UKIP Uncovered

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

Saturday, August 21, 2004

UKIP's Manipulations over my Hartlepool candidature and membership re-application.

Spending August, September and possibly even a couple of months longer pounding the streets of Hartlepool, with all the attendant expenditure and physical wear and tear and the uprooting and stress on my own family was never a prospect that I particularly relished. The best possible outcome would have been a likely few short months as a Westminster MP. After that oblivion!

So why did I push myself forward, swallow my pride and re-apply for party membership with the very serious offer to have a go at winning? Principally because I was convinced from the start that UKIP had failed to appreciate the true extent of the disgust amongst all voters at all existing main party politicians (Mandelson's appointment and resignation was the perfect trigger to ignite that disgust), secondly the depths of the crisis within the conservative party could have pushed their vote to deposit endangering levels and thirdly, but still hugely important - the real message regarding the true menace of the EU seemed at last ready to be listened to and absorbed among the mainly labour and therefore most disgruntled and protest-prone receptive voters of this proven independently minded constituency.

I believed the delay in starting the campaign could have allowed time to mount a protest that would have deservedly shamed and humiliated all three main political parties. Sending a strident anti-EU voice to Parliament for a few short months would have had tremendous local appeal - far more than the local issues of the hospital now disappeared and the so-called 'ghost ships' situation. UKIP, the only party that could have led such a popular protest needed a dedicated, well-informed clearly anti-EU and preferably non-political candidate. I guessed none such from the senior levels of the party - celebrity or otherwise - would be forthcoming as has now clearly been proved to be the case.

The facts of my membership re-application and UKIP's reaction and subsequent manipulations are as follows: I re-applied online in late July and received a membership acknowledgement reference number on that same day which I retain. I use a low limit UK credit card for all UK internet purchases which is in the name of my wife, that was debited for the twenty pound membership fee on Thursday 5th August.

The deadline for applications from fully paid-up UKIP members for consideration in Hartlepool was set by the constituency association for midnight on Sunday 9th August. I informed the committee that I was such a member and that I wished my application to be considered. I heard nothing from the committee after that point until late in the week when the interviews and candidate selection had been made on the Wednesday evening.

UKIP, unable to react over the crucial weekend of 8/9th August - must then have realised that I was indeed a properly paid-up member and on Monday 10th August they issued a membership card in the name of my wife, totally contrary to the details on the application I had submitted on 30th July.

This membership was against the constitution of the party as my wife not being a UK national nor residing within the UK is quite clearly ineligible to join the party. We have now been told that the twenty pounds will be refunded and we await receipt of the funds.

The Party Secretary has informed me that I had never been re-accepted as a party member which is clearly not the case given the facts above.

I have now been informed that UKIP officer, Ms Nikki Sinclaire of these facts and my own relief that I am now once and for all rid of her fraudulent party and free of the burdensome obligation I was prepared to undertake when putting forward my name for consideration as a party candidate.

I hope that the personal sacrifice I and my family were prepared to undertake to fight the EU by-election in Hartlepool will be perhaps understood and appreciated by some true sceptics within the UKIP who might now realise their own work and efforts would clearly be better directed elsewhere. I stood to gain nothing by putting myself forward and merely hoped to halt the advance of the EU and particularly gain a chance to argue against the new EU constitution in the next session of Parliament. I will continue to speak out through the medium of my various blogs as detailed on the side bar, while hoping a genuine and dedicated anti-EU party might emerge (as hinted at by Dr Alan Sked in the interview linked from the post beneath this).

UKIP through its handling of the Hartlepool candidate selection has clearly exposed the apparently purely mercenary motives of their MEPs and higher party hierarchy. The fact they purport to oppose the organisation on which they now hypocritically depend puts them even beneath the venality often displayed by the debased three main parties - some of whose members, at least, have no doubt previously sincerely but wrongly believed that the EU project might once have been considered a force for peace and progress.

posted by Martin |5:57 PM