ONE MAN’S SABOTAGE OF A NOBLE CAUSE by Derek HUNNIKIN
THE UNITED KINGDOM
INDEPENDENCE PARTY
Also See: THE ASHFORD CENTRE by Derek HUNNEKIN
There Have Been Additions supplied by Derek Hunnekin
ALSO various corrections of fact and cross references
at the end of the document. ONE MAN’S SABOTAGE
OF A NOBLE CAUSE
Prepared by Derek Hunnikin
UKIP Membership No. 1428
INTRODUCTION
Having been a member of The UK Independence Party since August 1995 I have witnessed its popularity fluctuate wildly. In the Chichester parliamentary constituency, for example, in April 1998 we had 64 members and, under Roger Knapman’s leadership, reached a peak of 274 in June 2004. Today, July 2011, we have but 124 members. I suspect the Party as a whole has suffered similar ups and downs, but this beggars the question - WHY?
The purpose of this document is to give the reader a clue as to why UKIP is stuck in a rut of mediocrity and, in the eyes of many, is untrustworthy.
Apart from some of my comments in items 19 and 20, the information contained in this document is already in the public domain. All I have done here is to bring some of the disasters inflicted upon UKIP into one document.
For reasons which I trust will become apparent, I was shocked and disappointed when Nigel Farage was re-elected as leader of our Party last year. Clearly, most members are unaware of Farage’s track record. To have him serve on the
National Executive Committee (NEC) or as leader is, in my view, unacceptable. His contribution to UKIP should be limited to the speeches he makes in the
EU parliament.
This document may give the wrong impression that Farage is solely to blame for UKIP’s less than satisfactory progress – this is not the case. Can anyone doubt that had
Conservative party members known just how ignorant David Cameron was, on matters EU, they would have voted him leader? They appear to have selected Cameron purely on the basis of his ‘charisma’. The same goes for UKIP members - many failing to do any research before voting for the leader or NEC members.
I had viewed David Campbell-Bannerman (D.C-B) as a staunch supporter of Farage, and his resignation from the party came as a surprise. However, upon reading his reasons for leaving UKIP, I realised that he was following a long line of people who had got to know Farage well, and had become totally disillusioned with his style of leadership and lack of firm commitment to our cause.
It is ‘par for the course’ that anyone who puts themselves forward as a possible leader, as David Campbell-Bannerman did last year, Farage automatically then regards as an enemy.
What was not revealed, in David’s resignation letter is that, over a period of many months and under his guidance, teams of helpers were organised to produce a comprehensive UKIP manifesto. If one could criticise the work it is that the final document was too detailed and needed downsizing. On its completion, Farage lost no opportunity to belittle and insult David’s contribution to the document. This was probably the tipping-point that prompted David to resign from UKIP.
It was Farage’s decision to remove all 18 policy papers, after years of work by highly dedicated policy teams, and to seriously consider removing even the 2010 manifesto, which confirmed to David that UKIP was not willing to become a serious, credible political party.
Some people have suggested that D. C-B has left UKIP because our
MEPs have been asked to contribute £10,000 p.a. to Party funds. D.C-B gave £1,500 in the two months before resigning.
I circulated a copy of David Campbell- Bannerman’s resignation letter to Chichester branch members.
What finally galvanised me into preparing this document was the response I received from a young man, who judges Farage’s suitability as leader on what he sees of him on a computer or television screen.
YouTube, I believe, is the most popular source of information for the young. Here follows a copy of the e-mail in question.
Hi and good evening Derek,
After reading D.C-B’s statement (carefully) I am incensed that you feel this is a worthy missive to further push into the UKIP member consciousness - I quote from the honourable David Campbell-Bannerman’s resignation message which is now patently in the public domain, allowing aspirants and adherents of the allegorical NOW (New World Order) to now sleep somewhat easier:
1: “I have lost all faith in UKIP’s ability to win the argument on Europe” - fine we don’t need you with that attitude
2: “A Conservative Party that has demonstrated to me that it is genuinely and deeply Eurosceptic at all levels” – Hey everyone forget paying 50+ million£ a day – how about a referendum?
3: “Is UKIP a proper political party or it is really a pressure group ? “ – Clear Tory HQ media brief.
4: ”Nigel is a plant who is really out to destroy UKIP’s chances from within” – Sit down! Time for your medication.
5: ”I have sadly given up on UKIP ever becoming the serious, credible, fully-fledged political party that it could have become” – Party members of UKIP shape the future direction – you have NO voice or ‘say’ now David as you have left, please close the door after you.
If you have any metal Derek I insist you prove it and disseminate my response to all on our list. I would have a lot more respect for any ‘leadership/UKIP rebels’ if they are prepared to oppose Nigel and offer themselves as an alternative UKIP leadership vision with a constructive and progressive plan – Marta, David and any others (Derek.H?) who wish to divide/disrupt/retard/damage – PUT UP OR SHUT UP!
+Political gains are clearly about internal discipline and consistent external spin, negations of that universal constant will rapidly destroy years of hard work.
Regards Dan
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If Dan is suggesting I should put myself forward, that is PUT UP, as a prospective leader of UKIP then, as one who is just three months short of his 80th birthday, this is just one of the many reasons I think it would not be a sensible thing to do.
The production of this document is the only way open to me to ‘PUT UP’. Hopefully, for those who read it, it will act as a wake-up call. The fact is that UKIP goes forward as a result of the work of grassroots foot soldiers and an increasing awareness of the public that membership of the EU is bad for them and, indeed, all the peoples of Europe. The limited way in which Farage takes the party forward is more than lost by his poor judgement, aggressive style, and inability to utilise those of greater talents than himself.
No doubt many having read this document could add their own thoughts and record instances worthy of inclusion.
Derek Hunnikin
August 2011
SYNOPSIS
1. The establishment of Nigel Farage as the de facto leader of The UK Independence Party.
2. The events which led to Bryan Smalley, a retired submarine commander and UKIP National Executive Committee member, branding Farage a thief and a liar.
3. A comprehensive critique of Nigel Farage which led to the resignation of well over 200 UKIP members.
4. Anthony Scholefield, who was a founder member of UKIP, writes about Farage’s good and not so good characteristics.
5. Dr. Richard North worked in Brussels for UKIP as a Chief Researcher. Working opposite Farage for a couple of years, Dr. North got to know him well and gives his verdict on Farage as leader of the party This section includes a comment by former leader and founder of the party, Dr. Alan Sked.
6. Richard Suchorzewski would, without doubt, have made a superb leader of UKIP. Farage knew this and is alleged to have launched the most vile character assassination against Richard. This section is a copy of Richard’s letter of resignation from UKIP.
7. Marcus Stead makes very clear, in his letter of resignation from UKIP, how disgusted he is with Farage’s character assassination of Richard Suchorzewski, his leadership shortcomings, and lack of enthusiasm for a UKIP Youth Movement to be set up.
8. UKIP West Dorset Constituency Association Committee resign en-block from UKIP due to the lack of direction from the leadership, the MEP’s doubtful worth, and the disgraceful way the leadership election was conducted.
9. This section quotes a few lines from the resignation letter of Viscount Exmouth.
10. Farage and his cabal launch an attack on Dr. David Abbott. David Abbott was twice elected to the NEC. This section includes the letter written by Dr. Abbott, in which he claimed that a letter he wrote, claiming that Party Rules were frequently ignored, prompted an attack on him to be launched.
11. The Ashford Call Centre was responsible for a massive number of resignations from UKIP. Two members of the Chichester branch had an audience with members of the NEC in London, with the aim of eliminating further damage to the Party. In this they failed. Read the story here.
12. Robin Page was the nationally renowned presenter on TV of ‘One Man and His Dog’. He is a regular contributor to The Sunday Telegraph, and possessor of a brilliant sense of humour. Indeed, at a London UKIP conference he once rendered us all weak with laughter. This section, by Robin, is his version of events which led to him not being included in the prospective MEP list for the EU elections
13. This is an account of the ambush of Delroy Young written by Dr. David Abbott. At the time of the ambush Delroy was working hard to establish a UKIP Youth section.
14. This section, written by Rodney Atkinson, highlights the inability of Farage to recognise when he is leading UKIP further into the EU web of ‘ever closer union’.
15. John Petley writes about his experiences working under Farage as a Research Assistant.
16. Dr. Eric Edmond, who was heavily involved for a number of years in policy decisions by the Bank of England, gives his verdict on why Farage ‘is not fit for purpose’.
17. The UK First Party was set up by a number of ex-UKIP NEC members and party officials in response to dissatisfaction with the party leadership.
18. [ed: BDI advert - an idea dropped by G.L-W. and others as unenforcable and thus a Bloody Daft Idea - hence perhaps the acronym!)(**C)
19. Other matters of interest include Farage’s last minute change of policy for Wales.
20. Conclusion – this poses a question, not an answer.
IN THE BEGINNING
The first leader of UKIP, when it was founded towards the end of 1993, was Dr. Alan Sked who was, and still is (as far as I know), a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics. In 1994 Farage proposed that the party endeavour to campaign for UKIP to have MEP representation in the European Parliament. Dr. Sked was adamantly opposed to this proposal, as he thought it would indicate that the United Kingdom had agreed to be subservient to the European Union. Farage’s argument was that UKIP MEPs would generate income for the party and doors, which would otherwise remain closed to our party, would be opened. Farage won the day and Dr. Sked, together with several others, including Colin Bullen (who went on to be a leading light in The Campaign for an Independent Britain), resigned from UKIP.
So, right from the start, Farage has been hugely influential in the policies adopted by UKIP. Indeed, he has been either leader or de facto leader of the party ever since.
All political movements need a figurehead and Farage fulfils that role for UKIP. His energy and passion attract many, particularly the young, and his utilisation of the power of on-line social networking, and especially the online video sharing programme, YouTube, which show his passionate exchanges in the European Parliament to the generally younger viewers.
Without doubt, the fortunes of UKIP are closely linked with the style of leadership and management abilities of Farage, so let us have a look at the history of the party’s ups and downs over the past 17 years.
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Dr. Alan Sked resigned as leader of the party in July 1997 and named the then Party Chairman and Treasurer, Craig Mackinlay, as leader. Mackinlay decided that the only way to keep the party going was to rework its constitution and hold a leadership election. Mackinlay, Gerald Roberts, and Michael Holmes stood, with the backing of Farage. Michael Holmes easily won and appointed Mackinlay as his deputy.
Craig Mackinlay resigned from UKIP in 2005 and joined the Conservative Party. I do not have any information on his reasons for leaving UKIP.
Michael Holmes, having won the leadership election in 1997 was, in the same year, elected as an MEP representing the South West. In the same election Farage was elected as an MEP in the South East. As a result of a power struggle, precipitated by an unfortunate remark by Michael Holmes in the European Parliament, and his dismissal of Craig Mackinlay and Tony Scholefield from the NEC, which generated a vote of no confidence in Holmes, he stepped down as leader in 2000.
However, it should be noted that, under Michael Holmes leadership, the membership of UKIP doubled.
Jeffrey Titford was elected as the new leader of UKIP, beating Rodney Atkinson (brother of the comedian Rowan Atkinson) by 15 votes and, again, Farage had backed the winner.
Many believed that Titford should have appointed Rodney Atkinson as deputy leader or, at least, to a position of responsibility within the party. However, because Rodney Atkinson had exposed Conrad Black (who at that time owned the Telegraph group of newspapers) as a member of the Bilderberg Group, Conrad Black put UKIP under pressure not to appoint Rodney Atkinson to a position of authority within UKIP. (**A)
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BRYAN SMALLEY
At the time he retired from the navy Bryan Smalley was a submarine commander. A man of the highest integrity, Bryan joined UKIP, and was voted by the membership onto the National Executive Committee (NEC), and held the post of Party Secretary for two years. Clearly, as a commander of many men, Bryan had an above average ability to judge a person’s character and trustworthiness.
In a letter to Roger Knapman, Bryan Smalley wrote:
It is now obvious to all members who know what is happening at the top of the organisation that the Party has been taken over by Nigel Farage and his acolytes.
I am sure you have heard me say before that the Party belongs to its members. We elect some members to specific offices to run the Party for us. Even then, for those elected to the NEC, we only permit members to act in accordance with policies laid down by the committee and not to act independently. It is the failure to run the Party on these lines which is causing its disintegration.
My concern is that those people who are running the Party are unchecked and are behaving extremely irresponsibly. I will make some comments about these individuals which you may think libellous. I assure you I can bring evidence, and witnesses if necessary, to prove that everything I write can be proven.
Nigel Farage is a member of the NEC and has no authority to make individual decisions about the Party.
He is dishonest and frequently makes untrue statements.
He acts independently without consulting the NEC and in doing so frequently gets the Party a bad press.
You will recall that when I drew your attention to Nigel Farage’s illegal copying of video tapes and his lies about his activities, you gave him your full support and permitted the distribution of a press release which was also untruthful. You failed to support me when I was the only person telling the truth. I expect to see Nigel brought under control, by means of a disciplinary hearing if necessary.
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On 4th September 2000 Bryan circulated the following letter to members:
Dear
I am writing to a number of friends to explain why I have resigned as the Party Secretary and as a member of the NEC. My main purpose in resigning is because I cannot work within an organisation which doesn’t respect the law. The report (below) on the sale of ‘pirated’ videos explains what I mean. I am concerned that my view is not shared by Jeffrey Titford who says that I should accept Nigel for ‘what he wants to be for the Party.’ But there is more to this than meets the eye.
I had hoped that the new NEC would start again with a clean slate, but there are six or seven people on the NEC who are seeking to settle old scores or who have their own specific agendas. Unless these people unite they are not a threat in themselves. The most dangerous threat is Nigel Farage, because he has an organised band of followers who work as a group and which is seeking to control UKIP from outside the NEC. In pursuit of their aim they totally ignore the Party Secretary and his position, and they do their best to denigrate the effectiveness of the operations at the Head Office. This is one of the factors which has led to strain between the elected NEC and Nigel’s supporters.
I do not want to be concerned with fights between opposing groups within the Party. I have therefore decided to resign as Party Secretary and from the NEC. I shall continue to work within my constituency to promote the anti-EU cause.
UKIP will not survive if Nigel Farage is allowed to impose his dishonest and impetuous will on the Party. He is an excellent speaker. His activities should be confined to what he is good at.
Yours
Bryan Smalley
Commentary and timetable on the sale of ‘Pirate’ videos by Bryan Smalley - September 2000
24th May. NEC meeting at which Nigel Farage put forward a motion that any NEC member who fell foul of the law should have their legal expenses paid by the Party. Nigel couldn’t get majority support and lost his temper and stormed out of the meeting. I wondered why this was so important to Nigel.
At some time after this I learned that Nigel was going to copy and sell a video tape. I made enquiries and was told that the box which contained the video would be sold for £5 but the video inside it would be given away at no charge. I realised that this was an attempt to circumvent the law.
9th August. Mosaic issued its first warning to Nigel not to sell the videos. I was not aware of this at the time
21st August. I issued a memo saying I would have nothing to do with the sale of ‘pirated’ video tapes. N.B. I said nothing about the BBC holding the copyright.
24th August. Memo to me from Jeffrey (Titford) saying that Nigel had permission to sell the videos and that he (Jeffrey) had seen the letter giving approval.
