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

Happy International Womens Day

Nigel Farage has been accused of putting pressure on two MEPs to break European rules as he sought to gain tens of thousands of pounds in taxpayers' money for the UK Independence party.
Nikki Sinclaire, MEP for the West Midlands, told the Guardian the Ukip leader told her the party would not be able to gain access to extra funds meant for a new political grouping without her support.

If she failed to support the group, Farage said he would destroy her political reputation, she alleges. Sinclaire left Ukip in 2010 after clashing with the leadership.
A second MEP claims she was asked by Farage to secure an assistant for his 2010 general election campaign using money from Brussels, in breach of strict EU regulations. Marta Andreasen, who also left Ukip – joining the Conservatives last month – says Farage told her women of childbearing age should not work because they are "a burden to their companies".
Friends of Farage said Sinclaire had been a "thorn in his side" for many years and had an axe to grind. A Ukip spokesman told the Guardian: "We do not respond to vexatious allegations of this kind from our political opponents."

Andreasen and Farage have clashed publicly before – after she quit Ukip, the party leader said: "Having left the OECD, the European commission and Ukip in unpleasant circumstances, the Conservative party deserve what is coming to them. The woman is impossible."
Farage and his party argue that the EU is a waste of money and call for Britain's withdrawal. Over the last 10 years, Ukip has raised £6.2m, according to the Electoral Commission, with hundreds of thousands of pounds coming from its MEPs, whose salaries and expenses are met by European taxpayers.

Ukip ran the Lib Dems a close second last week in the Eastleigh byelection. All three main parties are now wrestling with how to respond to the rise of the Eurosceptic party, which is to field about 2,000 candidates in the May council elections.

Both accusers are the only female MEPs ever elected by Ukip and both left the party, claiming there is a sexist attitude at the top of the organisation.

Sinclaire, a close associate of Farage for 14 years, said she was "intimidated and bullied" by him as he sought to establish the European Freedom and Democracy group in the European parliament.
In July 2009, he had secured 29 MEPs from a number of countries to support the establishment of the group. Sinclaire alleges that he told her he needed a 30th MEP to ensure that he secured additional funds. When she replied that she was unsure because of homophobic and antisemitic comments by Italian politicians who were part of the grouping, he responded by threatening her, she said.
"He said to me that unless I signed up to this group by 10am the following morning then it would cost the party half a million pounds and it would be all my fault," she said. "If I didn't sign up, he said he would make sure that everyone knew it was my fault and damage my standing in the party."
"There is no doubt in my mind that he was seeking these funds for the political party, not for the new group," she said. "His main objective was to get the party to gain access to more money, and he was prepared to bully me to get it."

EU sources said if a grouping increased the number of MEPs from 29 to 30, its funding would be increased by about €50,000. EU rules state money for groupings should not be used for party political purposes, but Sinclaire said the funds were supposed to be sent instead to Ukip and filtered through to London. Sinclaire eventually joined the group, but regretted doing so, she said. She left it in 2010 and is now an independent MEP.

Andreasen is an MEP for South East England and a former Ukip treasurer who defected to the Conservative party last month. She said Farage instructed her to recruit an assistant on the party's publicly funded Brussels payroll, despite rules that MEPs' assistants must work for at least part of their time on European parliament business.

"I had a specific situation where I was asked to recruit someone for the southeast region [where she and Farage are MEPs]," she said. "I realised he was only going to work on the general election in 2010 with Nigel Farage, who was standing in Buckingham.

"He [Farage] told me to draw up the contract for him and he would give me a staff member from the group in Brussels. He wanted me to recruit someone who would work in an office in the northern part of the south-east constituency, close to Buckingham."

Andreasen said the contract would have been for an assistant earning around £40,000 a year pro-rata and they got as far as identifying the assistant Farage wanted, but she realised Farage was asking her to use an MEP's allowance solely for his UK political campaigning. She said she decided it would have breached parliamentary regulations and declined.

EU rules state: "The provided allowances are only eligible when spent on activities and objects which are directly linked to the office of a member of the European parliament."

A Ukip MEP has been found to have misused taxpayer-funded allowances following a crackdown by Olaf, Europe's anti-fraud watchdog. Derek Clark, an MEP for the East Midlands, had successfully applied for money from the EU to pay for two assistants in 2004 and 2005. But instead of working for Clark, the inquiry found they worked almost exclusively for Ukip from Britain.
Clark, who has given more than £190,000 to the party in the past 10 years, said last year that he began paying political workers with EU money only after being asked to do so by an adviser to the party, whom he refused to name.

Andreasen said Farage and others were "very dismissive and disrespectful" when discussing legislation that affects women.

"The general attitude was that we would never support anything that was in favour of women. He told me that his attitude was that women who are at the age of being able to give birth to children should not be employed because they are a burden to their companies. It is a very extreme position.
"He dismisses you as if you were not a proper interlocuter. He does not discuss with you, because you are a lower-level human being. I could not respond or be angry about each thing that would happen," she said.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch said that he had invited Farage to his London flat for dinner. The News International chairman told his followers on Twitter that Farage was "reflecting opinion" at the dinner. "Few days in UK, Italy. Politics both places very fluid, economies going nowhere. New leaders emerging on distant horizon," he tweeted. "Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, few excellent, frustrated ministers. Farage reflecting opinion. Florence mayor Renzi brilliant young Italian."
Sinclaire said she had faced many years of sexism from the party. Ukip used to hold national executive meetings in men-only gentlemen's clubs in central London such as the Caledonian Club. "I was allowed to attend the actual meeting but could not join the rest of the NEC in the bar, where the eventual decisions were actually made," she added.

