Brussels, 13/10/2004 (Agence Europe) - The twelve UKIP (UK Independence Party) members who have seats at the European Parliament within the Independence and Democracy Group, conceal under an apparently single issue programme not only anti-Europeanism but also a "very right wing agenda". Also, as Commissioner Chris Patten puts it, they form a "particularly unattractive" xenophobic group. This was what British Labour member Richard Corbett told reporters on Tuesday in Brussels when he presented to the press a pamphlet entitled "25 things you didn't know when you voted for UKIP" (and why you'll never vote for them again). He is the author of the paper addressed to his colleagues at the European Parliament. It is published by the "Britain in Europe Campaign" on the occasion of the recent UKIP Congress. Mr Corbett said he had sent the pamphlet to his colleagues at the EP because they are not yet fully aware of what these new British UKIP representatives want (Farage, Sinnott, Batten, Bloom, Booth, Clark, Kilroy-Silk, Knapman, Nattrass, Titford, Whittaker and Wise), all the more as they are not especially active as MEPs and use the Parliament mainly as a platform to denigrate Europe "at home".
Richard Corbett notes that the UKIP defends its position close to the BNP (the extremist British National Party), that there are many revelations about their links and many members of BNP have shifted to UKIP and vice versa, and have formed electoral alliances during several local elections. According to his pamphlet, Alan Sked, UKIP founding member, admitted moreover that, when it comes to immigration, "the UKIP is even less liberal than the BNP". MEP Robert Kilroy-Silk (Ed.: who tried in vain to win the leadership during the recent congress), stated in his brochure that paratroopers should "herd the immigrants together" and dump them on a "slow boat to - wherever". Accused of racism, Kilroy Silk writes in The Daily Express that "Muslims are backward and evil and if it is racist to say so … then racist I must be - and happy and proud to be so". In his work, Mr Corbett also recalls that, when British Labour member Gary Titley and other MEPs had, in January 2004, received letter bombs, the UKIP member Nigel Farage had said he understood the reasons behind the attacks. Michael Nattrass, also MEP, went as far as to compare British opponents of EU membership with Chechen separatists three weeks after the Beslan tragedy in which over 330 children and parents were killed.
On disinformation practised by the UKIP on the subject of Europe, Richard Corbett said "one does not know whether to laugh or to cry about it". He gave a series of allegations such as: The higher rate of crime in the United Kingdom is due to the fact that British police are hampered by norms imposed upon them from Brussels; the congestion charge applied to cars in the centre of London is also imposed by the EU. "Some news for Ken Livingstone" (who was at the origin of this measure), Richard Corbett explains, describing the allegations by UKIP members as "simplistic saloon-bar politics".