24th August. Nigel repudiated the statements in my memo and says that the BBC do not hold the copyright. He admits that he has consulted the Leader (Jeffrey Titford) and the Chairman on the matter but not the Party Secretary who is the office holder responsible for legal matters. He fails to mention that Mosaic have told him that he has no right to sell the videos.
25th August. Mosaic wrote to Nigel again asking him to stop selling the videos and send all unsold videos to them. They report that the Trading Standards Department have become involved. I was not aware of this letter at the time.
Weekend of 26th/27th August. Nigel ‘phoned me and told me that a Trading Standards Officer had visited the Redhill Office (a UKIP office at that time) and bought a video under the pretence that he was a member of the Southampton Branch. The conversation then became difficult to interpret. I got the impression that Nigel was suggesting that I had spoken to the Trading Standards Department. He told me that he had consulted Richard North and Christopher Booker who assured him that he had nothing to worry about. He asked me whether I was trying to get him to resign from the Party.
30th August. Mosaic wrote to me, the Party Secretary, with copies of all previous correspondence. I then became aware that Nigel had been in conflict with Mosaic since 9th August. They also spoke to Nikki Sinclaire as I was not available that day.
1st September. Mosaic sent a Fax to Nikki Sinclaire giving further information. They said that they had never given Nigel permission to duplicate and sell copies of the film. This means that no letter giving approval exists. They also said that they were aware that Nigel’s aim was ‘to create a scene with the BBC’.
2nd September. Nigel ‘phoned me and said that the Trading Standards Officer had visited the Redhill Office on Friday 1st September and found a number of videos that had not been sent to Mosaic as instructed.
Signed by Bryan Smalley
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WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH
Printed and published by Chris Cooke – UKIP West Midlands Regional Office.
Dear Friends
UKIP CONDEMNED TO THE FAR RIGHT
Now a new Party Leader has been elected. Jeffrey Titford won by 15 votes, the narrowest of margins, from Rodney Atkinson (who we felt would at least have given UKIP a fighting chance). We are convinced that this election result condemns UKIP to the far right. Mr Titford was supported by Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage may have a strident speaking style, which UKIP’s more aggressive members seem to admire, but his actions politically have been disastrous for UKIP. He has been instrumental in deposing UKIP’s past leaders and attacks potential leaders. As UKIP Party Chairman, his inaction and poor judgement allowed the extended leadership crisis, a lack of proper party procedures, bad decision making, a continuing lethargy within UKIP, and botched attempts at high level defections to UKIP.
While Mr Farage holds important positions within UKIP his well publicised links to the British National Party will keep sabotaging the efforts of other UKIP members.
Mr. Titford and other prominent UKIP members had been members of the far right New Britain Party. One of these, Mike Natrass, has now been offered the post of UKIP Party Chairman. It matters not whether they were naive or otherwise in past associations – only that they persist in defending these associations. In doing so they give ammunition to UKIP’s political opponents, damaging UKIP credibility. Their intentions are made clear by their abject failure to offer Rodney Atkinson any position at all, despite powerful support from half of UKIP members.
SO WE MUST GO
How difficult is it for us to tell you that we, the undersigned, are leaving the UK Independence Party. We tried. From the start we knew that UKIP had “teething troubles”. But we did not understand just how deeply entrenched and corrupting those troubles were. We “fought from within” but were undermined by undemocratic “in-fighting”. From our respective positions within UKIP we did constant battle to ensure fair play for all members, prevent extremism, give UKIP sensible policies and provide the honesty and integrity sadly lacking in much of politics today.
For our troubles many of us have been insulted, harassed, libelled, intimidated or otherwise abused by some rather unsavoury people. We wonder why such people are in UKIP and what they are really after.
UNDERMINING UKIP SUCCESS
After the 1999 EU elections, at the very time when UKIP should have capitalised on its successes, when members up and down the country were aching to get on with recruitment, UKIP had no national recruitment leaflets, no newsletter was put out to members, and nothing was done. Perhaps more could have been done if the Party Chairman, Treasurer, and Secretary, had been less concerned with trying to depose the Party Leader.
In his short term of office party leader, Michael Holmes, successfully led UKIP into a doubling of its party membership and into winning three seats in the 1999 European Elections. Yet he has been hounded out of office by what seemed to be a conspiracy of members, mostly from London or the South East. Their defiance of the wishes of ordinary members (as expressed overwhelmingly at the Birmingham Conference and in a postal poll), and their outrageous attacks and vindictive behaviour has shocked many of us.
Even now they continue to harass Michael Holmes by attempting to divert his phone and mail and freeze his bank accounts. Michael is currently in hospital having suffered a mild stroke. Doctors attribute much of the cause to stress in dealing with his UKIP assailants.
We send him our good wishes and hope that he makes a speedy recovery.
STRANGE BEHAVIOUR AT LONDON HQ
Also infuriating to UKIP members was the ludicrous state of UKIP’s Head Office. The membership database was never correct. During the NEC elections some fifty members were ‘lost’ from the West Midlands alone. Despite strenuous efforts many of these people did not receive their voting papers until it was too late. One of the main workers inside the London HQ caused commotion and scuffles at the Birmingham Conference where he had to be restrained from molesting a young, coloured catering manager in a complaint about service. For that alone he should have been expelled from the party. Instead he continues in the London HQ. He and other London HQ workers vehemently denigrate the previous party leader – and made sure UKIP HQ was used to spread their message!
ACCOUNTABLE TO WHOM?
A cause for concern is that UKIP, with Craig Mackinlay acting as Treasurer, never produced properly audited accounts. Members’ money has been spent, although on what it is not always easy to see. UKIP now has very little of its own money and is effectively “bought” by a handful of people. Far from fighting for UK Independence it can’t even maintain the independence of its own organisation.
UKIP LINKS TO EXTREMISTS
Attempts to subvert internal UKIP elections (incidentally the UKIP returning officer, George Franklin-Ryan, has been receiving payments from Nigel Farage since last October – something members should have been told about), wanton disregard for the UKIP constitution or rules (as demonstrated in the case of the wrongful disqualification of a newly elected N.E.C. representative, Janet Girsman), continuing and clear evidence of UKIP links to extremist groups and individuals, are just some of the things that convince us that UKIP is no longer viable, nor is it proper to give it more of our time, effort or money.
Members should know of the dangers of their addresses falling into the hands of extremists. Rodney Atkinson’s recent circular refers members to Mr Farage’s links to an outsider. This person is a non-member who supports extremist groups. He obtained and used a stolen copy of UKIP’s membership database to try to ruin Rodney Atkinson’s leadership bid.(**B)
PUPPET ON WHOSE STRING?
Perhaps even more disturbing than Nigel Farage’s influence over Jeffrey Titford is the svengali-like power Tony Bennett (the person Mr Titford employs as a political assistant) seems to hold over him. Tony Bennett is responsible for the most vicious, and by far the most relentless, attacks on party members. Particularly nasty were his attacks on the last Party Leader, which continue despite an NEC request for him to refrain. Even now Mr Titford seems to do nothing about him. We believe that Jeffrey Titford, as UKIP leader, will be only a marionette dancing to the tune of his political puppet-masters.
UKIP NOW A BARRIER TO SUCCESS
When UKIP was formed it was helped enormously by being sucked into a political vacuum where no other moderate political party offered the honest policy of withdrawal from the EU. Now we fear that UKIP, through its tarnished reputation, bad organisation and structure, has become a liability in the fight for withdrawal from the EU. It cannot succeed and yet UKIP will act as a barrier to a more reasonable political force emerging. This is appalling for its members (most of whom are genuinely moderate and reasonable people) and for our country.
UKIP MEMBERS DESERVE BETTER
Nothing is gained by continuing to work in such a disabled party. UKIP has given us experience and good friends. We are grateful for that. UKIP members are undoubtedly the best of any political party. Their energy, imagination and commitment has done much to turn the tide of public opinion in Britain even if their election efforts continue to be sabotaged. They deserved better.
Other party members will also soon decide if UKIP’s disease is no longer worth the fight. But staying with UKIP tars us with an extremist brush. We must move on – many of us to work in other organisations with similar aims.
OUTSIDE INFUENCES
It may be – as some suggest – that UKIP was never meant to succeed; it may have been set up as some sort of “sponge” organisation – to soak up opposition to the EU in Britain without allowing it to become an effective force. There is ample evidence to suggest agents provocateurs have been active in UKIP stirring up trouble as the opportunity arises. Without doubt extremists have infiltrated. UKIP structures are incapable of preventing such things (i.e. there has never been a Party Rule book!).
FUTURE SUCCESS
As the door to UKIP closes windows of opportunity will surely come our way. Whether we work within other already established groups or set up a new one (as 1997 UKIP National Agent, Cam Poulter, has done with Reform) we are determined that where UKIP has failed us others must succeed. We have had enough and leave with but few regrets – and much hope for the future.
SIGNED
Rodney Atkinson UKIP NEC Member. 2nd in UKIP leadership election – 2000. Lead UKIP candidate & UKIP Election Campaign Committee – 1999.
Peter Davies Hemsworth (1997) & South Yorkshire (1998) - By Elections candidate.
Carolyn & Michael Holmes UKIP Party Leader 1998 – 2000. UKIP MEP (South West).
Christina Speight Editor: Facts, Figures and Phantasies. Former Chairman Ealing.
Cam Poulter Who was Acting Party Chairman in 1996/97
Ashley Banks General Election candidate Battersea 1997. EU Election - Eastern Region 1999.
Ron Dickinson NEC ’95-’97. Former Salisbury Office Administrator. Political Assistant to M. Holmes (MEP).
Bruce King Former Organiser UKIP Devon.
Simon Stoker UKIP Independence News Editor, Website, Derbyshire.
Don Briggs Chairman: Tatton (UKIP NW).
Barrie Draper Founder Organiser for UKIP National & Devon.
Robin Lamming Hull & East Yorkshire Committee.
Mike Carter Former Regional Organiser Cornwall. Chairman Falmouth Cambourne
Janet Girsman UKIP NEC member. Former UKIP National Media Adviser. Eastern.
Jose O’Ware General & EU election candidate (London).
Chris Cooke UKIP NEC member. National Conference Organiser. Founder – Truth about Europe Campaign.
Harold Green Chairman: Epsom & Ewell.
Lynn Riley Secretary – British Housewives League.
And more than 200 other UKIP members who want to be associated with this statement.
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ANTHONY SCHOLEFIELD
A founder member, and Party Secretary for three years, wrote:
Nigel Farage is a reasonably competent and hard working salesman, but he is also the alpha and omega of UKIP’s problems because of his widespread manipulation, poor judgement, and poor choice of associates. His manipulative political style suffocates development of Party structures and policy development and drives away many activists. His judgement of personalities and staff is notoriously poor and appears to be based solely on their sycophancy. He is the exemplar for, and the inspiration for, the MEP problem, their self-centredness and lack of subordination to the Party members.
Apparently the membership of UKIP is estimated to be less than 12,000, including those signed up to long term membership and unable to get out. The party lacks cash although the MEPs are well remunerated and many don’t contribute financially to the Party. Press reports of widespread alcoholic consumption, and Farage’s sexual misadventures, steadily drove away supporters who back the Party with their sacrifices of time and money. Many will not abide this abuse of Party support.
A disturbing new feature is the revelation that Mark Croucher, the UKIP Press Officer, shows details about UKIP’s membership to Communist and Socialist Workers via Searchlight and ‘Unite Against Fascism’. Croucher reports to Farage.
Note from DH: From time to time, Anthony Scholefield writes excellent articles published in eurofacts.
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DR. RICHARD NORTH
Christopher Booker and Dr. Richard North co-authored several books on the saga of how we were persuaded, by lying and incompetent politicians, into joining the ‘Common Market’ and the devastation membership has caused to our farming, fishing, industries, legal system, and much else.
The two most readable books are ‘The Castle of Lies’ and ‘The Great Deception’. To this day, many articles in The Sunday Telegraph, by Christopher Booker, owe some of the research needed for their production to Dr. North.
(Note: In my view, if all who have influence on our nation’s fortunes had read ‘The Castle of Lies’ within three years of its publication in 1995, then there is every chance we would have left the EU by 2000).
For four years Dr. North was employed as a Chief Researcher for UKIP in Brussels. I think it was in 2004 that Dr. North wrote:
Any claim that UKIP is a ‘right wing party’ is a nonsense. It is, in effect, a one-man party …. the Farage Party. Although he is lauded as the most prominent and effective of members, that is largely of Farage’s making.
Having sat at the desk opposite him and worked very closely with him for four years, I have come to the view that the man has a complete inability to delegate and is also terminally insecure. This latter defect means he cannot tolerate anyone around him or in the Party who he feels is or might be in a position to challenge him. He prefers to surround himself with incompetents and dead-beats and prevents anyone with talent developing. Anyone who emerges who might show an independent streak, he ruthlessly eliminates, to ensure they cannot be seen as competition. He holds the reins of power to himself – acting through surrogates whom he can control or marginalise – and spends the bulk of his time manoeuvring and scheming to keep himself in the dominant position, while presenting to the world his “boyish charm” that effectively conceals his utterly focused grip on that power.
Thus, while he was just what UKIP needed in the very early stages, he has failed to develop with the party and now is the central reason why UKIP itself has failed to develop. Any attempt to develop structures and capabilities that do not revolve around Farage he has failed to support and, if it looks like being effective, he moves heaven and earth to sabotage it. In so doing he has developed a singular expertise for diverting attention – and therefore blame – from himself, not least through exploiting his knowledge of the party to set people against each other, so that he can fade into the background while they fight each other. As long as he is in place, with his grip on the party, that will continue to be the case. The sooner the party wakes up to this, the better.
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Alan Sked, former leader of UKIP, wrote in 2004:
I write this article more in sorrow than in anger. I was proud to found the UK Independence Party and I still avidly support the cause. However, since I quit the Party in 1997, I have been disturbed by developments inside it and disagree on principle with its obsession with gaining seats in next month’s elections in the European Parliament. The introduction of a list system of proportional representation has made it relatively easy for it to win seats (and huge salaries and expenses) in Strasbourg with votes that would just scrape past deposit-saving levels in Westminster elections. Meanwhile, the party has given up thinking about any policies and its active base is down to around 1,200 people, if internal voting figures are anything to go by.
What possible purpose has been served by sending UKIP MEPs to Strasbourg? The European Parliament has no power to grant or further UK independence. In addition, who has heard of the
UKIP’s MEPs? Their only monument has been the laughter occasioned by the maiden speeches of Michael Holmes, who called for greater powers for the European Parliament – not exactly UKIP
policy – and Graham Booth whose incomprehensible speech in Devonian even managed to insult his Cornish and Somerset constituents. (He later apologised).
Worst still, the extra-parliamentary behaviour of the party’s de facto leader, the MEP Nigel Farage, led UKIP’s research director, Dr Richard North, to resign, saying: “I am not and was not prepared to be a bag-carrier. Nor would I fetch and carry for Farage, or write his letters, or be available 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 long. I am almost old enough to be his father, but I am not in the business of being his nanny. I am a professional researcher and that, in my mind, was what I was employed to do.”
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RICHARD SUCHORZEWSKI
Richard came second to Nigel Farage in the 2006 UKIP leadership election. In October 2006 he circulated the following:-
Dear Colleague
It is with great sadness and after much consideration that I have today sent by e-Mail and Royal Mail to The Chairman of UKIP the following letter:
Dear Chairman
Please be good as to accept, and post on UKIP.org, this my letter of resignation from The UK Independence Party.
