Brownshirts in Blazers? The Rise of UKIP Martin Sullivan ITH ITS 16% of the vote in the June Euro- denunciations of the European Union’s bureau- W elections the UK Independence Party, pre- cratism and lack of democratic accountability have viously dismissed as a group of cranks on the a broad appeal (even if its MEPs show little political fringe, displaced the Lib Dems as the third compunction about getting their own snouts in largest party and won 12 seats in the European the trough at Brussels). Indeed, some on the left Parliament – a big advance on the 6.5% and 3 seats have even suggested that UKIP’s electoral gains it achieved in 1999. UKIP followed this up in expressed, if in a confused and contradictory form, September by coming third in the Hartlepool by- a healthy popular opposition to the current project election, relegating the Tories to fourth place. The of European integration. party showed it had the potential to establish itself But this hardly explains the success of two UKIP as a significant force in British politics. candidates in the London Assembly elections, UKIP has its origins in the Anti-Federalist where Europe was not exactly a major issue. League, which was formed in 1991 by Alan Sked, Rather, the attraction of UKIP’s line on Europe has a London School of Economics professor and ard- to be understood in the context of the openly racist ent Thatcherite, to campaign against the European propaganda that the party has directed towards Community (as it then was) and the Maastricht white voters. Thus UKIP’s campaign against the Treaty in particular. UKIP itself was launched in EU concentrates on the alleged threat posed by 1993 but made slow progress. It won only 3% of immigration from Eastern Europe, tying this into the vote in the 1994 European elections and sub- a wider xenophobic attack on migrants, asylum sequently found itself overshadowed by James seekers and foreigners in general. Goldsmith’s Referendum Party, which enjoyed the The party’s website declares that Britain is advantage of being bankrolled by a millionaire. “already full up”, is in fact “bursting at the seams” After Goldsmith’s death in 1997 and the dis- due to an influx of foreigners. “Our cities are integration of his party, UKIP’s fortunes began to overcrowded”, UKIP asserts, “our roads clogged look up. It attracted wealthy backers such as up and our railways are grinding to a halt. Our Yorkshire property tycoon Paul Sykes, who con- doctors’ surgeries cannot cope and the hospital tributed over £1 million to the party’s 2004 Euro- waiting lists are growing. New housing estates pean election campaign, while the media attention are covering the countryside. In 2002, the UK generated by the recruitment of former TV government allowed in another 200,000 people. The personality Robert Kilroy-Silk and actress Joan UK Independence Party will put an end to mass Collins helped raise the party’s profile among the immigration.” The cover of UKIP’s manifesto general public. In this year’s elections the UKIP features three white babies with the slogan: campaign team included Dick Morris, Bill Clinton’s “Concerned about their future? This is their one-time political strategist, and PR specialist Max country, make sure it stays that way.” Clifford who selflessly gave his services in exchange Of course, UKIP repeatedly and indignantly for a £30,000-a-month salary. denies that it is a racist party. But it combines this UKIP’s ability to conduct a well-financed, with an equally fervent denunciation of political effectively publicised campaign would not in itself correctness, which it claims prevents an honest have been enough, however, to secure such an debate on issues of race and immigration. In increase in its vote. What, then, explained the surge practice, this means that UKIP persistently plays in support for UKIP in June? Apart from the fact the race card while claiming that it is merely that it attracted a general protest vote against the exercising freedom of speech. Its website quotes a main political parties, the obvious answer is that UKIP member as saying: “I am no racist, but I am UKIP’s euroscepticism struck a chord among a prepared to have a discussion about how things section of the electorate. Certainly, the party’s like immigration affect our country. I went to a 19 Christian school where they were not scared to fact there is no direct physical evidence to show talk about the Empire and colonies and other races. that such gas chambers ever existed.... there are You can’t say anything now because people will no photographs or film of execution gas cham- point their finger and cry ‘harassment’.” bers.... Alleged eyewitness accounts are revealed One of UKIP’s most vociferous critics of political as false or highly