by Nigel Farage
So much for the ‘niceness’ of a Prime Minister principally remembered only for that quality and for adultery whilst espousing ‘back to basics’ to the people. So much, too, for democratic representation.
When, therefore, I saw an advertisement in the London Evening Standard for a meeting of the Campaign for an Independent Britain at Westminster Central Hall at which Labour’s Peter Shore and the Conservative John Biffen would be speaking, I went along in hope that I might learn something new or that someone could reassure me that I had read the whole situation wrongly.
Shore was a superb speaker. There were several hundred people in the audience. So far from reassuring me, he confirmed all my worst fears. The forthcoming treaty, he warned, would sound the death-knell of democracy. He advocated voting Labour. Biffen was less impressive but agreed that the treaty was an irrevocable renunciation of Parliament’s powers and of democratic process. He said that we should vote Tory. Both men declared the EU to be a distant, inefficient, unresponsive and unrepresentative system of government.
The meeting was thrown open to questions from the floor.
‘If we’re all agreed that the system is wrong,’ said one man, ‘why don’t we simply get out and return to governing ourselves?’
There was a deal of shuffling and mumbling on stage. Biffen gave it as his opinion that we should reform the EU from within rather than talking of withdrawal.
At that, another man sprang to his feet. He would later become a close colleague and loyal friend. He was a Sussex maths teacher, by name John Harvey. ‘Exactly how are we meant to reform the EU when we have a joke Parliament that refuses to represent its people?’ he asked. ‘And how can we make our will count for anything when qualified majority approval is needed for any change? I will stand as an Independent in the next election. It’s not much, but it’s all I can do.’
There was a cheer and an outburst of applause.
Another man stood. Scruffy but suited, with a pink marshmallow face, a boyish smile and a shock of surprisingly black hair, he declared above the hubbub, ‘No need. I intend to start a party which will lead Britain out of this mess. If you professional politicians won’t take that responsibility, we will.’
Soon afterwards, the meeting broke up. I, in common with many others, made my way towards these two men. I was inspired to meet for the first time people who not only shared my convictions and my awareness of the urgency of the situation, but were prepared to do something about it.
I shook the black-haired man’s hand and murmured something about helping if I could. I ascertained from those around that his name was Dr Alan Sked. He lectured in European history at the London School of Economics and had written quite a lot of books which I hadn’t read, including Great Britain and the Continental Revolutions of 1848 and The Decline and Fall of the Hapsburg Empire, 1815 –1918. I felt still better about my own incredulous research. Here was a man who should know better than most others the nature and the extent of the EU threat, and he was taking it as seriously as I.
Sked was persistent and persuasive. Every halfway personable enquirer was at once recruited to stand for his ‘Anti-Federalist League’. These were the founding members of the General Committee, which soon became and which remains the National Executive Committee.
Some, notably John Harvey, who has been the party’s most adept fixer and editor of the newsletter and Gerard Batten, a BT sales executive who is now my colleague in the European Parliament, are still prominent in party affairs. Others such as Sked’s academic colleague Dr Helen Szamuely (who fancies that she was just Sked’s token female and whose sharp brain was a sore loss to the party) soon fell by the wayside.
For all his bids to obtain active supporters, the League was Sked’s invention and was intended to be made in his own academic image. Its name was modelled on Cobden and Bright’s Anti-Corn Law League, an organisation so successful that it achieved its ends and so its effective demise in the 1840s. Cute, and no doubt impressive to Sked’s colleagues, but not, perhaps, an allusion which would find resonance with the British public.
This, I confess, was my stated reservation from the outset. Sked seemed bright, sincere and affable, but soft, unworldly and strangely spoiled. He was accustomed to the autonomy of the academic – self-reviewing, unaccustomed to being edited or criticised save by his acknowledged peers – and I doubt that he acknowledged peers outside his own field. He was autocratic in style and a seriously bad organiser.