It was a privilege to be elected Chairman of UKIP Wales and work to represent the members in restructuring and introducing an organisational structure for growth. I would like to thank, for their invaluable assistance, John Bufton as Regional Organiser, and my hard working and supportive committee and members in Wales. I am pleased to have been able to help turn UKIP Wales around and put in place foundations for growth and success in the National Assembly Elections next May.
I was honoured to be elected by the membership to represent them at the NEC (National Executive Committee), where they believed I had specialist skills and experience to best represent their interests, to the benefit of UKIP and its primary cause.
When I stood for the leadership election I did so, on a ticket of Transparency, Integrity and Equality. These standards reflected my inner beliefs, as well as the moral, ethical and Christian principles upon which I have based my whole life. I knew there were sufficient problems with the Party, and also believed that the moral integrity of a number of people at the top left much to be desired.
It was my belief that should I be elected leader these problems could be resolved and the Party then could move forward together, on a firmer footing in probity and strength.
Nothing however prepared me for the scurrilous behaviour, defamatory comments, and downright dishonesty of some of Nigel Farage’s and David Bannerman’s staff, supporters and members of the Press Office staff, in which they clearly colluded.
I was accused of having associations with the BNP – even when these scoundrels knew that my grandfather was murdered by the Nazis in a concentration camp and my Great Grandfather was discovered hanged by them from a lamp post near his home by my 14 year old Father. Further I am angry that UKIP’s leadership were happy to collude in this base and obscene slur, particularly in the light of the fact that I have been ‘courting’ a young woman from St Lucia for the last 2 years, she herself has been victimised by racial abuse.
I was accused of being a homosexual, despite no evidence of this, and my having been happily married for 14 years, a marriage which sadly ended in an amicable divorce and now subsequently I am courting the above-mentioned lady.
I was accused of having ‘run up’ a company debt of £4millions in one of my businesses when these accusers knew that I had purchased the company with secured debts, that it had already accrued, amounting to £4millions of losses. My business is in the field of mergers and acquisitions, specialising in the purchase, development and sale of problematic companies. My critics in this area are either commercial illiterates or unarguably dishonest either of which reflects ill on the competence of the new leadership.
My local newspaper was contacted by an UKIP official and advised to look into these accusations – in order to attempt to taint my unblemished reputation.
Even friends within my own local Conservative Party have informed me that they were asked for ‘any dirt’ they had on me including my political, personal and business affairs.
This list shamefully goes on.
Despite all of this I was willing to forgive and forget. I called for Party unity behind the new leader Nigel Farage, regardless of how he had gained his new position. I hoped this would in some way result in a change of attitude.
Clearly it did NOT. Farage colluded with, and thus endorsed the scurrilous behaviour. He was not prepared for his staff to apologise for the BNP allegations as he felt that the issue ‘would go away’ – and he tried to justify the concern on the basis that a fellow NEC member David Abbott volunteered his support of my leadership candidacy. (David Abbott is the very man whom Farage and his secretary Douglas Denny introduced and actively supported to the NEC, and only turned against when he supported my candidacy).
Farage also claimed concern in that a Mr Andrew Edwards supported my leadership bid on an internet blog that he runs. I am to be tainted by this, even though I have never posted on his site, spoken to, nor communicated with the said person, who I am advised is NOT a member of UKIP.
Farage has also claimed that a long term associate of his, Greg Lance-Watkins is a supporter and associate of the BNP, of which I have seen no evidence – yet this seems to besmirch my reputation, as G.L-W. openly supported my candidacy, having stated, based on extensive personal dealings with Nigel Farage that “he was a good performer for UKIP but lacked either the probity or competence to lead UKIP.”
This logic that UKIP’s new leader has adopted if seriously applied, must call into question his own credentials, bearing in mind both his long-term association with G.L-W. and that the BNP actually refused to stand against Farage, and supported his candidacy at the Bromley by-election. Does this make Nigel a BNP supporter?
Rather then be magnanimous in victory and help the Party unite, Nigel and his clique overturned a perfectly legitimate democratic vote at the NEC which had elected Geoffrey Kingscott (a most honourable man) as Party Secretary, denying the Party of another person with integrity at the top, and placing his supporter the discredited Douglas Denny in the post.
A witch hunt has now commenced, seemingly with the aim to disingenuously massage MEP lists, with the disciplinary hearing of Peter Baker for daring to make public his committee’s majority voted opposition to Roger Knapman’s morally questionable exploitation and involvement in a Polish worker’s import business run by his son.
Similarly Dennis Brookes, a loyal and devoted supporter and Regional Organiser of UKIP, would seem to have been victimised for having the temerity not to object to his committee’s support of my candidacy, and this apparently has contributed to losing him his job. I have no doubt from Nigel’s discussion with me, subsequent to the election, that others too will suffer similar fates.
On policy issues, Nigel has made statements already, that makes it clear to me, we are to become a shadow alternative Tory Party. A pressure group created to persuade the Tories to dump Cameron and change its policy on the EU. I am sorry; I did not leave the real Tory party to join a poor imitation.
I believe UKIP was sincere in its endeavour to extricate Britain from the European Union, returning sovereignty to a British Parliament and playing a full independent part in that new Parliament.
On financial transparency issues, I believe a cloud still overhangs the Ashford call centre and various aspects of UKIP accounts. Also the financial dealings and involvement in fraud, (as exposed by the media), of Tom Wise, one of UKIP’s MEPs, have not adequately been resolved.
Likewise there has been a lack of transparency of others. I have contended that the funding mechanisms are too heavily reliant on the EU, as this makes us subservient to the very body from which we wish to disassociate and which we openly accuse of corruption particularly in the area of accounting!
I stood for leader knowing full well that it was a challenge I was unlikely to win. Farage had control of a number of advantages that if abused would guarantee him success. Knowing this, I was more than surprised that he allowed his cronies, supporters, and certain staff to openly and reprehensibly lie and rubbish a loyal UKIP member, with elected duties, who devoted the last 2 years of his life, full time, unpaid, to help UKIP progress.
Even now in ‘victory’ Farage appears determined not to change his ways, and because of this I cannot support this Party under his leadership any longer.
Reluctantly I am left with no honourable action open to me other than to leave, as I am not prepared to give my good name, reputation and integrity, in support of Farage and many in his clique. I therefore stand alongside the other Party devotees and former NEC members, Anthony Butcher, Gill Chant and others (not to mention the many other activists who have already resigned).
My heart and my grateful thanks go out to all of those who supported me and the values in which we believed, and those who have committed so much of their lives in their patriotic pursuit of regaining democracy, British Independence and Sovereignty.
It does not give me any satisfaction to realise that the old saying “Fish Rots from the Head Down” may have more than a cursory resemblance to UKIP.
Please be so good as to convey to the membership my very best wishes and thanks for allowing me to serve them! At the moment I feel honour bound to continue the struggle for liberation from the EU and better Governance outside of UKIP, but would be happy to reconsider my position should there be notable changes within UKIP in the future under very different leadership.
Yours sincerely
Richard Suchorzewski
UKIP Wales Chairman (resigned 5th October 2006)
NEC member (resigned 5th October 2006)
MARCUS STEAD
Marcus Stead posted a letter of resignation from UKIP on 24th November 2006. Below is a copy of his resignation letter in full which, at that time, was circulated to about 140 e-mail addresses.
To: Nigel Farage, Present UKIP leader, John Whittaker, UKIP Chairman, Michael Zuckerman, Party Secretary, Roger Knapman, former UKIP leader.
Dear Mr Farage,
I am writing to you to inform you of my resignation, with immediate effect, from the United Kingdom Independence Party, my position as an elected member of the UKIP Wales Committee and from my position as Vice-Chairman of the UKIP Cardiff and District Branch.
After many weeks of deliberating, I have come to the conclusion that UKIP has become a hindrance to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. UKIP professes to be the flagship of Euro Sceptic pressure group in Britain (to describe it as a true political party, would I believe, be a gross misrepresentation). This places a serious responsibility upon the shoulders of the party, one it does not take seriously enough. From the perspective of a pro-European, UKIP have become ideal opponents, a party led by useful idiots and therefore being a joke opposition.
The fight to regain control of Britain’s sovereignty needs and deserves a serious political party with a mature core message, a clear strategy for getting that message across and must be led by political heavyweights. UKIP has failed on all these grounds. It cannot decide whether it is a political party or a pressure group, and as a result has not succeeded in being either. Your initial response during your short time as leader has been to treat UKIP as a Conservative Party splinter group, while still lacking any serious policies. If I had wanted to belong to the Conservative Party I would have joined it.
These frustrations on my part are nothing new, and judging by the rapid decline in membership since 2004, this is a view shared by a large number of others.
Yet my principal reason for resigning relates specifically to you, your controlling cabal and your unacceptable behaviour over recent months, most specifically, the series of events that began at the Exeter hustings of July 30th. Simon Muir, David Noakes, Richard Suchorzewski’s solicitor and others have seen and verified the validity of a letter signed by a bona fide member of UKIP clearly stating Annabelle Fuller introduced herself as a member of the Press Office and clearly showed herself to be an ‘intimate’ of yours. She solicited the conversation with a stranger and stated unequivocally that Richard Suchorzewski had lied about his background and CV and that he was a BNP supporter.
Your employee Mark Croucher also made similar accusations on a public internet forum. Mr Croucher’s twisted logic that Mr Suchorzewski’s alleged links to Greg Lance-Watkins somehow made him a BNP plant is bovine in the extreme. Mr Suchorzewski and Mr Lance-Watkins are more febrilely connected as allies with the BNP than you are through your well publicised and close association with Mark Deavin.
I have given you and your clique several opportunities to substantiate these serious accusations, yet all I received from you was an ill-mannered and abusive response on one occasion and no reply at all on others.
During the past eighteen months I have worked closely with Mr Suchorzewski, and have consistently found him to be a man of integrity and great talent who was willing to work long hours, and without pay, to help UKIP develop into a serious political force.
It appears that as soon as he became a threat to your control of the party you resorted to using the politics of the gutter to destroy him. The accusations you made against Mr Suchorzewski were especially absurd when one considers members of his family were killed in the Holocaust and he is in a stable relationship with a woman of Afro-Caribbean origin. Even I was surprised by how low you were prepared to sink to destroy him.
I concede you are a quite brilliant media performer, but I have come to the conclusion that this is where your talents begin and end. Your track record in all other areas has been truly shambolic. You have been convicted of misusing party funds. You have overseen a catastrophe at the Ashford Call Centre where just 15% of all money raised ever reached the party. Can you enlighten me and the many other concerned members as to which black hole the generous donations of ordinary members fell into?
And can you enlighten those of us on modest incomes just how much of your generous salary you have donated to the party? Or do you rely solely on us members and the naïve Alan Bown to fund ego-trips, such as your campaign in the Bromley by-election in which every vote you gained cost £86 in campaign money?
Since you became leader many decent people at every level of the party have resigned, and, after a period of reflection, I have decided to do likewise.
My own personal experience of you has taught me a lot about your character. On an occasion during the 2005 conference you personally assured me a Youth Movement would be set up in the near future. A long conversation, followed by a period of email correspondence with your Personal Assistant of the time, persuaded me you were serious about this, whereas in reality it was a ploy to turn me against the successful “Youthkip” movement set up by younger members of the Lechlade Group.
Then, in December of last year, the last time we met in person, you once again assured me that the launch of the Youth movement was “imminent” and likely to occur in February of this year. Your PA then refused to answer emails written by myself or any other younger members of the party who wanted this to be set up.
How is it possible to come to any conclusion other than that the only purpose of this exercise was to turn me against a then-thriving “Youthkip” Movement, favouring the “official” Youth movement which, in truth, you never had any intention of launching?
How can I have confidence in a leader who behaves in such a way?
Your short period as leader so far has fared little better. On day one of your leadership you referred to myself and others who have dared question you as, “A small number of malcontents”, thereby implying we were in some way trouble makers rather than people merely revealing the truth about you and your conduct. You then went on to attack those of us who subscribe to the “Democracy Forum” during your conference speech. It seems you simply dislike those who dare to question you or your conduct in any way.
It also seems you have learnt nothing from past mistakes when it comes to celebrity endorsements. You stupidly invited the mock shock jock James Whale to represent UKIP as the party’s London Mayoral election candidate. Mr Whale is clearly using this as a ploy to draw attention to himself and increase ratings for his radio show – he has no intention of joining UKIP or representing the party at any level, yet you have allowed him to use the party as a self publicity tool. Does this remind you of anyone?
Finally, I turn to the state of the party in Wales. Following the resignation of Mr Suchorzewski as UKIP Wales Chairman, John Pratt, a decent and honourable man, was elected to take his place.
While I hold Mr Pratt in high regard, the notion that he would make a good Chairman is frankly laughable. How can an elderly man, who has numerous commitments outside politics, as well as having no access to the internet and who admits to seldom watching television, possibly be a suitable Chairman?
I fear he will be used and manipulated by you and your controlling cabal as so many others have been, and then chewed up and spat out if he dares to challenge you in any way. I am therefore calling on him to resign from the post, and indeed as a member of the party, with his dignity and reputation in tact and find better uses of his time and resources to contribute to the campaign to get Britain back.
What remains of UKIP is a shipwreck of a party, consisting of a Dad’s Army of largely well meaning, patriotic, and generous people who have no idea about the corrupt nature of those at the top, such as yourself, Mark Croucher, Annabelle Fuller, Tom Wise and Douglas Denny to name a few. Indeed, with their track records, I would consider all of them suitable candidates to become European Commissioners. The way you are lining your pockets, you would be in good company in the current Commission.
I no longer wish to remain in this increasingly autocratic party, led by a corrupt leader who must be obeyed at all times
With your dreadful professional and personal record, you can be sure you will be found out soon enough, and I doubt it will be very long before you cause UKIP and yourself embarrassment in the press, killing off UKIP once and for all in the process.
I also wish to call upon many, many decent ordinary members I have had the privilege of knowing and working with to resign their party membership, as they are doing the euro-sceptic cause far more harm than good remaining in a party led by you and your cabal. I therefore call on all members to abandon this sinking ship led by a rogue Captain, and to confront head-on the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long.
To campaign to restore Britain’s sovereignty requires a serious political party led by people of integrity. Instead, we have a joke party led by a two-faced philandering drunk, who enjoys the wealth and trappings his role brings, yet in reality has contributed very little towards the goal of getting Britain out of the European Union and restoring British sovereignty.
Yours Sincerely,
Marcus Stead.
Vice Chairman, Cardiff & District Branch.
Wales Committee member with responsibility for Youth Development.
UKIP WEST DORSET CONSTITUENCY ASSOCIATION
A letter to the then Party Chairman, from the West Dorset Constituency Association, dated 1st November 2006, reads as follow:
Dear Dr. Whittaker,
It is with deep regret, and a lot of heart searching, that the under mentioned members of the UK Independence Party, West Dorset Constituency Association committee, tender their resignations.
