UKIP Uncovered

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

Thursday, December 16, 2004

UKIP PARTY CHAIRMAN EXPOSED AS THE SOURCE OF LEAKS TO GREG LANCE-WATKINS

This report, compiled by one close to one of many ongoing disputes now developing within UKIP, brings back the name of Greg Lance-Watkins, veteran of many earlier party disputations.

"In a sensational development, the new Party Chairman Petrina Holdsworth has been discovered to have been passing information about internal discipline matters to Greg Lance-Watkins, a non-member who is paid by senior party members to spread filth about NEC members who are out of favour with the party leadership.

The discovery came about during the investigation into the fraudulent hoax e-mails sent by Party Press Officer Mark Croucher.

Although the Party Chairman has a number of complaints about the behaviour of the leadership, she has chosen to spend a considerable amount of her time assisting a non-member Greg Lance-Watkins, a paid smear merchant who is currently being used by Nigel Farage and Roger Knapman, to attack anyone who is calling for a leadership election.

In an attempt to cover up the discovery, party officials and MEPs began a frantic campaign last night to vilify other NEC members who are out of favour with the party leader Roger Knapman and Nigel Farage. They began spreading stories about Tony Scholefield, Craig Mackinlay, John de Roeck and others in an attempt to distract attention.

So serious has the matter become that a Labour MEP called one of the party's elected officials from Strasbourg to ask if the UKIP party leadership had "gone completely mad".

A BBC researcher also said that she had seen Mike Nattrass's hysterical e-mail to Damian Hockney and assumed Nattrass had "totally lost the plot". The Labour MEP said that Nigel, Mike and the gang were going around accusing a number of people of being "leakers and wreckers". In fact, the MEP said they were behaving "like the Far Left and Militant Tendency used to do in the early 80s". They also again accused those they disliked of being "Tory Moles" in their rampage around the French town.

The discovery came to light when Greg Lance-Watkins thanked the Party Chairman for sending him the information she had forwarded, and she inadvertently forwarded it to one of the growing numbers of people the Party Leader is running a campaign of vilification against through "discipline proceedings".

Lance-Watkins suspiciously predicted discipline proceedings against a number of party members, including Damian Hockney, over a day before they were issued! As members know, the Party Leader and Nigel Farage use their own staff on the discipline panels to try and judge cases against people they wish to remove from the party. These panels have been compared to the EU Court of Justice - with vested interests judging and convicting members who are out of favour."

Rumours of further threatened disciplinary proceedings and libel suits all add to the general uncertainty, while the situation in Derbyshire where the paid party Regional Organiser seems to stand virtually alone against the rest of the UKIP membership is desperately reported to be preparing a defence against possible national press interest in the story in the Derby Evening Telegraph linked from our post of this morning. The Mike Nattrass e-mail referred to above is also available further down this page.

posted by Martin |8:14 PM