The Real Face of Ukip?

Over the last few days, news has emerged about three of Ukip’s candidates publicly making racist and disparaging remarks about BME individuals, Islam and immigration. The party has been trying to disassociate itself from these members by announcing the resignation of one of the individuals and the suspension of another, expressing apologies, and emphasising that the views of these members are not the views of the party.

However, with such a flurry of candidates making racist comments, albeit in the past, combined with their openly anti-immigrant platform, what should we believe?

Racist comments/ imagery, it would appear are nothing new for Ukip. Its recent campaign posters, depict immigrants as predatory beings out to steal British jobs, have been the cause of much discussion over Ukip’s far-right views.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, has been forced to defend them and claim that they are not racist, even though their exclusionary and xenophobic undertones show the opposite. Additionally, in the midst of this aggressive campaign, three Ukip candidates have been revealed to have used twitter to make openly racist remarks.

The first incident involved Andre Lampitt, the star of Ukip’s television political election broadcast. Lampitt used twitter to lash out against Islam, remarking:

I don't want my kids learning anything about Islam it's against my HR [human rights]."

He also included that Muslims should leave Europe and America, and that Islam was a religion with satanic traditions. In the past, Lampitt had attacked Ed Miliband for being of Polish heritage. Lampitt, who was born in Zimbabwe, has also claimed that Nigerians are “mostly bad people”, Africans should be “left to kill themselves off” and claimed that people should simply “get over” slavery.

Lampitt’s remarks were followed by the remarks of another Ukip candidate, William Henwood, who attacked comedian Lenny Henry and said that Henry should emigrate to a black country. Henry, who is a British-born comedian, stated last week that there are more BMEs in the artistic fields, and this caused Henwood o lash out against him. Like Lampitt, Henwood has also made remarks about Islam being evil in the past and even went as far as comparing it to the Third Reich.

The last racist comment was discovered just two days ago. David Wycherley, a relatively new Ukip candidate used Facebook last year to question why British Olympian Mo Farah was allowed to be in Great Britain’s team if he was an African. Farah was born in Somalia, but has lived in Britain since he was eight years old. He currently holds the 10,000 metres Olympic and World gold medal and the 5000 metres Olympic, World and European champion, and has won 12 gold medals for the country.

Farage has announced the suspension of Lampitt and the resignation of Henwood, but he has not yet made any remarks about Wycherley. Farage has repeatedly stated that the view of these extremist members don’t reflect the views of the party; nevertheless, it is difficult to separate the views of the party from the views of its members when one is supposed to emanate from the other.

Moreover, all of these individuals have made racist remarks in the past, but why are they only being removed from the party now. Perhaps, it seems like a veiled attempt by Ukip’s leadership to ‘clean up’ the party’s image for the European Elections, but this delayed response in fact reveals the party’s true identity.

Angelica Encinales