Nigel Farage insists that UKIP is not a racist party. So why does it attract so many racists?
After one of his councillors was filmed saying she had a ‘problem with people with negroid features’, UKIP leader Nigel Farage stated today that:
“I haven’t seen the film but she is alleged, and she confirmed to us, that she had made a series of racist comments that is at odds with what we stand for.”
Rozanne Duncan may have been expelled from the UKIP, but scandals like this are no longer an exception to the party rule. Here are 15 other times that ‘racist comments’ have come from the heart of UKIP:
1. Last May UKIP member Ken Chapman, hoping to be elected to Amber Valley Borough Council in Derbyshire, wrote the following post:
“islam is a cancer that needs eradicating multiculturism does not work in this country clear them all off to the desert with their camals that’s their way of life.”
2. UKIP was forced to sack newly elected councillor Dave Small after just six days, when Facebook posts from 2012 surfaced, including this:
“I visiting the city of Birmingham recently and felt like a foreigner in the city of my birth, all around me I could hear the sound of jabbering in an alien voice … we also have the Pakistani’ and the Somali’s. Tell me Mr Cameron Why? the men wear their Pyjamas.”
3. In 2013 UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom famously said that the UK should stop providing aid to ‘bongo bongo Land’, and that the aid was being used to buy designer sunglasses and Parisian apartments. He may have toned down the language, but this Tweet from 15 February shows that Bloom hasn’t changed:
It is deeply immoral to fund foreign aid with £1.8 trillion of debt & rising.Borrowing money from our children is plain wrong,ABOLISH IT NOW
— Godfrey Bloom (@goddersbloom) February 15, 2015
4. Last year UKIP was forced to distance itself from local council candidate James Elgar after the discovery of tweets like this:
#ThingsAsianBoysDo groom and rape underage white girls, stab and rob innocent old white people, bomb innocent white people #EctEctEct [sic]”
Elgar’s father insisted that his son ‘came home at 10.30 pm with a curry’ the day the story broke.
5. Last April UKIP suspended Andre Lampitt, the star of its European Election TV campaign, after he tweeted:
“Most Nigerians are generally bad people… I grew up in Africa and dare anyone to prove me wrong.”
6. After comedian Lenny Henry said there should be more black and ethnic minority people in creative industries, candidate William Henwood said that Henry should move to a ‘black country’.
7. Joseph Quirk, former UKIP candidate for Boldon Colliery Ward on South Tyneside Council has shared anti-Semitic material claiming that Jewish Bankers financed Hitler, Soviet Communism and 9/11. There’s also this from November:
“Well, I reckon dogs are more intelligent, better company and certainly better behaved than most Muslims.”
8. Gerard Batten, UKIP’s chief whip and immigration spokesman, believes that all UK Muslims should sign up to a special code of conduct, and wants mosque building to be banned.
9. Camden UKIP chairman Magnus Nielsen made headlines after describing Islam as ‘organised crime’. Now standing for Hampstead and Kilburn, Nielsen says that his ‘great aim’ is to licence mosques. Asked if he would prescribe the same for Jewish and Christian places of worship, he said that this would not be necessary.
10. Former Offerton councillor Harry Perry’s Twitter feed is astonishing. As well as prolific sharing of material about the ‘sin of feminism’ and the ‘disease’ of homosexuality, Perry is obsessed with the idea of ‘white genocide’:
Don’t forget about step two of White Genocide: Genetic assimilation via forced integration http://t.co/t4YFoGtgAt — Harry Perry (@harryperry15) February 16, 2015
and has a rabid hatred of Islam:
the nazis; a warning from history-is there any difference between the islamic ideology and the nazis? — Harry Perry (@harryperry15) January 10, 2015
11. Plymouth UKIP candidate Ron Northcott believes that premier league football teams should be limited to two foreign players. His Twitter account is a treasure trove of bizzare anti-Scottish (‘jock’) bile and calls to reclaim the country.
Asian Muslims groom our white girls, now they rape our boys. Jordanian Paralympians commit sex offences. We need to reclaim our country — Ron Northcott UKIP (@RonNorthcott) August 22, 2012
12. After the death of Nelson Mandela, West London UKIP member David William Griffiths wrote in the members-only forum that some people were ‘intended by nature’ to be slaves. Meanwhile Pamela Preedy, secretary of UKIP’s Redcar branch, questioned why Mandela’s death had received so much coverage since he ‘had nothing to do with Britain’.
13. Newport East candidate Donald Grewar was forced to resign last month after he apparently backed a post by the EDL, calling for ‘no surrender to militant Islam or political correctness’.
14. Diane James is UKIP MEP for the South East of England and has said that Romanians are naturally associated with crime:
“On 1 January 2014 the floodgates will open for Bulgarian and Romanian citizens [to come to Britain].
“We are not just talking about pressure on services from immigration but also, and I have to say it, the crime associated with Romanians.”
15. In 2013, the then Stourport-on-Severn councillor Eric Kitson was questioned by police after he shared anti-Muslim cartoons on Facebook. In one particularly memorable post he said of Muslim women: ‘Hang um all first then ask questions later.’
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
293 Responses to “Is UKIP a racist party? These 15 comments would suggest so”
Lee Collier
Nonsense. The media would publish embarrassing remarks from /any/ MP, counsellor or party representative. That’s how they make their money: reporting scandal. Certain papers or TV channels might downplay an issue with their favourite party, but there will always be another paper or channel that doesn’t like them.
Anthony
As I said in my post, UKIP clearly is a racist party not because of its members but because of its policies. In all likelihood the other major parties have had just as many problems with racists and loons as UKIP but that is really neither here nor there.
The point is that the media’s attacks on UKIP continually fall flat and are fuelling its rise not the opposite. If you want to prove that UKIP is racist I provided the clearest evidence you could want – they deliberately adopt policies to hurt Muslims and Jews just ‘cos.
madasafish
Anyone who criticises a critic of multiculturism as in item 1 should ask why the Rotherham scandal was actively and deliberately not investigated.
On the basis of that alone – and following the logic of this article – Labour are a racist Party.
Which tells you all you need to know about the logic of this article.
Brian Martin
I’d say this is a pretty racist policy “– Businesses should be able to discriminate in favour of young British workers.” — do I need to explain why, or is it already clear that discrimination based on nationality is racist?
Anthony
I’m not defending UKIP – I’m saying its racist but this article is bad.
I’m also, incidentally, saying that UKIP are unlikely to be much worse in their membership than other parties. It’s interesting that you pick on that policy as racist given Labour’s “British jobs for British workers” policy not so long ago.