In the 2004 EU elections, UKIP came second in West Dorset, elected two MEPs and beat the Lib/Dems into third place. We felt we were on a roll. Our moment had come when the United Kingdom was waking up. We then had to put up with the ignominy of watching our leaders scrapping with Robert Kilroy-Silk in public, resulting in many good workers leaving UKIP and following RKS into Veritas. That, we feel, was the beginning of the end.
Our leaders squandered the goodwill that members of the party had worked hard to build up during the Euro Election. They did nothing to take the party forward, and we were left rudderless at the one time in the party’s existence when it could have become a serious contender for Westminster.
The MEPs have secured for themselves lucrative jobs, but what has happened to the cash they were going to inject into the Party? Instead, UKIP is relying on money from the very Commission we are supposed to despise and want to destroy. We would remind these MEPs that the public voted for the Party, not for them personally.
The leadership campaign was a disgrace. Lies and scurrilous accusations were made. These were not counteracted by the leadership, and now it is over, there have been no apologies and no offers of the hand of friendship. The questions about the Ashford Call Centre have not been answered, and the new Treasurer has stated that he won’t be looking at the accounts prior to his takeover. Nigel Farage has now declared that UKIP will not stand against BOO (Better Off Out) candidates.
We had high hopes that when a new leader was elected things would change for the better, and the Party would move forward. It is now obvious that Nigel Farage, and other MEPs, do not want the UK Independence Party to be a Party at all. They merely want a pressure group for the Conservatives. This view is substantiated by the news from the recent Conference.
We can see no valid reason to work for a Party that is obviously not going to achieve anything we want, and does not offer the voters a true opposition to the three main parties.
Yours sincerely,
L. K. Hansford, Chairman. M. Stringfellow, Secretary. D. Dixon, Treasurer.
J. Bolton. O. Blackburn. D.Matthews.
L. A. Harris. C. Sparkes. T. Greenaway.
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EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER OF RESIGNATION FROM UKIP BY VISCOUNT EXMOUTH
Downloaded from the internet on 6th February 2007.
I hereby resign as a member of the UK Independence Party.
At the MEP Candidate Selection Meetings I expressed my views of the manner in which the leadership was running our campaign and the results of such. My worst fears have been realised.
In the last year ordinary Party members have been betrayed by incompetence, naivety and waste.
The leadership whilst referring to rogues and knaves in every other Party appears to have behaved in a manner, matching that description, in regard to its own staff and office relocation.
I am disturbed by much else, not least our association with that Master of Sleaze, Max Clifford. Given the way the leadership behaves, it is perhaps an apt choice.
This is no longer a Party I wish to be associated with.
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DR. DAVID ABBOTT, MD MRC
November 2008
Dr. David Abbott, a respected medical doctor and committed Christian, who puts honesty and openness before self interest, speaks out:
I am a member of UKIP’s NEC, elected and re-elected by the members of UKIP.
On both occasions I had stood for election on a platform of transparency, democracy and probity.
Other candidates have been elected on similar platforms in the past, but the emotional toll of the ridicule and abuse from the party leadership has resulted in most of the good people resigning.
Resignations since I have been on the NEC include Anthony Butcher, Linda Guest, Gill Chant, Richard Suchorzewski, and Bryan McCormack.
The result is that there were, until yesterday, only three members of the NEC who had any backbone. Eric Edmond, Del Young, and me. The rest are, for the most part, just nodding donkeys who never disagree with the leader and never vote other than how he wants.
Now Del is the only member with any courage who remains, and it will be lonely for him with no-one to second motions or give moral support.
The circumstances of the removal of Eric and me are as follows. There were complaints on the agenda against both of us. In my case Rachel Oxley had made the complaint that I had circulated a letter calling for the rules of the party to be adhered to.
The item was added to the agenda less than two days before the meeting, and was not drawn to my
attention by the secretary or anyone else in the leadership cabal. It was another attempted ambush.
However, her complaint, made under section 7.18.1 of the UKIP constitution was not valid and I had prepared a statement, which I planned to read to the NEC
However, I never did present my case as events took a strange turn. In addition to efforts to get rid of Eric Edmond and me, the leader had also asked for the resignation of Martin Haslam, the deputy treasurer.
Martin is a gentle, honest and very generous man. He has restored our faith in the accounts, at
least in the current ones. The leader’s beef was that Martin had taken a phone call from a reporter
and had not reported it to Farage. By chance the phone call had come just as Martin had finished
a game of tennis with Buster Mottram, who had overheard the conversation and could vouch for what had been said. Martin felt very aggrieved at his dismissal and had come to the NEC with the
encouragement of several members, not just the three stalwarts, but also some of the nodding donkeys too. At first he was denied permission to speak but eventually he made a moving speech, reminding the leader how much he had contributed in time and money to the party, he had paid for Nigel’s driver, paid the salary of Marta Andreasen (£30,000 per annum), paid for a fund raising dinner at the House of Lords, and done the SE accounts as well as the national ones, etc.
Farage belittled his contributions and did not once say thank you.
Then came the appalling statement from Farage that he had KNOWN the day before that the reporter was going to phone. But INSTEAD of alerting his colleague he had waited to see if the call would be reported to him. It was a trap.
This sneaky, untrusting treatment of a kind, honest man so incensed me that I left the meeting. I could not sit at the same table as a man who demanded trust but could not trust others, who did not recognize as valuable anyone who didn’t totally agree with him on every single issue.
These new revelations were on top of all his more obvious defects including total amorality, bullying, adultery, and drunkenness, vengefulness and lying. I did not resign from the NEC, but when I got back from the meeting I found that the complaint against me had been upheld.
I enclose the statement I had intended to make to the NEC. (See below).
Bannerman’s complaint (an EU employee's complaint) about Eric had also been upheld. We have both apparently been fired from the NEC. I want to make it clear that our firing had nothing to do with Buster Mottram’s idea of a pact with the BNP, which neither of us endorsed or supported and which I spoke against.
We were each fired as a result of baseless complaints by other NEC members, one of whom was in the pay of the EU. Neither of us presented our defence. In my case I was not given adequate notice and the complaint was patently not valid in any case.
Keeping to the rules (prepared statement for the NEC) by David Abbott NEC - NOV 3rd 2008
All of us sitting here today agree that you can’t have an effective organisation without rules and
procedures … that are fair and followed. Rachel accuses me of breaking the rules .. because I
distributed a piece asking that our party rules and constitution be adhered to … including observing
normal British conventions of fairness.
We may find it telling that she and the chairman are now attempting one of the NEC’s signature
Ambushes … by only giving me one day’s notice of the complaint. Our constitution does not forbid
NEC members from commenting on the leadership. My comments were not an attack on the party, but a plea to keep to our own rules. Let me remind you of the circumstances that led me to write the letter.
By refunding the fees paid by two of the candidates, the party has already admitted that rules were
broken in the MEP selection process. The returning officer‘s report says that rules were changed
in mid game … which was one of the observations I had made. He seems to recommend re-running the entire election process in London … because of all the rule breaches.
Our rules do not permit a foreigner (Marta Andreasen) living abroad to be a member of the party, … let alone become the treasurer, or an MEP candidate. The preferment of an Argentinean Dane who lives in Barcelona … and who has told this committee that she does not share UKIP’s core goals is against the spirit and the rules; and is causing much disturbance in the SE.
The lead candidate in the East works for the EU … and thus his terms of employment include that he shall conduct himself solely with the interest of the EU in mind … and shall not take instructions from any organisation or person outside the EU. He is thus not eligible to be on this committee … especially not as deputy leader and certainly he cannot be an MEP candidate.
The fact that he is repeatedly introduced as the relative of a famous man (which claim proves to be
completely false), is the icing on the cake …. I would like to know who it was in our organization that checked his credentials and identity as required by a resolution of this committee
Our press officer loses a computer … with confidential data on it … and somehow someone in Morocco puts up a video of another East Region candidate .. on U tube. And the party didn’t even apologise. In fact our leader seems to sympathise with this woman in a newspaper article rather than with the wronged candidate. The candidate is now suing ….. More trouble because we haven’t kept normal standards of decency.
The constitution says that the chairman is appointed by this committee …. but the membership was
told of the appointment of our new chairman before the NEC had even met him, let alone discussed his appointment.
Our leader issues an edict … that MEPs’ wives must not be on the MEP’s payroll … then he is caught paying his own wife. And this committee says and does nothing.
Del (Young), the founder and energetic leader of Young Independence, was ambushed without notice. Eric is similarly pounced on without the notice required by common decency.
The man who was our treasurer at the time knowingly accepted illegal donations …. .landing our party in trouble with Elcom. Alan is kindly picking up the tab .. but this money could have been spent on the cause if we had just kept to the rules in the first place. Rules and conventions are broken time and time again. This lack of attention to rules and procedure is only one aspect of the shambles of a leadership that we now suffer …. but it is an aspect that this committee can and should deal with, if our party is to survive … let alone succeed in its noble goals.
And that is the reason I wrote the letter.
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For your information, here is the letter that caused the NEC Cabal to launch its attack on Dr David Abbott.
Begins:
"Several times we have been proud to point out that the British invented most of the world’s
popular games and sports. This happened because we Brits understood the importance of rules. Rules have to be fair, agreed and understood ahead of time, and obeyed. If the rules are broken there are penalties. The rules are not to be ignored or changed in the middle of the game. The umpire or referee has to be unbiased. This is the British way, and it has worked for centuries.
Without rules that are understood and willingly obeyed there is chaos. And chaos is what is
engulfing UKIP at the present time.
Where there are UKIP rules they are ignored if it suits the leadership. Often there are no rules
and no rule book. The constitution goes missing. Minutes are not kept. Some rules are selectively
applied so as only to affect the favoured few. These problems are sapping the very life out of theparty.
A recent manifestation was the MEP lists. I voted for the rules governing the conduct of the selections process because a man, who had been my hero until that time, was going to be the trusted umpire and would ensure that the rules were fairly applied. This has not proved to be the case. It seems that close contact with the party leadership can turn even a principled man into a shyster.
Until our party leadership adopts again the ethics of its members, which is to say British habits of keeping to the rules, fair play and honesty, it is hard to envision any future. And I mean a future for our country as well as our party. All those leaflets we delivered, all the time and money we have contributed appear to have been dissipated in the fleshpots of Brussels, as our leaders have learnt the nasty and cheating ways that are the norm in parts of Europe.
Please insist that your elected NEC members vote with their consciences and do not succumb to the continuing pressure that legitimises cheating and rule bending ."
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THE ASHFORD CALL CENTRE
by Derek Hunnikin
At the suggestion of John Moran, and with the enthusiastic support of Nigel Farage, the Ashford Call Centre was set up in 2004, to both raise money for the Party and recruit new members.
In August 2005, as the Chichester Branch Membership Secretary, I became so alarmed at the number of members who were refusing to rejoin UKIP on their annual renewal date, and many resigning before the due date, I sent a letter to the Party Leader, Roger Knapman, which included the following:
As Membership Secretary for Chichester for over eight years, I have never witnessed such a large number of members failing to renew their membership. Since May, this year, Chichester has lost 20% of its members! Why? In short I believe largely due to the activities of the Ashford Call Centre.
A typical example is the lady I spoke to recently who told me she would not rejoin because she is fed-up with being constantly telephoned by UKIP asking for money – five times in the past twelve months! Bernard Smith, our Branch Chairmen, tells me he has had dozens of calls from members complaining about unsolicited telephone calls from UKIP asking for money. He spoke to Nigel Farage and John Moran about this matter last June and his concern was brushed aside. I ask myself, what is the point of supporting a political party that so blatantly alienates its members?
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As a result of the above letter, Bernard Smith and I met with some members of the NEC in London on 17th October 2005. We were assured that steps would be taken to ensure members would not be harassed by the Ashford Call Centre in future.
In January 2006, I had reason to write to John Moran again on the subject of the damage the Ashford Call Centre was doing to UKIP. There had been no discernable improvement in the operation of the call centre. Factors which came to light include the following:
- Farage said that the call centre, in UKIP terms, is an absolute lifeline. It took us nine years to get 9,500 members, and we doubled the size of the party because of the call centre.
- In January 2006, I wrote again to inform Head Office that we were still getting complaints about the call centre - one lady having gone to the expense of having her telephone number changed. Another member reported she had had three calls in as many weeks. In response to the first she agreed to make a donation, the second call was to say Ashford had not received her cheque, and the third call was downright rude.
- At a Chichester Branch Christmas Lunch not one person present had a good word to say about the call centre.
- Although detailed accounts for the Ashford Call Centre have never been produced, it is generally accepted that only somewhere between 11% and 15% of the money raised by the call centre went to Party funds, the rest was lost in expenses. This means that, of the £400,000 Farage said was raised, only £60,000 was available for promoting the party.
- At the time it was widely reported that at an NEC meeting Farage voted against providing audited accounts of Ashford’s affairs.
- The then Party Treasurer resigned rather than answer questions on ‘Ashford’ and his replacement refused to carry out a retrospective audit.
- It was reported in The Sunday Telegraph, dated 12th February 2007, that outrage over the Ashford Call Centre has been blamed for the resignation of six senior UKIP officials over the previous 18 months. In the same article, Farage is reported to have confessed that a London based UKIP call centre had lost between £5,000 and £6,000 every month and this was the reason he was keen for a ‘professionally run call centre’ to be set up under John Moran in Ashford.
- The call centre operatives are not members of UKIP, and could even be unsympathetic towards it and they are, therefore, motivated solely by financial incentives through soliciting money from members. Indeed, one operator is reported to have said, ”I don’t give a damn about members, I’m here for the bonus!”
To put this matter into context a paragraph, taken from an e-mail to me from a Horsham branch member, is worth recording here:
I was called about six weeks ago one evening just as I had settled down to my meal after a tiring day by someone “from Ashford” calling himself David. Apart from my usual irritation at the casual modern culture of first-name-terms-only from strangers, my main concern with this begging practice is that it tends to annoy and alienate members by its crude interruption of one’s domestic peace and quiet. I don’t mind so much a local person calling me, but I hate being pestered by any ‘national call centre’, especially if they simply want money! This particular pitch has long ago been queered by business big and small. Furthermore, to then expect me to give out personal bank card details, as he did, is exceedingly poor, not only from a courtesy viewpoint but also from a security one. I had no proof, of course, of who he said he was and there are now literally dozens of such telephone (‘cardholder not present’) scams on the go these days, according to our neighbourhood watch advisors. Whilst I appreciate its need for vital funds to fight campaigns against vastly better-funded opponents, UKIP does need to be very careful in not aping the abrasive contemporary habits of commerce in its dealings with its allies! In the end I sent back a few quid on a postal form once I’d checked that the approach was genuine.
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Needless to say the Ashford Call Centre was duly closed. Incredibly, a few months after the Ashford Call Centre had been closed down, Nigel Farage called for it to be reopened! Not surprisingly, the NEC rejected this request.
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ROBIN PAGE
A letter to NEC members giving his version of the events which led to him not being included in the prospective MEP list for the 2009 EU elections.
Dear Members of the NEC,
I am sorry not to have been in contact with you earlier, but my latest book has just been published - it is flying out through Telegraph Books you will be pleased to hear. I am also involved in a number of articles for the Mail on Sunday which have been very time consuming, in addition to all my other activities and responsibilities.
This is to inform you that the so-called "election" for Euro-selection for the Eastern Region is invalid. I would therefore ask you to put the election on hold immediately. I am writing to Piers
Merchant asking him to do this in his capacity of Returning Officer. I assume he is supposed to be independent and not simply a "gofer" for Leader Farage.
