Thursday 19 June 2014

Press Release - Nikki Sinclaire MEP Condemns UKIP Association With Nazis in European Parliament

Press Release - Nikki Sinclaire MEP Condemns UKIP Association With Nazis in European Parliament

UKIP has announced that it will form a political group in the European Parliament with far-right politicians, including 2 MEPs from the controversial Sweden Democrats. The party leader, Nigel Farage, had been struggling to find the requisite 7 nationalities in order to form a group.

The Swedish party was founded in 1988 by Gustaf Ekström, a former soldier in Hitler's Waffen SS, and an active Nazi since the 1940s. It has attracted controversy ever since. As recently as 2013, a Sweden Democrats parliamentarian, Erik Almqvist, resigned his seat after being previously filmed in Stockholm on a drunken rampage, armed with a scaffold pole, carrying out several assaults, one racially motivated, and one against a woman, in the street with another member of the party.

Ms Sinclaire said "I am appalled. That this party should be elected to the European Parliament confirms my fears about the state of European democracy, and it shows just how far Nigel Farage will go in order to hold onto his cherished position as the president of a political group in an institution he claims to oppose."

Ms Sinclaire was elected to the European Parliament in 2009 as a UKIP MEP, but left the party's political group, the EFD, because of her strong objections to "racist" and "homophobic" elements within the group.

UKIP has also accepted into its parliamentary group Joelle Bergeron, who was elected in May's European Elections to represent the French Front Nationale. The French party has been ostracised in recent weeks for anti-Semitic remarks made by founder Jean-Marie LePen, the father of current party leader Marine LePen.

Nikki Sinclaire said "UKIP claim that they will not allow former members of the BNP or the National Front into the party under any circumstances. But on the basis of two letters from the Swedish MEPs saying that their party is no longer racist, they are accepted into UKIP's group. Despite all his condemnation of Front Nationale in the UK press, he allows an MEP elected for that party to sit alongside UKIP in Brussels and Strasbourg."

ENDS