Vile Lega Nord MEP and UKIP colleague Borghezio agrees with Norwegian monsters manifesto

How on earth can UKIP continue to sit in the same group as this man?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14315108

Press Statement by Nikki Sinclaire MEP

 

On the atrocities in Norway, and the response of the Lega Nord MEP Mario Borghezio

 

 

 

My heart goes out to the victims of the atrocities that took place in Norway last week, and to their families. There can be no excuses, no justifications, this was nothing but an act of pure and unmitigated evil.

 

In protest against violent right-wing extremism, I resigned from UKIP's political group in the European Parliament, the Europe of Freedom & Democracy (EFD). I particularly cited the racism and homophobia prevelant in the Italian Lega Nord. As a result of my stand, I had the UKIP party whip withdrawn by the party leadership.

 

In the wake of this vile mass murder, one of those Lega Nord MEPs I particularly objected to, Mario Borghezio, a man with at least two convictions for racially motivated violence, including an assualt on a child, has gone on record as supporting the murderer Breivik. He stated that  “One hundred per cent of Breivik’s ideas are good, in some cases extremely good. The positions of Breivik reflect the views of those movements across Europe which are winning elections.”

 

I now call upon UKIP MEPs to distance themselves from this objectionable political group, of which Lega Nord is not the only party to contain members with racial convictions. As 76 families mourn their loved ones, now is the moment for UKIP MEPs to take stock, and act on their conscience, rather than remain in a political group with such extremists, purely on the grounds that they can earn more money by doing so.

 

 

ENDS

 

For further information contact Nikki Sinclaire MEP on 07941 461255

 

 

Notes to Editors: Nikki Sinclaire was elected as a UKIP MEP in June 2009. She sits on the parliament's Human Rights Committee.

In January 2010 she resigned from the EFD group after her protests about far-right extremist elements were ignored by the party leadership.

Subsequently, Mike Nattrass, a UKIP MEP in his second term resigned from the EFD group for the same reasons as Miss Sinclaire.

More recently, Trevor Colman, also a UKIP MEP serving his second term resigned from the EFD group.

In 1993, Mario Borghezio was ordered to pay a fine of 750,000 lire following a violent assault on a Moroccan child in 1991. He appeared to justify this by alleging that the child was an illegal immigrant.

In July 2005, Mario Borghezio was found guilty of arson, having set fire to the belongings of some immigrants while they were sleeping under a bridge in Turin during a vigilante raid. For this he was sentenced to two months and twenty days imprisonment, which he avoided by paying a fine.

In September 2007, Mario Borghezio was arrested by Belgian police during an unauthorised anti-Islamic demonstration in Brussels.

An update on the Tribunal hearing.

UKIP, Farage and Bloom have applied to the Tribunal to have the judgement 'set aside' on the basis of an administrative error. That all three forgot they had to reply to the claims against them and there was a mix up in all three of their diaries. The ET rules were recently changed allowing respondents 28 days rather than 14 days to reply to allow for due consideration etc.

I note that Nigel was elected under the banner of professionalising the party and the new Party Secretary, Michael Greaves, a Barrister admits to have been at fault here.

The Tribunal Judge has decided not to accept their application without hearing their application IN PERSON and a hearing will be scheduled in due course. The rules state that at least 14 days notice must be given for a hearing. Therefore, currently the Judgement remains in force and the Remedy hearing postponed.

As this hearing will heard due to the negligence of UKIP, Farage and Bloom; they will be expected to pay the costs of all sides in full.

Legal action announced

Today at a press conference in Westminster, I announced with regret that I have been driven to take legal action against UKIP, Nigel Farage MEP and Godfrey Bloom MEP in the High Court and the Employment Tribunal.

The high court action is in relation to UKIP breaching it's own Constitution and party rules. The ET claim relates to discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. I feel that I have been unfairly treated by the leadership of UKIP because I stood up for my principles. It is especially disturbing and offensive as my colleague, Mike Nattrass MEP has received no sanction despite leaving the EFD group for the same reasons.

Speaking at the English Democrats

 I along with fellow West Midlands MEP, Mike Nattrass was pleased to have the opportunity to speak at the English Democrat AGM in Nottingham today having had a very successful business breakfast meeting with their leadership team.

We spoke individually and then took questions about the European Union, being a MEP, and the Campaign for a Referendum. It was an enjoyable and interesting experience exchanging views and developing an understanding of each other’s perspective.

It is these cross party initiative that are so important if we are going to win the day. I look forward to further dialogue.

Ps.  I was quite surprised to learn during our breakfast meeting the overtures made by Malcolm Pearson towards an electoral pact during the general election.

Pearson supported by Steve Crowther and Peter Reeeve met with the English Democrat leadership, with the blessing of Nigel Farage

Constituencies where UKIP would not stand were agreed however, as with so much else Pearson reneged on his undertaking costing UKIP considerable support in the areas that they had agreed.