Hugh Moelwyn-Hughes, a solicitor from south Wales and another stalwart of the party from the outset, met Sked in 1992 and was at once asked to draw up a constitution for the then League. He did so with professional meticulousness, taking care to cover all the bases and assuming that many of the clauses would be amended in the course of subsequent debate. Sked took one look at the impressive finished document and declared it ‘far too complicated.
‘So I went away, and this time I wrote the whole thing in the form of one-liners. Gross oversimplification, of course, but again I assumed that discussion would supply the necessary detail. I was asked to present it at a meeting at the LSE, and turned up to discover that Sked, without telling anyone, had invited members of the public along. He had also failed to tell the technicians that we would need a table and some chairs, so I had to sit on a dusty stage like a student at a poetry reading, proclaiming what had been intended to be a discussion document to an audience of complete strangers. One Tory heckler there jeered at my every word. It was the most embarrassing evening of my entire life.
‘So that version of the constitution was also rejected out of hand and the solution was that Sked wrote his own, which was very self-serving indeed, but was passed by a new and nervous committee.’
Others claim that Sked was a good orator. Again, I disagree. He was brilliant at exposition but wanted passion and responsiveness. He did not listen to others or venture into milieux other than his own. He therefore found it difficult to translate his high-flown theories into terms which reflected popular concerns. I shared his convictions and applauded his initiative, but the League seemed to me destined to be yet another short-lived special interest pressure-group.
I was considerably more impressed in truth by John Harvey and by another supporter, Major Michael Kelly, a charming and able man who knew a great deal more about administration and motivating all ranks than Sked and who would certainly have contested the leadership of the League had he not been struck down by a heart attack.
I was merely gratified to have my conclusions confirmed. I returned to work.
I noted with interest that Sked stood on an Anti-Federalist League platform in Bath in 1992 against the then Tory Party chairman, arch-federalist and later EU Commissioner, Chris Patten. Patten was trounced by the Liberal Democrat candidate, which was cause for celebration, but Sked, though attracting far more indulgent attention from the media than we were able to command once an organised political party, was trounced by everyone, polling just 117 – 0.2 per cent – votes.
I was, I thought, by now far too busy to get involved in what seemed to me, in Sked’s hands, a hopeless cause. I was working – and, yes, playing, but the two were inseparable – a fourteen-hour day. Instead, I resorted to the businessman’s usual salve for his conscience. I pulled out the chequebook, scribbled, ‘The Anti-Federalist League’ and ‘Fifty pounds only’ and popped it in the post on my way to the pub.
*
For all my resistance, the gods had not given up on me. Sked’s letter of thanks was brief, but he suggested that I might like to lend him a hand at the Newbury by-election in which he was also standing.
I mused upon this unlikely suggestion. I discovered that he was absolutely right. I needed a break, and this was my sort of break – a frantically busy one involving a lot of fresh air and a vast number of people, leafleting, knocking on doors, being roundly abused by total strangers and, on one memorable day, chauffeuring Enoch Powell, who came down to speak in support of Sked and his embryonic League.
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bsp; I collected the great man (and, for all his want of diplomacy and his occasional errors, I apologise to no one for maintaining that he was a singularly great man: principled, with a formidable mind, the courage of his convictions and enduring independence of spirit) at 33 Eaton Place. He elected to sit beside me, forcing Sked into the back. As I drew away from the kerb, he enquired, ‘And what is your intended route to the M4?’
I sort of nodded in the vague direction of Brompton Road and nervously mumbled something or other.
‘I have a daughter who lives in Chiswick,’ said Powell. ‘Follow my instructions.’
As we entered Sloane Square, it was ‘Take the fourth exit’, then ‘I generally find it better to be in the middle lane here…’ This was Brigadier Powell, and I, the poor untrained orderly driving him, found the experience considerably more nerve-racking than my driving test.
