn’t stay long.’
Bryan Smalley, a retired Naval Commander from Hertfordshire, joined New Britain in 1994, and served on its national committee, because, he said: ‘It was the only party on the (anti-EU) scene.’ He added: ‘I found the organisation rather shambolic and I moved on. To call it extreme Rightwing is exaggerated.’ Even if they knew nothing of Mr Delderfield’s earlier campaign, questions remain: was it just political na’vety which prevented these UKIP luminaries from seeing Mr Delderfield for what he was?
More pertinently, was their decision to leave New Britain more to do with political expediency than a difference of ideology?
If the alleged comments of Nigel Farage, one of the UKIP’s three MEPs are anything to go by, he’d get on famously with a man like Mr Delderfield.
According to one of the UKIP’s founders, historian Alan Sked, who has now left the party, Mr Farage once told him: ‘We will never win the ****** vote.
The nig-nogs will never vote for us.’ ‘I was quite shocked,’ said Dr Sked, a lecturer at the London School of Economics. ‘Others just thought it was Nigel being funny, but to me it wasn’t funny at all.’ MARRIED City commodities broker Mr Farage, 40, from Kent, – who bears a striking resemblance to Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean – denies making the remarks, but declined to comment on other allegations concerning his nocturnal activities in London and Strasbourg nightspots.
Prospective voters may be interested to hear that he quaffed Pounds 100a-bottle champagne in seedy lap-dancing clubs, given his party’s pledge to root out and ‘report back’ on EU sleaze.
Former UKIP research director Richard North – also a refugee from the party – said of Mr Farage: ‘I am not, and was not prepared . . .
to pour him into a taxi when he was so blind drunk that he could no longer stand, or cover for him when he failed to turn up for morning appointments because he had been out on the tiles all night.’ That, he said, was why Mr Farage missed the crucial vote on the 2001 EU budget. None of this seemed to matter much to 100 or so erstwhile Tory voters I saw at a UKIP election meeting in Denham, Buckinghamshire recently, most of them clearly in rapture over Mr Farage’s tub-thumping oratory.
Certainly, you can’t help smiling when he rejects rivals’ claims that the UKIP is a single issue party by saying: ‘That is completely untrue.
‘We have a comprehensive manifesto ranging from Agriculture to Xenophobia.
If only theirs were as broad!’ One after another, members of the audience told me the same story that night. They were there because ‘We’ve been sold a pup with Europe, and no one’s telling us the truth apart from this party.’
Their resentment at the EU is understandable, but aren’t they in danger of buying a second pup if they send more MEPs like Mr Farage off to enjoy a five-yearlong European ‘party’ at their expense?
One thing is beyond doubt – if enough Conservatives – or even ingenues like Joan Collins – register their protests by voting UKIP, they will surely deliver a gift-wrapped victory to those whose European policies they fear most – Tony Blair and his Government.
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
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