My own view is that the election cannot be transparent and the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) should conduct it. I understand that Nigel is opposed to this very normal procedure; I wonder why? Incidentally, the National Trust Council Elections are held under the watchful eye of the ERS and as a result I became only the second person ever to have been elected onto the Council against the wishes of the NT's hierarchy. Not only that, but I comfortably topped the poll last time. It makes me wonder why I have been cheated out of standing in this UKIP poll and "cheated" can be the only adequate word to use.
I must remind you that David Challice asked me to pay my £250 to become part of the procedure. This was paid on 13.5.2008, by Visa, and HAS NOT BEEN RETURNED. My solicitor tells me that acceptance of the money constitutes a contract and I must therefore be included in the
selection process - whether Mr.Farage wants this to be the case or not. He may be leader but he is not a dictator and he is not above the Law. Apparently at the NEC meeting, which should have resolved this issue properly and honestly, it was Mr.Farage's Putinesque behaviour that had his automated members of the NEC voting that the issue should be handled, in my view, improperly and dishonestly. Is this the same UKIP that claims that "honesty" is one of its main drive-engines in its battle with Europe? Sadly the sleaze of Europe seems to have swamped many of those leading UKIP and any "sleaze ratio analysis" of political parties in Britain would now surely have UKIP top of the league. My aim in continued membership of UKIP is to get it fighting as an honest, electable party again and because of this I shall be standing in the NEC elections next time. I will be asking for them to be conducted by the ERS to prevent any chance of malpractice and rigging.
To remind you - although you all know the situation. Despite being in a position to complete the various forms by the required date for Euro-selection - Peter Reeve and David Challice gave me another route that was far simpler for me at the time. It meant paying the money, sending the CRB forms and sending my nominations as soon as I returned from my research trip. This was agreed - if Reeve and Challis are honest, then I am sure they will confirm this. Consequently the NEC should have said - "Yes you were mis-directed, but it is our fault – you are part of the selection process". But no - that was too simple, too transparent and too honest. Incredibly too - I understand that Peter Reeve's partner remained in the NEC meeting to vote against me – which again should make the vote invalid.
Incidentally - this is the exact version of the events. After thirty-eight years of national journalism I have never been accused of lying - and I am not now; I have never been sued for libel.
I am also concerned that after explaining the situation I have never had an explanation as to why mistakes by UKIP members of staff have penalised me. When I told Nigel that Christopher Gill had not had the courtesy to explain things to me, Nigel was very uncomplimentary about him and described him as "unprofessional". Nigel has since been similarly "unprofessional", in my view.
Consequently I am now asking you to cancel the election process for the East and to fulfil your legal obligations.
I am afraid that I will be writing articles about all this in due course and issuing a Press Release. I have accepted several UKIP branch speaking engagements recently and I will be telling those present of the current state of affairs at the top of UKIP. I will also be informing our two UKIP Lords of the situation.
I will also be writing to Nigel Farage in the near future - I will be sending copies to you. I am sorry too that I have not been invited to speak at the UKIP Conference - I presume no invitation means that I have been banned. Never mind - I did address 10,000 people the other day. After-wards several people approached to ask me if I would be standing for UKIP at the Europeans. I told them the position and they were duly shocked. News of sleaze travels fast and far - I have had telephone calls from as far afield as Scotland and Devon asking "Is it true?" The simple answer has been "Yes." I hope those of you whose personal ambitions have been put before integrity are satisfied. It is no mean feat to actually turn a small party into an even smaller one - well done to those responsible.
I hope to hear something positive soon and I hope that for the sake of transparency John West will get a fair deal too. The breach of the criminal law against somebody who has worked so hard for UKIP is a disgrace. It seems to me that over the next couple of years the white prison vans could be kept very busy. Presumably the amount of sleaze within UKIP is why some of us, who say things as they are, have been deliberately side-lined.
Yours sincerely,
Robin Page
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Why Ukip has just lost another member
The grassroots are good people, but the party has been stolen from them, argues Robin Page.
Reprinted here is the article that appeared in The Daily Telegraph dated 2nd March 2009. It is followed by Farage’s letter which appeared on the following day.
I have just helped the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip). I have jumped ship. It is a small party whose main wish at the moment seems to be a desire to become even smaller; so I did my bit and resigned.
Why now? Surely Ukip was on the verge of a great political breakthrough? After the 2004 European Elections, Ukip rode the crest of a wave with 12 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), 2.7 million votes, 16.8% of the vote and membership of 26,000. But now, as the next round of Euro elections approaches, the great breakthrough has turned into break-up.
Ukip’s 12 European parliamentarians have, by defection and expulsion, dropped to nine – and one has even left his constituency to live elsewhere, without telling his constituents. At the Henley by-election last year, the party finished sixth, behind both the Greens and the BNP with just 2.4% of the vote. Membership is down to 14,000 (sorry, make that 13,999) and on the slide. To make matters worse there are accusations of rigged internal elections, tales of extravagance and high living in Brussels, and an embarrassing stampede to try to board the European gravy train this June. In short, Ukip is in the process of imploding. I have absolutely no personal political ambition whatsoever. For me the summer was going to involve seeing gorillas in the Congo for Telegraph Week-end and visiting St Kilda for the first time. I was encouraged to stand as a Ukip candidate because of my concern about the state of my country and I reluctantly agreed. Because of a farcical series of accidents, health problems and other commitments, I had a special dispensation to submit my papers a few days late. Or at least I thought I had.
When I contacted the officials as arranged they told me I was out of time. So I phoned Nigel Farage, Ukip’s Blair-like, ex-public school leader, who said he was very sorry and would do his best to sort things out, but “it’ll be up to the Political Committee”. He came back later with bad news. “The Political Committee won’t accept your late documents, I’m really sorry.” I have since found out Mr Farage is Ukip’s Political Committee. It runs at his whim with no obvious agenda or minutes. Piers Merchant, a former Tory MP who is now Ukip’s Returning Officer, informed me that the process was “flawed” and that there should be a re-run. But there has been no re-run and Ukip refuses to send me a copy of the Returning Officer’s report, even after a Data Protection Act request.
It seems that Nigel Farage has managed to obtain almost complete centralised power of Ukip. Other late nominations were apparently accepted, some people heading MEP lists have been forced out to be replaced by others, and three members of Ukip’s National Executive Council were expelled for criticising the leader. Other high-profile Ukip members have also been removed over the years, so as not to threaten Farage’s control or image. The party’s own policies – such as opposition to genetically modified crops – have been reversed without the membership knowing, including me. Stories from Brussels suggest that Ukip’s MEPs have come to love the high life of gravy and status. The party created to fight centralised government, sleaze and corruption, has become a mirror image of the body it professes to loathe. The grassroots of Ukip are good people, but their party has been stolen from them by their executive; and with David Cameron seemingly afraid to say the word “Europe”, they have nowhere to go – unless lured by the false smile of the BNP.
Just under 2,000 years ago Tacitus wrote words to the effect: “Britons are very good at being Roman. They like the baths, the forum and they think they are becoming Roman whereas in fact these devices enslave them to Rome.” Replace Britons with “Ukip MEPs”, and Roman with “European”, and the disintegration of Ukip is explained.
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Nigel Farage’s response to the above was printed in The Daily Telegraph the following day – and is reproduced below.
SIR – I was interested to read Robin Page’s article (“Why Ukip lost another member”, Comment, March 2) in which he professes to have “no personal political ambition whatsoever”.
There was a nine month period for nominations for Ukip candidates; Mr Page telephoned me with two days to go and we relaxed the rules (which I now regret). We asked him to submit his papers – which he failed to do after a further fortnight’s grace.
I admit that, since 2004, Ukip has had some difficult times – especially in 2005, when Robert Kilroy-Silk sought to inflict maximum damage. Since then, Ukip has changed. Membership and candidate lists are younger and more diverse. I have also introduced tougher discipline and anyone linked with extremism is removed. The election of Marta Andreasen, the Spanish former EU accountant, to a winnable position on the MEP candidate list has upset the reactionaries.
It is easy to say that Ukip’s MEPs are on the “gravy train”, but the evidence is different. Several have been major donors to the party and large sums have been promised to this year’s campaign. This is not the behaviour of those intent on personal financial gain.
We are going to fight a vigorous campaign on issues that matter to voters. We will not allow the anti-EU voice in Britain to belong to extremists.
Nigel Farage MEP
Ukip Leader
LondonW1
DELROY YOUNG (**E)
A former member of the National Executive Committee with responsibility for ’UKIP Youth’.
A letter, written by fellow NEC member Dr David Abbott, dated 30th November 2007 is reproduced in full below.
To whom it may concern
Del Young’s treatment at the hands of the NEC at its most recent meeting resembled a Stalinist show trial. Del had founded UKIP Youth. He presented a report on its activities to the NEC at every meeting. (At least his report was always on the agenda, but the meeting frequently did not reach this agenda item).
At the November meeting, before the agenda item was reached, it was announced that Wayne Harling was downstairs and we should interrupt the agenda in order to hear him.
Wayne Harling was a member of the Youth Council, which had made a good impression at UKIP’s recent conference. However, it transpired that Del had removed him from his position due to lack of initiative. I learnt this when Wayne Harling was shown into the room. He sat next to me, and addressed the NEC by reading out from a printed-out sheet where he had listed multiple complaints about Del. There were many accusations that Del had made negative criticisms about the party leadership. Del vehemently denied these charges.
Mr Harling’s appearance was not part of the agenda, but it appeared to come as no surprise to the bulk of NEC members, though it surprised Del and myself. Clearly if Del had known in advance of this ambush, he would have produced the email and other documentation which would have refuted many of Mr Harling’s accusations.
That it is no crime to deplore the leadership is surely a given in a free society. In any case, Del denied those charges, but was given no opportunity to refute them in any detail.
Harling and Del Young left the room while the matter was discussed. It was clear that most NEC members had already made their decision. The motion was put that Del’s resignation as leader of the youth movement should be accepted. This was despite the fact that Del had not in fact submitted his resignation. I was the only one to vote against the motion.
I think that any decent person would agree that the NEC’s actions were un-British, unfair, and unprofessional. I am not making any judgement about the justice of Del Young’s dismissal. I think most people would agree that it was preposterous to handle his dismissal at the NEC meeting in so shabby a fashion.
Del requested a copy of the statement that Mr Harling read at the meeting. Harling said that he would send him a copy. As of a few days ago, it had not been received.
Del deserves all our thanks for making a valiant attempt to establish a successful youth movement.
There is a reason why the boards of every profitable business in the City operate according to respected rules of conduct. If they did not their business would fail.
Sincerely yours,
David F. Abbott, MD
Farage embraces Eurofederalism’s SUBSIDIARITY.
By RODNEY ATKINSON
The former leader of the UK Independence Party, Roger Knapman, has rightly attacked the present leader Nigel Farage (both are MEPs) for signing up UKIP to the EU’s (eurofederalist) idea of “subsidiarity”. Nothing could be more dangerous for a party which claims at least to believe in democratic national sovereignty.
Having come within a few votes of winning the UKIP leadership election of 2000, one of the many reasons why I was happy to leave was the evident impossibility (in a party bereft of credible leadership and intellect) of persuading anyone of any real political substance to join and persuade the electorate that we were capable of joining other parties in a sovereignty coalition in Parliament.
Nigel Farage was by no means the only barrier to such credibility but his lack of intellectual rigour was always going to be a major stumbling block. Today we see why. Farage has never maintained a UKIP principle if he was offered financial incentives to abandon it. (My emphasis - DH). Thus, when Paul Sykes offered millions of pounds, the party effectively abandoned its objective of “gaining power to withdraw from the European Union” and instead said they would adopt the methods of other spineless euro-federalist parties and merely “hold a referendum”.
Now Farage and many of his UKIP colleagues in the European Parliament – in order to absorb another vaguely euro-sceptic party from Romania into their “Independence/Democracy Group” in the European Parliament – have embraced the dangerous eurofederalist principle of “subsidiarity”. This, Farage maintains, is “UKIP (voting) for things if they reduce power at the centre.” Subsidiarity is of course nothing of the sort. Far from ceding powers, subsidiarity is the means by which the central sovereign authority (The European Union) maintains its control. It hands down responsibilities not power. It decides what can be handed down to “lower” levels – like the nation states! - and it decides how many responsibilities are passed on. Indeed by passing down responsibilities to the subservient nation states the Centre saves money. It means the nation states have the burden of administration and have to raise the unpopular taxes – the centre, having passed on responsibilities, will not be reducing its budget, of that we can be sure.
So anyone who supports “subidiarity” is not only a fool but a dangerous fool. This latest surrender of principle by UKIP is of course (surprise, surprise!) in order to raise more money and privileges for their MEPs.
In aid of the same money grab UKIP has even changed its policy on the wasteful, disastrous Common Agricultural Policy – it now seeks to “reform it”! Anyone see any euro pigs flying?
The Ind/Dem group signed the declaration because it hopes to recruit the Roman Party Pin and its MEPs in order to keep its numbers high enough to continue to qualify as a “group”. This qualifies them for a lot of money and facilities paid for by the EU Parliament.
Thanks to the additional funding, the Ind/Dem group, including UKIP, is going to move to new offices next month but such benefits would disappear if enough of its MEPs were to split off.
Roger Knapman wrote in his letter on May 13: “I, and a number of my colleagues, cannot in all conscience accept something which represents a major departure from what we believed to be UKIP’s policy – withdrawal from the EU, a complete rejection of its authority (and subsidiarity) and rejection of the Common Agricultural Policy.”
Well done Roger Knapman! But one good man does not a party make! If he cannot convince a substantial number of UKIP MEPs to leave the Ind Dem group on this matter of fundamental principle then UKIP is surely finished.
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My experiences of working for Nigel Farage in Brussels.
By JOHN PETLEY
I joined UKIP in 2001, having never before been a member of a political party. I stood as UKIP’s candidate for Lewes in the 2005 General Election. During the campaign, I became acquainted with John Harvey, one of UKIP’s founder members who lives in a village just outside Lewes. It was thanks to John that I was given the chance to work as a researcher in Brussels, starting in January 2006. I went out to Brussels slightly in awe of Nigel Farage, but within a couple of months, my view of him had begun to change. Indeed, by the summer recess of 2006, a mere seven months since coming out to Brussels, I had arrived at the conclusion that Nigel Farage was a liability to the party. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, I was concerned about the rumours about his sexual impropriety, including that he was having an affair with Annabelle Fuller, one of my colleagues in Brussels at the time. Also, and even more worryingly, was the fact that cronyism rather than competence seemed to be what counted. All the researchers who I regarded as competent ended up being thrown out, while others who are totally unsuitable are still working there!
Nigel’s sincerity also leaves much to be desired. I heard from a colleague about a conversation between Farage and Gerard Batten shortly before the 2006 Bromley by-election. It transpired that Farage had discussed a deal with the Tories whereby if they selected the Eurosceptic but not withdrawalist MEP Syed Kamall as their candidate, UKIP would not put up a candidate. On hearing of this, Gerard was incensed and said, “If you don’t stand, I will.” As it happened, the Tories chose Bob Neill, and with Gerard being the ultra-loyalist that he is, he chose not to leak this out. Nigel then announced at a big UKIP meeting the following weekend about how excited he was at being able to contest another by-election. Most people cheered. I was livid.
