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.
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87 Responses to “UKIP: a history of cranks and oddballs”
wj
The thing that fascinates me is that Labour actually believe that they can smear UKIP voters into voting for Labour – it isn’t going to happen.
A large section of voters, middle-aged, white, working class, are well beyond Labour’s reach and will vote UKIP – no matter what.
So, smear away – each insult is worn as a badge of pride; the greater the insult, the more entrenched the UKIP supporter becomes.
The tactical thinking in the article above will prove to be self defeating.
Thomas F. Lopez
Articles like this show just how much the left is clutching at straws. Whenever someone in UKIP says something silly, said person is removed. Say if the scandals involving Diane Abbott and Harriet Harman were to happen to UKIP members, the party would be destroyed. But because these are Labour MPs, the media largely doesn’t care and they won’t even be fired. It’s double standards like these that are getting more and more people fed up with the LibLabCon and voting UKIP.
Thomas F. Lopez
Yes, in polls that don’t even prompt UKIP we get 11 – 13%. And despite the fact I think our real support is higher, and that we can go higher still, I think even just 11 – 13% is a decent showing. Better that the Lib Dems at any rate.
Thomas F. Lopez
So when the mainstream media is up in arms about something silly a UKIP member says, it is justified, while when a paper is rightfully concerned there is evidence suggesting Harriet Harman did nothing to stop a paedophile gang it’s a ‘pathetic smear’. You guys hate your own double standards being bought into the light, eh?
bluecat
Er, you DO know that we have FPTP (first past the post) already, don’t you?
We had a referendum about whether we should change it quite recently.