Having been politically active since my schooldays, I have
always been hugely concerned by the undemocratic nature of the European Union,
and the way in which successive governments have managed to keep us
ill-informed and in the dark about what our membership really means. It was
this that led me to become involved with UKIP in 1994.
I never do things by half, and so I threw myself into
campaigning work. I must have walked a thousand miles of pavement, and
delivered more leaflets than I could count. I wrote letters, helped run the
party's head office, raised (and donated) large sums of money, and worked
alongside Mike Nattrass when he was elected to the European Parliament in 2004.
In 2009 I joined him in Brussels
as an MEP, full of pride and ready to fight.
But then things turned sour.
I have always been a passionate defender of human rights and
individual liberties. Imagine my horror when I realised that for reasons of
financial benefit UKIP had formed a political group in the parliament that
contained some of the vilest far-right elements in European politics. I was
expected to sit alongside convicted racists,
homophobes, and holocaust deniers. One
of our new allies, an Italian, had a criminal record that included convictions
for a racially motivated assault on a child and for setting fire to the
belongings of a homeless immigrant who was sleeping under a bridge. He had also
been filmed encouraging fascists to infiltrate mainstream political
organisations. My protests were ignored. Nigel Farage,
the UKIP leader, was co-president of
this group and as such he had helped to form it. I was horrified when the
editor of a Brussels
magazine told me he would not report my work in the parliament because I was a
member of a far-right group. I realised that my association with such elements
was damaging my political credibility. None of this seemed to concern the party
leadership.
Eventually I had enough, and I resigned from this group,
hoping that I could work better as a non-attached member of the Parliament. Then
it really started.
Nigel Farage appeared on the BBC stating that I had not
resigned, but that I had been expelled and that I had the party whip removed
from me as I had failed to reveal that I was a bankrupt. This was an absolute
lie, and I was horrified to hear it. The party sent people into my office to
seize computer equipment and the police had to be called.
I felt that the party had betrayed my principles, and was
trying to put the blame on me. Of course, my crime was to speak out, and I was
being punished for it.
It is surprisingly hard to leave a relationship, even when
it has been abusive, but eventually I did make the break and am no longer a
member of the party that I had come to regard almost as a family. Friends
turned their backs on me, and lied about me. I started to question whether all
the work I had done was in vain, and grieved over broken dreams and
aspirations.
Soon, Mike
Nattrass and another UKIP MEP,
Trevor Colman, also resigned from
the group, and joined me. I felt
vindicated. Then a fourth MEP resigned from UKIP and joined the Conservatives.
It was all starting to fall apart in Brussels .
As I began to find my feet outside UKIP I realised how much
I could do. I launched a petition for a referendum on Britain 's
continued membership of the EU, and
have delivered 220, 000 signatures to
10 Downing Street
in the space of less than a year. I have become increasingly involved in
community issues, and in human
rights matters. My petition forced a debate in the House of Commons and
provoked the biggest back-bench revolt the government has seen.
When I look behind me,
at the people I walked away from, I
see one of them praising the ideology of the Norwegian gunman Breivik, and I shake my head in disgust. I feel sad at what
UKIP has become, and I feel sorry
for all the good people who are being let down. But the most important thing is
that I am able to get on with doing what I was elected to do.