Indeed, Nigel has lied - to me and to other party members. In March 2007, David Abbott’s $100 donation to what had turned out to be a BNP support group in America was blown up in the national media in March 2007 simply because of David’s criticism of Nigel’s leadership. Before standing for the NEC, David came quite clean about this donation. He did not want to stand for office if it would compromise him. Being so insignificant a sum, a one-off and inadvertent, Nigel and others said it was not a problem. However, when David began to start opposing Nigel on the NEC, Nigel deliberately leaked this out to the press and made it out that David had been seriously involved with the BNP (which wasn’t remotely true). When I challenged Nigel, saying that either he or Mark Croucher were ill-advised to have done this, his reply was "Neither I nor Croucher contacted the Press." The press had also spoken to a person I know who has held senior office in the party about the David Abbott business, and this person told me that when the reporter concerned rang up, he said, "I've just been speaking to Mark Croucher."
Did Nigel lie about the “Bucharest declaration” – which supported subsidiarity (not withdrawal) and reform (not abolition) of the Common Agricultural Policy and which was signed by a number of MEPs including UKIP’s Derek Clark? Certainly, when party members rang up the South East Regional office in anger about the Bucharest declaration, they were told it was nothing to do with Nigel. Only when it became apparent that too many copies of the e-mail proving he had a hand in its wording were in circulation (I still have a copy at home) did the line change.
Nigel also blew his top over things. He once came into my office and ranted at me because I had contacted Mike Nattrass (whose assistant I was for a while) about a dubious amendment to a piece of Parliamentary legislation put forward at Committee stage by Jens-Peter Bonde, Ind Dem Co-president, in the name of the group. A colleague of mine had spotted this amendment and
said that UKIP MEPs couldn’t support it, as it was giving more power to the EU (I can’t remember the exact details beyond this). I thought I had better tell Mike, and Mike must have
contacted Nigel, who then stormed in and said, “But we always vote against this in Plenary.” I guess Nigel knew I wasn’t happy with UKIP MEPs being in the Ind Dem group. I did not discover until I went to Brussels that NONE of the other MEPs in Ind Dem were withdrawalists. Bonde had been, but after 11 years admitted he had changed his position to “reformist” Interestingly enough, when was the last time anyone heard Nigel talk about outright withdrawal?
If Nigel became aware that any staff were in any way unhappy with him, even if they were not working directly for him, life became very uncomfortable. The atmosphere in the offices from February 2008 to my departure in April gave me an inkling of what it must have been like to live in the Soviet Union – You were always watching your back and every pair of footsteps outside the office door made you feel uneasy. So bizarre that fellow-withdrawalists should be the cause of such a poisonous atmosphere. I have to say that in over two years working in Brussels, I had no animosity from the “nasty” EU. UKIP staff were treated fairly.
My dismissal shows the utterly devious nature of Nigel Farage. He was not directly involved, but his fingerprints are all over it. It all began on Monday 7th April 2008, after Roger Knapman’s “Stop the Treaty” conference in Bristol the previous Saturday which I had gone to. When I got back to Brussels, I tried to access my parliamentary e-mail account, but was unable to do so. I entered the password about 10 times, but was repeatedly blocked. I know that I did not type in my password incorrectly. Having worked in IT before going into political research, I knew hacking when I saw it. The hacker had, fortunately, failed to guess my password, but had locked me out. I spoke to Oumar Dombouya, the man delegated to manage IT affairs for Ind Dem. He re-set my password and set a monitoring facility on my account, as one of my colleagues had had a similar problem, and suspected hacking.
On Thursday afternoon (10th April), Graham Booth came into my office with a print-out of the names, subjects and dates of the e-mails I had sent in recent weeks. He asked me to print out the contents of four of these. After he had left the office, I looked at a couple of these e-mails on my computer, and as I was doing so, the access to my e-mail account suddenly went down. When I eventually was able to bring up the initial screen and try to sign on, once again, I was locked out, just as I had been the previous Monday.
I subsequently discovered that it is within the rules to print out the list (although not the content) of the e-mails sent by EP staff without asking them. However, I did not know this at the time, and refused to take Booth‘s word that this was the case or provide him with the content of these e-mails until I could establish the facts. In view of my suspicions about someone trying to tamper with my e-mails, I think this was quite reasonable. However, his response to my refusal was by saying that in his eyes, this amounted to a “lack of trust” in me. This was the catch-all phrase that can be used to dismiss staff if you don’t like them but can’t find any good reason for sacking them. I had always got on fairly well with Graham until then, and I know Nigel set him up, because he expressed a very negative opinion of one person to whom these e-mails were sent (a branch chairman in the South East) and when I contacted this individual, he said that he had never had any dealings with Graham. Only Nigel could have singled out this e-mail.
Oumar was very helpful initially to my attempts to find out who had been hacking into my account. He traced it to a UK-registered machine (no surprise!) but could not go any further because of
intimidation by Hermann Verheirstraten, a senior member of the Ind Dem secretariat. He subsequently kept his distance from me, simply out of fear.
My dismissal was e-mailed to me on Thursday 24th April. This was during a Strasbourg plenary, and I was teleworking at the time. Quite honestly, it was a relief not to have to go back to Brussels. It amazed me to hear afterwards from the late Piers Merchant that Graham Booth had been going round the South West telling people that I (along with two other researchers) were MI5 spies! Meanwhile, Steve Harris, UKIP’s South East regional organiser, again no doubt mouthing Nigel’s words, has been telling people in the South East that my dismissal was because I was hacking into other people’s e-mails!
I made a statement about this illegal hacking to the Belgian police. I have copies of the documents at home.
Nigel also has failed to develop UKIP as a serious domestic force at home. I heard him speak at Hastings in November 2005, just before I started in Brussels. He said something on the lines of, “Well, UKIP isn’t getting much exposure because the EU isn’t in the news much now, but just wait - it’ll be back on the agenda.” He was proved right with a vengeance when the failed Constitution metamorphosised into the Lisbon Treaty, but he singularly missed the opportunity to put UKIP at the head of the campaign to oppose it. It was always going to be a tough battle to stop the treaty, but it would have put the party back in the consciousness of the electorate. Instead, it was left to an ordinary Party member to launch the “Parish Polls” initiative. On the day of the mass lobby of the House of Commons, Farage was in Brussels. I know, because I heard his voice in the corridor outside my office. This missed opportunity, for which he must take the blame, must represent UKIP’s biggest political mistake in its entire history.
He has also failed to educate the party’s rank and file. Many of those who joined UKIP, myself included, were new to politics. We could see that being in the EU was not in Britain’s best interests, but did not necessarily combine this piece of wisdom with political discernment. I would guess I am not alone in admitting that at one point, I believed that anything in print that says something bad about the EU must be correct. I now realise that this isn’t true, but I still hear of party members who innocently swallow all manner of daft conspiracy theories. Shortly before my sacking, at my own initiative, I wrote a little leaflet, called the UKIP Mythbuster, to try to separate fact and fiction. UKIP had had MEPs for 8½ years by then, and the necessary resources to have produced something of this nature several years earlier, but Farage never took any steps to produce something which would have stopped well-meaning UKIP activists from dropping clangers.
Hard though it is to say it, when I was in Brussels, what I saw in the main was a bungling bunch of amateurs. There were, indeed still are, some honourable exceptions, such as Gerard Batten, but if one incident sticks in my mind which shows how Nigel cannot be taken seriously as a politician, let alone as the No. 1 spokesman for the withdrawalist cause, it was the infamous “Chicken Costume” incident in Strasbourg in 2008. I can vouch for this being Nigel’s idea. When three staff members dressed up as chickens (Gawain Towler, Paul Nuttall and Ralph Atkinson) were escorted from the area near the Hemicycle by the security staff, it led to a very heated but almost surreal press conference, firstly with Gawain (still in his costume minus the chicken head!) and then Nigel, complaining bitterly to the media that the reason we were being treated unfairly in not being allowed to parade around in these outfits was because we opposed the Lisbon Treaty. What nonsense! No wonder the rest of the European Parliament saw UKIP as a bit of a joke.
And the blame for this must be placed at the door of its leader. My experience in Brussels has led me to the conclusion that Farage is an obstacle to British withdrawal from the EU. He arranges these stunts and does his “sound bytes” for the media, but what does this contribute to helping us get out of the EU? He has never been able to sell to the British public any vision of just how much life could improve if Britain regains its independence. His whole focus is in Brussels, where he rules the roost with an iron grip, attacking anyone who he sees as a threat or an independent-minded thinker. What does he care for the hard-working party rank and file in the UK, who have given their money and time for him to live the life of Riley over there? Having seen the European Parliament in action, I left Brussels more convinced than ever that our once great land should regain its independence and withdraw from this miserable failure called the European Union, but I am also convinced that the process would be hastened greatly if UKIP could disown that miserable failure called Nigel Farage.
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DR. ERIC EDMOND
Elected to UKIP’s National Executive Committee in 2008, and selected by the South West Region as a prospective MEP in the 2009 Euro Elections, Dr.Edmond was educated at Edinburgh & Oxford University where he was taught by Mrs Thatcher's old tutor, Dorothy Hodgkin.
He was in the Civil Service 71/73 during Heath's Common Market Entry - resigned in disgust, and was a Liverpool University Lecturer 74/96.
Later, he was a Bank of England market mathematician 98/03 preparing Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) briefings and working with other central banks.
Here follows a statement by Eric Edmond UKIP MEP Candidate SW Region European Elections in 2009.
What I will do if chosen and elected
· Use the letters MEP to keep the UKIP name and brand in the UK media as much as possible.
· Go to Brussels as little as possible. I would prefer not to go at all like the IRA did when elected to Westminster. The IRA won. I want to win.
· I will use every trick and tactic to obstruct the EU.
- Euro Assembly as Mrs Thatcher always called it is a pointless talking shop and I will show it as that.
- Give all salary to UKIP – some £40k pa.
- I will not employ any members of my family.
- Visit every South West Branch each year.
- Contact & lunch local paper & TV editors all the time – use MEP expenses for that!
What I believe in
- Equality and equal opportunity for all irrespective of colour creed or religion.
- Rule of Law and true honest democracy.
- I will always put my country’s interests before party interests.
- I want our country back for our children.
- I want a country with a reducing population & a rising GDP/capita and standard of living.
- I want UK citizenship to have to be earned by 15 years of honest work and a clean criminal record.
- I want real democracy with frequent referendums when the citizens want one
- I want a country like Switzerland with an EU trade agreement like the Swiss one
- I want to copy the Swiss rules for immigration and asylum.
- I don’t want a country for self-important greedy political careerists.
- I don’t want the EU that tries to run the world – like Napoleon and Hitler.
- I don’t want to be in a 4th Reich or Holy Roman Empire called the EU.
- If we had stayed out of Europe in 1914 my family and the country would have benefited hugely.
My strategy to get out of the EU
The Euro is central to the EU project. It needs a state to back it, hence the Lisbon Treaty. I know where its weakness lies. I will write and talk endlessly about the weakness in the Euro and hence undermine the EU
I will cultivate our core vote of retired people who know what this country was before Major, Blair, and Brown.
I will go for the over-taxed middle class vote
Only the UK parliament can get us out of the EU and I will work to get UKIP MPs elected and force other parties to back us in a repeal of Heath's 1972 European Act
What I promise - I will live up to the motto of the city of my birth, Leith, and I will Persevere to get us out of the EU in my lifetime
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The removal of Dr Edmond from the list of prospective MEPs - from Janius. (janiusonukip.blogspot.com).
Note: Dr Edmond has confirmed in an e-mail to me that what you read below is true.
On Friday 13th February 2009 the NEC decided to remove Dr Edmond as an MEP candidate. It is pointed out that Dr Edmond was not informed that he was to be on the NEC agenda. He was not given an opportunity to defend himself, and the South West Committee was not informed of the NEC decision.
The following day Nigel Farage travelled to Lexdrum House to meet the South West Committee.
Those present included:
Jeff Mager, Malcolm Wood, David Bendall, Trevor Colman, Elizabeth Burton and Graham Booth.
It was pointed out in a letter signed by Piers Merchant and Roger Knapman that the meeting was unlawful as the committee members had not been given the designated 21 days notice. As you can imagine Farage became extremely agitated after seeing this letter.
The purpose of the meeting was to de-select Dr Edmond as an MEP candidate. However, this could not be done as the meeting had not been properly constituted.
Farage was forced to admit that the NEC had already decided to remove Dr Edmond from the MEP list. The committee was less than impressed with this revelation and pointed out to a now agitated Farage that any decision to remove Dr Edmond should have been left to them as they represented the people who originally selected him.
Farage then accused Dr Edmond of disrupting NEC meetings. He also claimed that he had been removed from the NEC for reporting UKIP to the Electoral Commission.
Farage was lying.
As a member of UKIP’s NEC Dr Edmond had been jointly and severally liable for UKIP’s debts. He had simply written to the Commission AFTER his removal from the NEC informing them that he was no longer liable for any future debts.
I should add that Dr Edmond had also written to Dr Whittaker requesting details of all financial transaction made during his time on the NEC. Dr Whittaker ignored his request.
It was decided to remove Dr Edmond from the committee. They also confirmed his removal from the MEP list. He has also been banned from holding ANY office within UKIP.
Dr Edmond is set to be thrown out of UKIP when the proposed changes are approved.
Please remember that ALL decisions made at this meeting were unlawful because it was not properly constituted. I would urge all South West members to refuse to accept the decision of this ‘committee’. They should also demand the immediate reinstatement of Dr Edmond as both an MEP candidate and committee member.
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Thursday, 10 February 2011
Why Farage's UKIP is not fit for purpose
UKIP needs more members, more talent and more UK effort to even start on the road to getting our country back by repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. Since Farage and his Cabal have taken control of UKIP membership has fallen steadily, activists, the life blood of any political party who disagree with Farage have been kicked out, and sycophantic placemen put into all the important party positions. No serious political party carries on like this. You only see this behaviour in cults where a gullible and uncritical membership are conned by, and blindly supports, a corrupt leadership whose only interest is in lining their own pockets.
Look at those at the top of UKIP enjoying a luxurious cosseted lifestyle set up by the EU but paid for ultimately by UK taxpayers. They are tame, pampered, toothless EU poodles kept in Brussels who give Barroso and the other Eurocrats democratic credibility by enabling them to claim they tolerate anti-EU parties. Its tokenism plain and simple. Ask the brothers or the sisterhood.
The lack of talent in the current UKIP leadership is staggering. Look at the elderly, self satisfied Derek Clark, UKIP MEP for the East Midlands but seldom seen there. Under him UKIP in the East Midlands has gone from the strongest region in the country in the heyday of Robert Kilroy-Silk to one of closed and zombie branches with a few deeply unhappy remaining members. It’s a microcosm of what is happening to UKIP over the whole UK. Godfrey Bloom UKIP MEP for Yorkshire is an embarrassment with his crass public behaviour. Bannerman, Dartmouth and Farage are ex-Tories whose political ambitions were judged by the Tory party to be far in excess of their limited talents and deemed not to be worthy of a safe Tory parliamentary seat. Given the low standard of the average Tory MP that is a pretty damning verdict.