exaggerated.” The UKIP leader- correctness was boxing promoter Frank Maloney, ship publicly defended McConnachie’s right to free the party’s candidate in the London mayoral elect- speech and restricted itself to suspending him from ion. After a visit to Tower Hamlets, Maloney posted the executive for a year. an article on his campaign website condemning In light of all this, it is not surprising to find Whitechapel as a ghetto. “Immigrants are not in- that some of UKIP’s leading members have past tegrating with the rest of British society”, he wrote, links with the far right. Two of its MEPs, Mike “but creating their own areas, where the rule of Nattrass and Jeffrey Titford, were formerly law does not apply and people have no allegiance members of the New Britain Party, a pro-Apartheid, to Britain whatsoever – and even seek to harm pro-White Rhodesia outfit whose leader Dennis British people.” Pointing out that his own family Delderfield is on record as arguing that “suburb comes from the area, he added: “Now barely any- after suburb and town after town across the land one speaks English and to look around you would have been taken over by Asians, Africans and Afro- think you are in a different country.” Caribbeans.... In the not too distant future they It is understandable therefore that Robert will have direct control in many areas”. Nattrass, Kilroy-Silk, now one of the party’s 12 MEPs, chose who stood as a candidate for Delderfield’s party in to join UKIP after being sacked from his TV job the 1994 Dudley by-election, has explained his for publishing an article in the Sunday Express change of political allegiance on the grounds that describing Arabs as “suicide bombers”, “limb- “UKIP is electable and New Britain isn’t”. amputators” and “women-repressors”. This sort Another MEP, Nigel Farage, held discussions of comment has in fact been a regular feature of in 1997 with the British National Party’s Mark Kilroy-Silk’s Express column. Earlier he had Deavin, a former student of UKIP founder Alan written: “The barmy liberals like Diane Abbott don’t Sked. Deavin was the author of a document like the word ‘swamped’ when used by the Home entitled ‘The Grand Plan: The Origins of Non- Secretary to describe schools and GPs’ surgeries White Immigration’, which argued that “the mass being overrun by asylum seekers who cannot speak immigration of non-Europeans into every White English. What word would they prefer? Over- country on earth” had been engineered by “a whelmed? Drowned? Submerged? What is the homogeneous transatlantic political and financial problem with using proper English words to elite to destroy the national identities and create a describe an appalling situation that many British raceless new world order”. The plan was, Deavin people have to put up with?” And he had a ready wrote, “Jewish in origin”. Farage wouldn’t have explanation for HIV and the rise in TB cases in felt entirely out of place in such company. Sked, Britain: “The indigenous population is not who left the party in 1997, in part because he responsible. The diseases are being brought here believed it was being taken over by “extremists”, by refugees, immigrants and tourists.... It is the has recalled an argument with Farage over the foreigners that we have to focus on.” inclusion of a statement on the party’s membership UKIP’s political character is demonstrated not form opposing discrimination against minorities. just by its recruits but by its friends in the “We will never win the nigger vote”, Farage told European Parliament, where it is part of a euro- him. “The nig-nogs will never vote for us.” sceptic alliance which includes the League of Polish Concerning links with the British National Families, a Christian fundamentalist, anti-semitic Party, Sked has noted that, despite the UKIP organisation that attacks the EU as a plot by free- leadership’s public condemnation of the BNP, there masonry against Christianity. One of its leading is in fact “a symbiosis between elements of the figures is historian Ryszard Bender of the Catholic parties”. Indeed, in the summer of 2003 the UKIP University of Lublin, who has described Auschwitz and BNP held negotiations over an electoral agree- as “not a death camp, but a labour camp. Jews, ment under which they would avoid competing Gypsies and others were killed by hard labour, not for the anti-EU vote in their respective strongholds. always that hard and not always killed”. While no official agreement was reached, Sked UKIP is not without its own Holocaust observes that BNP leader Nick Griffin has spoken deniers. In 2001 the party’s then Scottish organiser on the BBC of “an informal pact between his party Alistair McConnachie wrote to the press support- and elements of the UKIP leadership”.