We stopped off for dinner before the main event. Powell had a glass of wine which, he claimed, was of the first importance before a speech. After the meal, I lit a cigarette. This was considered normal in those days, save by Powell, who regarded the cigarette with disgust. The clock ticked on and I suggested that we should leave for the venue. ‘No, no,’ he said with a wave of his expressive hands, ‘better to be a little late. It is all part of the act.’
We reached Newbury racecourse to find a small crowd of communist demonstrators tipping paraffin over Union Jacks and setting them on fire. They instantly spotted us and my heart sank. One hefted a large wooden stave, snarled and strode towards us. He swung at the rear wing. There was a bang and a crunch and the car rocked. In time, I would worry about what Credit Lyonnais Rouse were going to think about their new Mercedes. Right now, I was wondering how much damage a similar blow might do to Enoch’s cranium or mine.
He was totally unmoved. ‘Get the car as close to the door as possible,’ he said calmly and almost cheerfully, so I calmly and almost cheerfully did as I was told.
The previous autumn, Powell had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. There was no indication of debility or hesitancy tonight. His speech was fiery and colourful, logical and persuasive. Aside from one meeting of the Bruges Group, this was to be his last public appearance.
He was an astonishingly focused man. Now that the day’s work was done, he was at liberty to enjoy himself. On the way back, he was chatty and cheerful. He had a profound faith in the British electorate which he had famously declared in his great speech on House of Lords reform in 1968: ‘As so often, the ordinary rank and file of the electorate have seen a truth, an important fact, which has escaped so many more clever people – the underlying value of that which is traditional, that which is prescriptive…’ I shared that faith, but wondered whether today the British people really believed in themselves any more. He was confident. ‘Look at the Falklands,’ he replied.
That meeting, with a man who had achieved so much and sacrificed so much for his principles, awoke all sorts of aspirations in me which I had not even acknowledged before. It inspired me. Public service was not just about kowtowing to a party line.
One man who would not have recognised a party line had it been drawn in blood was R. E. G. Simmerson, who gratefully sprang to our support in Newbury. ‘Reg’, as he was universally known, was – well, single-minded. Some might prefer the word ‘obsessive’. Maybe history will see him as the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness. Certainly he was way ahead of his time.
Reg had left the Tories in 1961 over the first application to join the EEC. Euroscepticism brought him and his wife Betty together. They travelled to Brussels to throw ink over Edward Heath as he signed the Treaty of Accession and spent a night together in the police-cells.
Reg was to stand in twenty-one by-elections, a record beaten only by my old friend Lord Sutch and Wing Commander Bill Boakes. An ambitious cricketer’s dreams would include run-totals larger than the numbers of votes which Reg generally polled, though once, when he had the backing of the Cheshire Cricket Club captain, he topped 1,000 votes in Macclesfield.
Most candidates wheedle and toady to voters, at least until they are elected. Not Reg. He assailed them. I remember being with him when a mother passed, innocently going about her business with a couple of toddlers. ‘Ah, yes!’ he roared, and pointed. ‘You’ll notice when VAT is extended to children’s clothing!’
She started, recoiled, hastily gathered the children to her and scurried away.
Reg’s by-election innings had been cut short by emphysema, so he was delighted when UKIP appeared. He died in 1999. Betty invited Sked and me to speak at his funeral. I was honoured to accept.
I spent a total of eight days down there in Newbury, explaining the cause on doorsteps, in coaching house bars and in village halls, watching the electors’ faces turning from incredulity or dismissiveness to shock and anger.
Too often, the anger was swallowed and replaced with resignation. ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now’, ‘Our hearts are with you, but we’ll still vote Tory because we don’t want to waste our votes’ or even, astoundingly but repeatedly, ‘It’s all right. We’re voting Lib Dem. They agree with you about Europe … don’t they?’
I wanted to pick up these well-meaning and credulous good people and shake them, shouting, ‘That is not how democracy works! Use your vote to express your feelings, not to win an election! One vote for us means one more reason for the liars and cheats to tread softly! Don’t you see that they depend upon that attitude of resignation? Stand up and be counted! Fight! Your children’s freedoms depend upon it!’