Honesty and integrity can make up for lack of ability but even in that UKIP is lacking. When was Andreasen last seen in the South East region she was elected to represent? Why does Trevor Colman sit in Brussels with Farage's nasty neo-Nazi, mid-European associates. How many relatives of UKIP members died at the hands of the Nazis in the Second World War? Do the ordinary UKIP members know their cult leader associates with neo-Nazi parties in Brussels? I think not.
Nikki Sinclaire has shown how effective honesty, integrity and consistency can be in opposing the EU. Not surprising then she was kicked out of UKIP.
Why is Malcolm Pearson, Farage's puppet leader of UKIP, a man who at the last General Election campaigned for the Tories, still in the UKIP ruling group? Could this happen in any other party? I don't think so.
Then we have ex-chairman Nuttall MEP who counts success as defeating the BNP for 4th place in elections. UKIP is supposed to be about getting us out of the EU and the best way to handle the BNP is to ignore them! Comrade Nuttall would do better to address the needs of the jobless of Merseyside and try and recruit them for UKIP.
There is also UKIP's top management, Crowther and Duffy. No significant management track record and no organisational ability seems to sum them up. The current NEC is full of wannabe MEPs or more correctly wannabe on the gravy train who are therefore beholden to Farage for preferment.
There are many able and talented people who want us out of the EU but how many will want to join a cult party which measures its success by the leader’s appearances and applause on Question Time (QT). It’s only MPs in Westminster that can get us out of the EU. This needs organisation and hard work in local elections addressing the issues of jobs, schools and health that impinge on peoples lives and earns their trust to vote for UKIP when it matters. It needs a leader who attracts people in, not one who kicks people out. Until Farage and his clique go this will not change. UKIP numbers will continue to decline, the sycophants will squabble about getting onto the EU gravy train, the BBC will continue to massage Farage's vanity with QT invites etc., and UKIP will continue to slide into the garbage can of history.
I pray I will someday see our country free from the EU but clearly Farage's UKIP will play no part in our freedom struggle.
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As a former UKIP member said: “A party that encourages half truths and anonymous lies that seek to destroy a member’s good name forfeits its claim to loyalty from its members.”
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THE UNITED KINGDOM FIRST PARTY
The United Kingdom First Party was formed in Jan/February 2009 by Bruce Lawson (ex UKIP Treasurer) and Peter Cole (ex UKIP Regional Organiser).
A number of other Ex UKIP members joined, including:
Robin Page (former UKIP MEP candidate in the Eastern Region)
John Petley (ex Brussels based researcher)
John West (former UKIP press officer and Chairman of North Ipswich/Central Suffolk)
Petrina Holdsworth (ex Chairman of UKIP). Petrina is a retired Barrister and was thought to be a possible leader of the party
Drew Bellobaba (former UKIP MEP candidate and branch chairman in the South East
Ian Gilman (former UKIP NEC member and MEP candidate East Midlands)
Martin Haslam (former UKIP NEC member – Party and South East Region Treasurer).
David Noakes (who contested for the leadership of UKIP in 2006)
Others, such as David Abbott, Eric Edmond, and Geoffrey Kingscott (now deceased), maintained links with the party but were not members. (All three were thrown out of the NEC for criticising the leadership).
Robin Page, a fierce critic of Nigel Farage, also came on board and became leader of The UK First Party.
There had been much discussion amongst disgruntled UKIP members about forming a new eurosceptic party over the preceding two years.
At first it had been hoped to simply try to reform the inner workings of UKIP, and through the Grassroots Democracy and Phoenix Forum both of which had websites, and the latter which had meetings of interested members in Bournemouth in 2008.
However, it became clear that such activities were having little effect on the management of the party and it was decided to go ahead with a new party which could fight under its own banner in the 2009 Euro elections.
The UK First Party was formed to put forward a manifesto for withdrawal from the EU, its MEPs would publish their expenses in full, keep visits to Brussels to an absolute minimum, would not join any grouping, and only hold office for one term. In short, the party wanted to make it abundantly clear that their MEPs would keep a professional distance from the corrupting influence of the EU and its many blandishments whilst giving their best efforts to organising the Withdrawist Movement in the UK.
The party also had policies for smaller more accountable government, end to mass immigration, freedom of expression, less regulation, welfare reform, dismantling Quangos, food and energy, security, etc.
It was felt that UKIP had sullied itself with far too close contact with the EU; it had not kept its promises about publishing expenses and was perceived by many as having “gone native”.
There were also serious doubts about UKIP’s leadership’s desire and ability to take effective action to help the campaign for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (the reason Petrina Holdsworth resigned from UKIP in January 2008).
Further to that many who joined The UK First Party had considerable misgivings about the fact that the MEPs were in effect running UKIP rather than being its servants, fairness of the MEP process of selection, and other internal matters.
UK First did well for a new party in the Euro elections but, due to Robin Page’s poor health at the time and internal wrangling, it dissolved itself later in 2009.
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OTHER MATTERS OF INTEREST
Clearly, only a sample of the irregularities, counterproductive policy decisions, and the lack of transparency of UKIP’s accounts, occasioned by the leadership (not our treasurers), are given here. One that was brought to my attention last month is the unexplained reason for a change in policy immediately prior to the Welsh Assembly elections.
Ever since it was founded, Welsh members of UKIP had been campaigning for the Welsh Assembly to be closed down. In the run-up to the recent elections, for the Welsh Assembly, prospective UKIP candidates had been working hard, and spending their own money, broadcasting this policy. They were aware that, following the Conservative Party’s decision to no longer support the closure of the Welsh Assembly, and that in a recent poll 40,000 Welsh Tory supporters made clear they were in favour of its closure, UKIP Wales members believed their chances of representation in the Assembly was a distinct possibility.
However, ten days before the manifesto launch, Farage met with John Bufton in Cardiff to inform him that he had made the decision, unilaterally, that the 12 year policy of opposing the Welsh Assembly and Regional Government was over, and that the party no longer wanted the abolition of the Welsh Assembly. (**G)
A few days later Farage met with the prospective candidates and made it clear that the new policy was not going to be changed - ‘so either come with me or don’t stand’. The Conservatives and Labour grasped hold of this change and could not believe their luck. They informed their membership and all who would listen!
It must be pointed out that all of the Welsh UKIP candidates were opposed to the policy change. So, after the election, at the first meeting of the Welsh committee, it was unanimously voted to reinstate the long standing policy of opposition to Regionalisation of the UK and break up the United Kingdom into EU imposed Regional Assemblies.
Warwick Nicholson, the Chairman of UKIP Wales wrote – ‘We joined the party, because we believed in Britain, and we want Britain to leave the EU. UKIP should in no way adopt the EU’s policies or endorse them’.
Note: It was, I think, in 2004 that 78% of voters in the North East of England rejected Regional government.
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A member, who proposed that UKIP MEPs should serve for one term only, was threatened with expulsion from the party for daring to make such a suggestion!! A prospective leader who advocated this idea, of one term only for our MEPs, would probably gain wide support. Surely, in future, there is a case for UKIP not to have MEPs. In any case, only those MEPs who use their position to campaign for election to our Westminster parliament are worthy of selection.
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Then there is the Alan Bown case in which UKIP was informed, no less than seven times by the Electoral Commission, that before he could donate money to the party, Alan’s name and address must appear in a Register of Electors. For reasons which are unknown, this Alan failed to do. Summoning his aggressive style, Nigel Farage scuppered any hope of an amicable solution to this matter when he publicly declared that the Electoral Commission were only interested in prosecuting small parties. UKIP was lucky to come out of this mess with comparatively small legal costs. Many believe that a more diplomatic approach to this matter could have led to a cost free solution. (**F)
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Then there is the recent call, from Marta Andreasen, for Nigel Farage to resign his leadership position for wasting £150,000 of members’ money on what she perceived as unnecessary expense
on litigation.
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Under Farage’s leadership, UKIP is God’s gift to the legal profession. I would like to know the amount of money UKIP has haemorrhaged in legal expenses in the past ten years.
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The disappearance, some years ago, of £211,000 from the South East Region accounts (which is Farage’s patch) in ‘other expenses’ has never been satisfactorily explained.
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Under Farage’s insistence, UKIP membership application forms now make it clear that anyone who has been a member of The UK First Party, or the BNP, will not be accepted as a member of UKIP. Quite apart from the fact that no ex-UK First member would consider re-joining UKIP while Farage has any influence on the running of the party, anyone of them would be a greater asset to us than our current leader.
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Farage’s campaign to absorb our MEPs into a pan-European Political Party is a blatant attempt to trigger an exodus of members and supporters. As the letter I have recently received from a member, clearly illustrates, the mere fact that he has suggested such a course has alerted her to the unsuitability of Farage as leader.
After having read the latest issue of Independence, a member wrote to me and her last paragraph reads as follows: “I have not renewed my membership of UKIP. I shall write to tell them that I cannot possibly support Farage in his attempt to join the pan-European Group. UKIP was formed to come out.” This lady has been a staunch supporter of the party for many years. She never lost an opportunity to canvass for UKIP, be it the butcher, baker, shop assistant, or even a stranger she happened to have got into conversation with. Even her doctor and nurses have been canvassed from her hospital bed. Yet another active member is leaving the party as she has come to the conclusion that our current leader ‘is not fit for purpose.’
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Several people mentioned in this document who are said to have supported Farage in the past no longer do so. Regrettably, I do not have a list of these people.
One could go on
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CONCLUSION
Who can doubt that, if all those people who resigned from UKIP over the past sixteen years had not done so, but fought for someone more worthy, Farage would not have been voted leader again last year.
A close relative tells me that, by remaining a member of UKIP, I am wasting my time supporting a party that has no hope, under Farage’s leadership or influence, of achieving the declared aim of freeing the UK from the clutches of the EU. She maintains that I should follow the lead of many other honourable people and leave the party, and that by remaining a member I seemingly endorse Farage’s actions and deeds and, in so doing, tarnish my own reputation.
However, as was clearly demonstrated by the failure of The UK First Party, it is too late to start another political party. There are a couple of dozen pressure groups that do a fine job of giving out ant-EU information but, because they do not have the aim of getting MPs of their persuasion into our Westminster parliament, they are toothless.
So, the only option is to campaign for UKIP to be led by someone who can demonstrate that the party can be trusted. One cannot vote for a new leader unless a party member - hence my reason, to date, for not resigning from UKIP.
In the main, people who join, or support UKIP, do so because they have come to realise that EU membership has caused a huge amount of damage to our nation, and it is rarely due to admiration of the leader. Canvassing by grassroots members, branch officials, and honourable MEPs, is also a major factor in the recruitment of UKIP members and supporters. There can be few sections of our population that have not been detrimentally affected by EU interference. UKIP is the only viable political party to which they can turn. However, I am aware that some people have become so disillusioned with UKIP they have joined the only other party committed to our withdrawal from the EU, namely, the British National Party. (BNP membership is, I believe, now under 4,000)
It would appear that some people support our party purely on the basis of Farage’s ability to entertain, especially in the EU parliament. However, his aggressive, flamboyant, style undoubtedly puts an equal number of people off supporting UKIP. His clowning in the EU parliament (see item 15) begs the questions “can UKIP be taken seriously.”
In my view, only those who are prepared to use their time as MEPs to promote themselves as a prospective MP should be selected to serve in Brussels. During their term in Brussels they must undertake to spend as much time and effort as possible to get themselves elected to Westminster. Before selection can be approved by the Party the candidate must have signed the “British Declaration of Independence”. By so doing they would have an advantage over other candidates who had signed the ‘Better Off Out’ document or demonstrated no commitment to our withdrawal from the EU. (See section 18). Furthermore, no MEP should be allowed to serve for more than one term. Thus, the position of being an MEP is used only as a stepping stone to becoming an MP.
The fact that Farage got 60% of the vote, in the last leadership election, suggests the knowledge of those who voted for him is limited to what they hear on the radio, or see of him on a platform or television/computer screen.
It appears that many believe ‘charisma’ is of vital importance, and look no further as to the suitability of the person as a leader. This is akin to judging the contents of a parcel purely on the appearance of the wrapping paper. History is littered with leaders who had an abundance of charisma but led their followers into disaster. Also, it was the mindset that dictated ‘we must support the leader’ that ensured the said disaster.
The most likely reason for leaving a political party is dissatisfaction with the leadership or policies of the party. (Bizarrely, a member telephoned me to say that, because our then new leader, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, was in favour of fox-hunting, she was resigning from UKIP immediately)!
Thus, the conduct of the party leader, and his/her selection of party officials and advisers, is of paramount importance. It is put to the reader that the vast majority of those who have deserted UKIP have done so purely because of their lack of faith/trust in Mr Nigel Farage MEP.
As Rodney Atkinson pointed out, Edward Heath got us into the EU with cross-party support, and this is probably the only way we can get out. The book, co-authored by the Conservatives Douglas
Carswell MP and Daniel Hannan MEP, ‘The PLAN – twelve months to renew Britain’, should leave you in no doubt about their sincerity in campaigning for us to leave the EU. There are several other Conservative and Labour MPs who are equally committed to getting the UK out of the EU.
No-one can deny that Farage has worked very hard - speaking at public meetings throughout the UK and Europe, putting the case for the demise of the European Union. In the early days his commitment to our cause was unquestioned. The feeling among many today, however, is that Farage loves the lifestyle of an MEP and has ‘gone native’ in Europe, and the primary use of his energy is to promote himself, and the advancement of UKIP comes a poor second.
Despite what I have written above, after sixteen years as a member, most of which time I have been the Chichester Branch Membership Secretary and responsible for producing the branch newsletters, under pressure from my family, I have decided not to renew my membership of the party which expires at the end of this month. However, I shall continue to support the local branch in their effort to get our prospective MP, Andrew Moncreiff, elected to Westminster.
In an election for the leadership, or NEC members, it is hoped that members will garner as much information as possible about the candidates before voting.
Some have said, as a member, that by expressing dissatisfaction with the leadership of UKIP they are ‘rocking the UKIP boat’. If a yacht gets stuck on a dangerous sandbank sometimes the only way to free it is to ‘rock it’, which I believe is better than risking waiting for the rising tide to sink it!!
The question is - what can be done to install a trustworthy Captain at the helm of UKIP with a commitment to the noble cause of navigating the UK, with the support of a crew of UK Independence party members, out of the dangerous and damaging waters of the EU, and into a safe UK independent harbour?
A politician is one who thinks only of the next election. A statesman is one who thinks of the next generation. UKIP is in urgent need of a statesman to lead the party.
Have you, dear reader, any suggestions?
Derek Hunnikin
August 2011
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Addendum to ‘One Man’s Sabotage of a Noble Cause
07-Sep-2011
In my haste to get the above document finished, before the end of August, I expected more than one item to be imperfect. My endeavour was not helped by a computer crash when about half the screed was saved on the machine. In the end I had to buy a new computer and start all over again!
Enough time has gone by for me to assume all incorrect statements have been brought to my notice, but there has been one glaring error, for which I apologise, and one account of events, in particular, is disputed.
The note from Rodney Atkinson, below, corrects the misinformation given in the last paragraph in 1. IN THE BEGINNING.
In your UKIP history you get the timings and facts slightly wrong on the events leading up to after the leadership election in 2000.
