UKIP Uncovered

UKIP Uncovered
What motivates the leaders of the United Kingdom Independence Party?

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Permanent Termination of Party Membership for having BNP Contacts?

Earlier this month a party member circulated an article regarding the police and probation service to a list of more than one hundred recipients, two of whom it later turned out happened to be members of the BNP. He has now received this letter from Party Secretary Derek Clark:-

Dear Mr Edwards,

Your E-mail of Feb 2nd to two active members of the BNP indicate that you have clear associations with that organisation.

Under the terms of membership this is not allowable and would lead to your expulsion from the UK Independence Party. As it is your appeal against sanction of expulsion must now be considered void.

I shall inform the appeals chairman and your membership is now terminated permanently.

yours faithfully,

Derek Clark

Contrast this action against Andrew Edwards, who recently blew the whistle on BNP's National Treasurer being a UKIP Branch Chairman in the Vale of York, with a previous event when European MEP Nigel Farage was discovered to be lunching with a known and already dismissed senior BNP mole. The comments below are taken from a memorandum on that situation prepared by the then UKIP Party Secretary in early 2000.

Quote

About 25th September 1999 various members of UKIP and I received an anonymous package which contained among other things, a photograph of Nivel Farage with Mark Deavin and Tony Lecomber and an affidavit made by Nigel Farage in a case where he was about to sue the Times Newspaper in June 1999.

MARK DEAVIN
The photograph had been circulated anonymously before about Christmas 1998. Mark Deavin was a research student associated with Alan Sked at the LSE and unknown to him a member of the BNP. He was found out and expelled from UKIP in May 1997. Tony Lecomber is a BNP member with a criminal record for violence.
Close examination of the lighting values in the photograph seem to show that Lecomber ws present. However the photograph may have been altered so as to move him closer to the other two figures. Further analysis would have to await the exact background against which the picture was taken.
The anonymous material circulated in September 1999 correctly stated that the photograph had been discussed at the NEC in February 1999. There had been discussions there as to where it was taken and whether part of it was faked. Farage stated that it might have been at a garden party in 1997 or earlier. At all events, every confidence was placed in Nigel Farage.

NIGEL FARAGE'S AFFIDAVIT IN THE TIMES CASE
a) It was unwise of Nigel Farage to meet Mark Deavin on his own. This foolishness allowed pictures of him to be taken in compromising situations. A prudent man would not have met Deavin anyway or, if forced to do so, would have been accompanied. He should have realised this in advance. If Farage had taken, say, another NEC member we would not now be in a position where his veracity may be dependent on whether or not Deavin or Lecomber confirm his story.

b) In his affidavit Nigel Farage says he met Mark Deavin "to find out why he had left the UKIP". As mentined in the media this is a "strange choice of words" and also conflicts with his statement a few lines earlier that Deavin had been expelled from UKIP when it was discovered he had links with the BNP. Nigel Farage already knew why he had 'left UKIP'.

c) Further it seems unnecessary to set up a social occasion with Deavin who was not only known as a BNP member but particularly dangerous as a BNP person who could infiltrate and masquerade as something else.

d) There is no explanation in the affidavit as to what Mark Deavin gave as his reason for wanting to meet Nigel Farage bearing in mind it is stated it was Deavin who requested the meeting. Surely the only point in Farage going to the meeting was to find this out but it is not even mentioned in the affidavit.

e) Nor is there any explanation of what Nigel Farage hoped to obtain from his meeting in relation to his dispute with Alan Sked nor what he did obtain if anything.

f) It is not clear whether his then lawyers Bates Wells and Braithwaite were aware of the meeting.

g) No report on this meeting has ever been made to the NEC by Nigel Farage. Having failed to take someone with him, a further precaution by Farage would have been a written report to the NEC.

h) At the NEC in February 1999 Nigel Farage's failure to mention he had met Deavin and that he knew that per para. 6 of his affidavit the photograph had been taken leaving the restaurant was a serious lack of candour to the NEC.

i) The UKIP advanced 4000 pounds from members funds to enable Nigel Farage to take action against The Times. Despite The Times paying Ngel Farage's costs, he has failed to repay 4000 pounds to the Party.
The advance of 4000 pounds was unminuted and in contradiction of earlier NEC decisions. Nigel Farage knew it was temporary finance and it would be expected to be repaid.

j) Nigel Farage never gave a report in the case to the NEC, nor was any NEC member nominated to accompany Nigel Farage to meet lawyers nor has the NEC ever seen any of the legal correspondence or legal bills.

k) Nigel Farage is now an MEP and should finance such legal actions himself particularly when it was brought about by his own foolishness in meeting Deavin alone in the first place and not keeping the NEC in the picture.
Unquote

The memorandum then continues to discuss the competence of Nigel Farage's solicitors and the implications for the party, and questions whether or not an apology was ever really issued by The Times to which points we might return later. Meantime the last sentence of this damning memo reads:-

Yet no explanation has ever been given to the party by Nigel Farage of the Deavin matter

A clear case for 'permanent termination' if ever there was one under the standards now laid down in Derek Clark's letter to Andrew Edwards. Peter Troy having knowingly recruited an expelled BNP activist should similarly be immediately ejected. What a Party!

posted by Martin |8:48 AM