Donna Edmunds, a UKIP councillor and candidate in the European elections, has said that businesses should be able to refuse services to women and gay people. She isn't the first UKIP candidate to court controversy.
Fresh controversy has been sparked after Donna Edmunds, a UKIP councillor in Lewes and a candidate for the party in the European elections, said that businesses should be able to refuse services to women and gay people (she now says she regrets the comments).
Edmunds expressed this opinion in response to a question on whether she supported David Silvester, the UKIP councillor for Henley-on-Thames who claimed that the recent storms and floods were caused by the government’s introduction of gay marriage.
These are just the latest in a long line of gaffes by UKIP candidates and representatives.
Here are some previous examples:
- Godfrey Bloom MEP left UKIP after he described a group of female party members as ‘sluts’ and hit Channel 4 News presenter Michael Crick over the head with a copy of the conference brochure. Before these incidents, Bloom was already in the public spotlight for claiming that the UK should not be sending aid to ‘bongo bongo land’. More recently, he shocked those present at an Oxford Union debate in January by asking a disabled student if he was ‘Richard III’.
- Geoffrey Clarke, a candidate in council elections in Kent, was suspended by the party in December 2012 after calling for an NHS review to look into whether foetuses with Down’s syndrome and spina bifida should be compulsorily aborted.
- Eric Kitson, a UKIP councillor on Worcestershire County Council, resigned in May last year after it was discovered that he had been posting racist and anti-Muslim cartoons on Facebook.
- Chris Pain, a county councillor in Lincolnshire, was removed as leader of the UKIP group in September (and was then removed from the party altogether) after being investigated by the police for allegedly posting racist comments on Facebook.
- Winston McKenzie, a by-election candidate in Croydon North in November 2012, claimed that allowing same-sex couples to adopt children was ‘unhealthy‘.
- Philip Rose, a candidate who said that ‘gay folk’ were ‘being used by forces of evil’ to stop UKIP’s progress.
- Henry Reilly, a councillor in Northern Ireland, claimed that a ‘militant gay lobby’ was trying to impose itself on Christian churches. He also pledged to ‘support Assad’ in a tweet about the situation in Syria in September.
- John Sullivan, a council candidate in Gloucestershire, said that regular physical exercise in schools can ‘prevent homosexuality‘.
- Anna-Marie Crampton, a candidate in council elections in East Sussex, was suspended by the party after making anti-Semitic comments in April last year, in which she claimed that the Jews deliberately organised the Second World War and sacrificed their own people in the Holocaust.
There are also the claims which have been made about the party’s leader Nigel Farage. As the party’s conference started in September last year, an alleged incident was brought to light from 1981 (when Farage was a member of the cadet force at his school, Dulwich College) in which he and others are supposed to have marched around a Sussex village singing Hitler Youth songs.
Channel 4 News also uncovered a letter from around this time, in which a teacher at Dulwich College claimed that Farage held “publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views” and expressed concern that he had been made a prefect.
Considering the phenomenon of the ‘rogue’ UKIP member is seemingly never ending, perhaps the cranks and oddballs are less the exception, but rather the rule.
87 Responses to “UKIP: a history of cranks and oddballs”
Thomas F. Lopez
Well to me the tories are just another branch of the LibLabCon. They’re all protected by the media to some extent.
You’ve regularly attacked me personally. This is not only pathetic, anyone reading our comments can see that one side uses facts and the other has to play dirty to keep up.
I am OK with political satire, so long as it is not taxpayer funded. This tour had such money wasted on it. You can’t just say something didn’t happen because you don’t like it.
Frankie D.
And whose arse did you pull that from? The fact that the comedians have never recieved any funding from the Arts Council seems to have slipped past the best and brightest of ukip…
“I’ve never refused any funding whatsoever. But the Arts Council aren’t in any way involved with our show.”
http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2014/03/06/19735/ukip_tires_to_shut_down_comedy_tour
Frankie D.
And yet you’re taking the tory smear and running with it…
It’s just that there really must be something a bit wrong with you if you can’t see that trying to shut down someone elses free speech in the name of free speech is just idiotic, especially coming days after your great leader said people shouldn’t try to censor comedians.
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No, I said something didn’t happen, because it didn’t happen. The duo have said they’ve never received any money from the Arts Council and the only one who has said otherwise is your second in command, without ever bothering to try and back that claim up.
Thomas F. Lopez
Jonny and the Baptists are not paid directly by the Arts Council. However, their venues of course are, and need taxpayer support. The Stop UKIP Tour is therefore subsidized by the taxpayer. Venues funded by the taxpayer should never allow political propaganda.
Thomas F. Lopez
OK I replied to this in the other comment, can we just keep it to one comment section since we’re pretty much having the same debate in each place.