First of all Booker, Jamieson and GLW (Greg Lance-Watkins) with Farage's support stole the UKIP mailing list and attacked me - in particular for revealing Bilderberg whose Chairman was at the time Conrad Black the employer of Booker and Jamieson. (**D)
The latter two were then reprimanded by the Editor of the Sunday Telegraph (Dominic Lawson) for using the St's name in party political matters. Jamieson then left and went to work in Scotland. (Incidentally, I had always supported Booker and Jamieson and both had spoken at the "Oxford Conferences" I had organised for eurosceptic Conservatives).
I then raised funds from many UKIP supporters to send out a refutation of the nonsense Booker/ Jamieson had written (and GLW had mailed out). I narrowly lost the election AND THEN IMMEDTIATELY RESIGNED giving as my reason the general corruption surrounding Farage and Booker/Jamieson's disgraceful intervention. Many hundreds left at the same time, including my friend and collaborator Norris McWhirter.
So, although the Bilderberg matter was a part of the reason for my leaving it was not a reason for my non appointment to a position of influence in UKIP - that was simply due to the fact that I had resigned!!!!
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A member of the NEC has asserted that the account by Robin Page (No.12) as to why he was not included in the list of prospective MEPs’ is a parody of the truth. It behoves me to give below his thoughts on this matter.
“Most of these documents are valedictory diatribes from disillusioned people and give a very slanted view of events. To take just one example, the letter from Robin Page is a parody of what actually happened. I joined the NEC just after this one so was not part of it but I was very concerned about the allegations he was making and took great pains to check with those who were involved. I started with Nigel who gave a very different story, then I went to Chris Gill who is a man for whose integrity I have great respect. Somewhat to my surprise he corroborated Nigel's story almost to the letter. Robin had had several months to get his application in but had failed to do so. By making an exception for Robin, Nigel was setting a precedent and therefore laying the party open to potential trouble from others, but nevertheless Nigel had personally intervened with HQ to give Robin a special dispensation to submit his application late. The application was NEVER received. After the interview process was complete and the 'long list' to go forward to the hustings had been determined, Robin demanded to be included. Chris Gill, who was responsible for the process, advised that this would not now be possible. There was more but I cannot now remember it all. I then checked with 3 or 4 other NEC members whom I respected and they all agreed with this version of events. I am confident that Robin Page’s letter is completely untrue on a number of counts. It reads as a diatribe from someone who is looking for someone else to blame to avoid admitting that he has been rather stupid. Therefore, to circulate Robin's letter as if it were 'fact' is far from the truth. This criticism applies to many of the other documents in your dossier. It seems that whenever you come across a criticism of Nigel you accept it as 'gospel truth' and then ignore any alternative explanation which does not support that criticism - you then put all these criticisms together. To someone like myself it doesn't matter because I can say "well, I know about several of the incidents referred to and I know that the version in the document is rubbish, therefore I give no weight or credence to the ones I don't know about either", but to others who do not know the other side of these stories it amounts to character assassination. It also damages UKIP and I take exception to that.”
(**H) No wonder he was too ashamed to put his name to this pack of lies - Do see UKIP's own returning Officer's Report on the matter CLICK HERE
However, copied below is a note, recently received, from another NEC member who held a key position within the party.
“All I can say re Robin Page`s letter is that it reflects precisely what he told me and that he felt completely cheated by the whole process. I know that UKIP put out that he was given extra time and failed to comply with the rules but I prefer Robin`s explanation.
I know that Nigel was never keen to have Robin over in Brussels as an MEP and that many others were appalled by the MEP selection process and that Piers Merchant said that some of it should be re-run.”
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You will, no doubt, understand why I cannot resist including here a copy of an e-mail I recently received from a former Chairman of one of UKIP’s most successful branches.
“I am most sorry to learn of your resignation, though I understand why and have seriously considered it myself.
We need the local constituency parties to threaten to boycott the next EU elections unless our internal policies are restored and our whole political effort directed to success in local and national
elections. You and I didn't work so hard and for so long to make a handful of members rich or to seek leadership of a pan-European party.
We can only escape the EU through political success in the UK (while it's still there). UKIP's main efforts must be made here to prevent us becoming a collection of EU regions. After all, we only supported elections to the EU parliament to provide funds to build UKIP within the UK. Unless UKIP gets back to national politics I for one won't vote for the party in the next EU election and I won't be alone.”
Says it all really – does it not?
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Finally
Some members have indicated to me that they are considering resigning from UKIP. If so, PLEASE, reconsider. My reasons for not renewing my membership are unique to me and, under different circumstances, I would still be a member. It is only by staying a member that you can vote for members of the National Executive Committee and a party leader. If all those people who have left the party, in the past 16 years, had not done so, most likely Farage would not be the leader today.
It has been pointed out to me, time and again that, of all possible leaders, Farage has charisma, the abundance of which no other candidate on the horizon can match - and this is sufficient reason to vote for him!?! The leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas MP has, to my mind, about as much charisma as a wet fish, and she now has a seat in our Westminster parliament!
I have asked the Chichester Steering Committee to list me as a supporter as, in the run-up to a General Election, I shall do whatever I am able to help get the UKIP candidate elected to our Westminster parliament. The same applies in Council elections.
To the many who have given me encouragement and thanks for my efforts, please, forgive me if I have not replied directly. Your kind words are much appreciated - many thanks.
However, I must also extend my sincere thanks to those who willingly volunteered and supplied additional information, which has been included in the document.
Apart from those members who have asked me to keep in touch, this addendum is the last item you shall receive from me.
Best wishes to you all.
Derek Hunnikin
September 2011
Hi,
I am posting this string of information from Derek Hunnikin in good faith and in the certain knowledge that the bulk of the material is accurate and authentic - however there are a few areas where I believe that Derek Hunnikin has been either gullible or misled - though they do not alter the general thrust of the information provided.
As information is requested by media or UKIP members I will try to reasonably clarify issues in 'The Hunnikin Dossier' With the symbol (**?) in text where ? is a letter of the alphabet. The queries will be sequentially A-Z as asked not as in text!
CLARIFICATION:
(**A):
Jeffrey Titford was elected as the new leader of UKIP, beating Rodney Atkinson (brother of the comedian Rowan Atkinson) by 15 votes and, again, Farage had backed the winner.
Many believed that Titford should have appointed Rodney Atkinson as deputy leader or, at least, to a position of responsibility within the party. However, because Rodney Atkinson had exposed Conrad Black (who at that time owned the Telegraph group of newspapers) as a member of the Bilderberg Group, Conrad Black put UKIP under pressure not to appoint Rodney Atkinson to a position of authority within UKIP. (**A)
Whoever wrote this it is clearly bunkum.
May I commend as one source Robert Gaylon Ross Sr. in his excellent publication of 1994 updated in 1995 Who's Who of the Elite'
ISBN 0-9649888-0-1
Conrad Black is clearly listed from his first visit to a Bilderberg Meeting as a member and also as a member of The trilateral Commission.
Rodney Atkinson can not lay claim to exposing this as it was a well documented and well known fact.
That Bill Jamieson & Christopher Booker as well respected journalists who had ardently supported both the EUroSceptic cause and UKIP Both unequivocally announced they would be unable to support UKIP if Atkinson became leader is clear - it is both fancifull and dishonest to imply this statement was made on the instruction of Black!
As I said I have published the DH compilation though there are some glaring errors - I have done so in good faith as a record of perceived facts as they are quoted.
I endorse the main thrust but clearly it carries errors.
This person is a non-member who supports extremist groups. He obtained and used a stolen copy of UKIP’s membership database to try to ruin Rodney Atkinson’s leadership bid.(**B)
This is of course bunkum on several counts if it is, as I am led to believe, claiming to refer to me.
Firstly it is libelous as I am not nor have I ever been linked to any extremist group political or otherwise, many have glibly repeated this lie but as it is a lie NOT ONE has provided ANY evidence to back their lie.
I received anonymously 4 copies of the UKIP membership list, but as Nigel Farage had authorised Mark Croucher to share the membership list with an extremist with a serious criminal record associated with politics an associate of Mark Croucher's who was running an anti democratic extremist organisation.
The implication belies the fact that I was supplied with several copies of UKIP's membership list by presumably responsible senior members of UKIP who trusted me not to abuse it but to get across my beliefs, which were well known.
I was widely known as a long term and outspoken opponent of membership of The EU with an unblemished track record of honesty and integrity NEVER proven or shown to have misled or lied.
It was clearly known that I could be trusted and it seems that they agreed with my views and values.
I had made it clearly known that I did not believe Rodney Atkinson had the ability, presence or understanding required to lead UKIP and thus the hoped for campaign for withdrawal of these United Kingdoms from The EU.
A view which has been more than adequately endorsed and proven subsequently.
Of a particularly lack luster selection of candidates I BELIEVED that Jeffrey Titford, although clearly incompetent as a leader and with little political skill was the best available and least contentious safe pair of hands. Under whose leadership nothing of note was likely to happen beyond a period of healing after the damage done in the departure of Michael Holmes and the me, me, me temper tantrums of a claque of self important clowns several of whom were clearly dishonest.
I strenuously opposed any thoughts of Nigel farage becoming leader as I knew he would prove catastrophic for my Country (subsequently proven!).
(**C):
18. [ed: BDI advert - an idea dropped by G.L-W. and others as unenforcable and thus a Bloody Daft Idea - hence perhaps the acronym!)(**C)
I deliberately left this out as it was merely a developement of the concept foolishly suggested after a meeting at South Molton at which I had been a speaker, speaking in opposition to membership of The EU at a public meeting organized by Elizabeth Burton.
I had suggested, due to the fact that the local MP was a LibDim MP called Nick Harvey who had recently, having been elected campaigning to keep the £ and voicing opposition to The EU, Paddy Ashdown having been caught in an affair with a clone of his wife had left the SDP leadership vacant. Nick Harvey totally switched his views in a bid for leadership!
I advocated a formal agreement for MPs to be called The South Molton Contract - whereby any PPC must present as a candidate EXACTLY what aspects of his Party manifesto he believes are 'Wish List', and which are 'Points of Principle' - signing the document and undertaking to stand down from office and forcing a by election, if he EVER votes against or campaigns against such 'Points of Principle' that he is signed up to.
Within a very few days we dropped the concept, based upon the realisation that it would be completely unenforceable by the electorate as being a Politician they would find a way of weedling out of it and it would clearly not be supported by the respective party head office.
I have therefore left out this section, which I believe Junius has or will publish as it is, in my opinion, nothing more than self serving makeweight nonsense in support of a little chappie who never did show himself as much more than the brother of a children's comedian. I gather there was some ill will in the family in the claim made by Rowan that he had based many of the traits of Mr. Bean on his brother. I can not confirm this as I have been spared the pleasure of meeting any of the three brothers!
I note that as at Aug 2011 BDI does not come up on the first page of a Google search and after hunting the web site is as it was in 2001, or so it seems, the only additions being under News which culminate with 3 items in 2007 - so I guess I was right in believing it was something of a non starter.
That said however may I commend to you the enactment into law of a 'Recall Vote' to remove MPs who fail their electorate. The structure of such a mechanism to be debated and subsequently enforced.
(**D):
First of all Booker, Jamieson and GLW (Greg Lance-Watkins) with Farage's support stole the UKIP mailing list and attacked me - in particular for revealing Bilderberg whose Chairman was at the time Conrad Black the employer of Booker and Jamieson.
This is totally delusional twaddle and in fact probably libellous though I doubt any Court would take action they would merely 'consider the source'!
Has this silly little comic got ANY proof to back his lies?
That Christopher Booker, Bill Jamieson or I might have made ANY effort to 'steal' a UKIP mailing list is just about as fanciful as the poor chaps self agrandising fantasy about exposing Conrad Black - that Conrad Black had attended Bilderberg and Tri Lateral Commission meetings and other business gatherings was a matter of public domain knowledge from many years earlier as I have shown in note
(**A) above.
That I chose wisely in the election in question is made clear by the self dellusion and dishonesty of little Rodney Atkinson in his fantasies and spoilt brat exhibition of sour grapes above.
Are we to understand those with opinions that differ from his fanciful claims are not allowed to campaign againstthe risk of him leading a political party however insignificant.
I note the implication of Bill Jamieson being dismissed which is yet another lie as he took promotion to part retirement and financial editorship of The Scotsman. That they may have been chastised for p[olitical involvement is equally fanciful as not only is Christopher Booker to this day a Political Columnist with The Sunday Telegraph but Conrad Black actively encouraged political involvement for his senior staff.
Frankly some of poor little Rodney's jokes rival his brothers for predictability! A foolish little chap with it seems very poor judgement and a very large opinion of himself.
For the record Norris McWhirtter gave me tremendous help in the production of a 30 minute ITV special in which I opposed Britain's EU membership and I had the privilege of sharing a platform with him on several occasions.
(**E):
Delroy Young was a tremendous asset to UKIP, not just because he was black, he was a passable speaker and popular in his own right.
Sadly he totally failed to comprehend that he would have absolutely no serious future in politics without providing a birth certificate/passport, extended CRB and CV.
That seems to be a message he still has not learned as he recently re-registered
The UKFirstParty! That said the nascent party may stand a better chance than previously when it was so closely linked to Tom Wise via using his offices and the involvement of Peter Cole, whose personal ambitions, attempts at control and association with Wise led to its downfall.
(**F):
Many believe that a more diplomatic approach to this matter could have led to a cost free solution. (**F)
I have absolute certainty and more than a passing knowledge of the facts and there is no doubt whatever that this entire debacle was a crass, amateur and idiotic self inflicted catastrophy for UKIP, brought about by obdurate and idiotic incompetence and atrocious decision making based on seemingly crass legal advice if anyone was allowed to give any!
(**G):
However, ten days before the manifesto launch, Farage met with John Bufton in Cardiff to inform him that he had made the decision, unilaterally, that the 12 year policy of opposing the Welsh Assembly and Regional Government was over, and that the party no longer wanted the abolition of the Welsh Assembly. (**G)
UKIP and Farage particularly have only ever had the most febrile grasp or understanding of Welsh politics and their regional organiser Jim Carver had NONE - you need only read the resignation letters of
Marcus Stead,
Richard Suchorzewski and John Pratt for that to become abundantly clear.
(**H):
No wonder the self serving NEC member was too ashamed to put his name to this pack of lies - Do see UKIP's own returning Officer's Report on the matter CLICK HERE the informed will also realise it is lies and a fabricated story, seemingly constructed by both Farage & his muppet Gill (whose popularity as an individual and whose integrity was reflected by the vote he personally obtained in the Constituency which he had for many years held for the Tories).
A further measure of his integrity is measurable in his campaigning behind Farage's back in the leadership election where he supported Richard Suchorzewski as discussed in detail at little David Rowland's golf course, when they met to discuss tactics - as with the duplicitous Toby Mickelthwaite & his support and fear of being discovered!
All that this unfortunate interjection by the un-named NEC member indicates to the discerning reader is that UKIP Leadership and members of the NEC are all too willing to lie and defame to keep their snouts in the trough - as we have seen so often!
Also See:
THE ASHFORD CENTRE by Derek HUNNEKIN
It is a pity that Peter Gardner did not consult with Derek Hunnikin, though some of DH's views I find misguided and would enjoy many hours discussing, at least Peter Gardiner's book might have proved more accurate and at very least more interesting!
Regards,
Greg_L-W.
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