"To the people of this shop and to those that enter here... Ukip. I am
with my 13 year old son walking to get something to eat and I see your hordings
and advertising and I feel nothing but shame and absolute indignation that you
impose your fear, hatred and prejudice on our communities.
"You should be driven back into the hole where you are from just so you
know we are all beautiful people and your politics, your racism will never win.
Love compassion and tolerance will defeat you...."
To the person who posted the note above on the
window of the UKIP office in Bromley:
I'd like to start by saying 'thank you'. That might seem strange given
that your note attacks UKIP, but you may be aware that recently in different
parts of the country we've had offices attacked by criminals. We've seen
intimidation, violence and threats of violence against us. And of course, only
recently, our Party Leader Nigel Farage MEP was enjoying lunch with his
10-year-old and 15-year-old daughters when he was accosted by a group of
'activists' who so terrified his children by their antics that they ran away and
had to be returned home by police. The behaviour of those thugs (and I'm sorry
but I can't think of a better word to describe them) was so bad that their hired
coach driver refused to transport them back.
So, thank you for displaying your message and making your political point
in a reasonable and dignified way. That's what genuine political debate and the
freedom to protest is all about, and you have taught your teenage son a powerful
lesson: your message has been circulated widely online and had a greater impact
than those who don't respect that we live in a democratic
country.
I hope that I can respond to you in a similar fashion. You speak of fear,
hatred and prejudice. Yet UKIP is the only party, and I mean the only party,
that has a genuinely fair, ethical and colour-blind policy on immigration. If
that surprises you, think of this: UKIP believes in controlled immigration into
the UK. We wouldn't discriminate between someone from Poland and someone from
Pakistan: we would very simply treat everyone equally. In the 1980s and 1990s we
had average net migration in the order of 30,000 per year. Today, that figure
has increased ten-fold to 300,000 per year. It is reasonable, I think, for a
party to say that the scale of this increase is
unsustainable.
You also must consider the effect that emigration has upon those
countries who lose people that their economies can ill-afford to lose. In my
constituency, I might give the example of a very hard-working local taxi driver.
He is a qualified teacher in Romania, yet now regularly works 70 or 80 hours a
week in the UK, at or around minimum wage. He earns money that he could never
have dreamed of in Romania, yet here he does a job which does not require a
degree. We currently have a massive oversupply of unskilled and semi-skilled
labour in the UK. There are fewer such jobs today: our factories are now managed
by complex computer systems requiring degree-educated workers to operate them,
and even our supermarkets are turning to automated checkouts. Yet the open door
from Europe means that anyone can come in to the UK.
So Romania is deprived of a teacher, someone desperately needed to help
to develop that country's economy. Meanwhile, because he is prepared to work for
minimum wage this has the effect of driving down the wages of those already in
the UK, and he takes a job which someone currently unemployed could have learned
to do. Whilst he might personally be richer, both the UK and Romania are poorer
because of it.
But what if someone is moving to the UK from a country where they have an
oversupply of skills yet we are deficient in that area? In that case, the
migration would benefit both countries: their unemployment would be lower, and
it would help to develop British business. That would be an obvious example of
the kind of immigration which is beneficial to the UK. Now, in the long-term we
might ask the question whether our own skill shortages reflect a deficiency in
our education system.
And when Syria started being torn apart by unrest and violence leading to
civil war, who was it who led the way in demanding that the British government
should do our bit and take our fair share of refugees? Why it was none other
than UKIP Leader Nigel Farage! At the time, Anna Musgrave of the Refugee Council
said "We really hope that David Cameron listens to these people, listens to the
likes of Nigel Farage, and acts upon it".
You see, controlling immigration isn't about race, or hatred, or
prejudice. It's about doing the right thing - not just for our country, but for
other countries as well. So you need not feel shame or indignation when you walk
past a UKIP office.
As for your allegation that we're 'racist', former members of the BNP,
English Defence League, National Front and similar organisations are banned for
life from joining UKIP. We don't want racists in our midst, thank you very much.
And whilst it's true that some of our members have said bad things, we do not
accept it and we're the Party that takes swift disciplinary action against them.
The media have certainly 'cherry-picked' though: when a UKIP candidate says bad
things it's headline news - whereas when it's an establishment Party candidate
it rarely goes beyond the local newspapers.
Do we have people who don't always articulate our message correctly, in
the considered and caring manner that it should be? Yes, we do. It's something
which I personally fight against whenever I see it in UKIP. But if we can
explain what we stand for, and why, there is a reason why UKIP's top policies
are already so incredibly popular according to opinion polls. If UKIP can be
that Party, the Party of reasoned and principled opposition to problems in our
society (the fact that we tax the minimum wage, that many pensioners in fuel
poverty have to choose between heating and eating in winter, our problems with
social mobility and so many, many more), then the question is not whether we win
but when.
You finish your note by saying that love, compassion and tolerance will
defeat UKIP. We must not allow that to be the case. Love, compassion and
tolerance must drive UKIP. Huff
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