I didn’t, of course. I just smiled and nodded and thought, ‘Dear Christ! They really haven’t a clue what’s being done to them in their own name…’ but then, neither had I until the gods stepped in with their beetles and testicles jokes.
But every widening of the eyes as realisation dawned, every gritting of the teeth as anger gripped, every good wish and assurance of support was to me exhilarating as the moment when a fresh-run spring salmon hits or a resistant goddess strikes her colours and reaches out a hand. I was able to get through to people and the message was at once important and pressing.
I was hooked.
*
I was invited to join the ‘General Committee’, soon to become the National Executive Committee. I accepted. I caused the occasional stir amongst the dry academics and professionals by swanning in, glowing like a pippin in a striped blazer and flannels after a day at Lord’s and from time to time behaving really quite disrespectfully towards Sked.
In those days, my rare holidays were expensive and impressive expeditions with friends – game-fishing in Africa, following the England cricket team to Barbados and the like. I had also started ‘Farage’s Foragers’ on the Western Front battlefields.
Farage’s Foragers were four-day historical and gastronomic feasts organised by ex-Royal Marine Lieutenant Colonel David Storrie and his wife Linda, who looked after the wounded each morning. For several years, Professor Richard Holmes was our lecturer. I don’t spend much time being wistful, but thinking about those expeditions does it every time.
I was away on one such holiday when, in September 1993, the historic meeting was held at which the League became a party.
The meeting had been called ‘to discuss the items left unresolved from the last meeting on 6 August’ at which it had been agreed that the League should ‘take on the name and structure of a populist party’ in order to fight the 1994 European elections.
Although this was an obvious and necessary step for a body intent on the assertion of democracy, I suspect that it had remained unresolved at the earlier meeting because Sked did not want his infant adolescing and moving beyond his control. As Moelwyn-Hughes remembers, ‘He refused to believe that anyone had skills other than his own or that, if they had, they had value. He could not delegate. Everything was always about Alan, and all decisions must be referred to him. He was certainly no administrator, and, as soon as this was pointed out, he flew into a fury.’
All the other committee members, however, wanted the League to grow up and go to war. Gerard Batten even wrote a paper proposing that members should stand for the European Parliament but should, if successful, refuse to take their seats just as Sinn Fein had refused to take up theirs at Westminster.
There was a lengthy debate about the name of the new party. John Harvey insisted that it be short, self-explanatory and unambiguous. ‘The British Independence Party’, ‘The British Independence League’, ‘The Independent Britain Party’, ‘British Democracy’, ‘The British Democratic Party’ and ‘The British and European Freedom Party’ were all rejected, not because of post-imperial guilt on the part of members, which, quite properly, did not exist, but because such neurosis was widespread elsewhere and because other organisations such as the vile British National Party had already tainted that once proud epithet. Besides, we were eager to stress the Union.
‘The Freedom Party’ was attractive, but, although I was a libertarian to my fingertips and would have welcomed the chance to fight for the nation’s cross-dressers, swingers, naturists, prostitutes, adult nappy-wearers, consensual cannibals and the like who would no doubt have flocked to our fold, they might have been a distraction from the main agenda, and not all committee members were as generally libertarian as I.
‘The Majority Party’ surely cursed itself as, proverbially, does naming a racehorse ‘Hard to Beat’ or ‘Lightning’. We were prepared for embarrassment, but did not need to add that assured by ‘Majority Party, two votes’ at the election count. Nor, for that matter, did success offer easier prospects. ‘John Bloggs, MP MP for Milton Keynes’ did not trip off the tongue.
‘The Reform Party’ and ‘The Resurgence Party’ would have rung down the ages had we triumphed, but in truth they belonged in the history books. They were altogether too magnificent and, like many magnificent phrases, too vague (think of all those wonderful battles fought for the non-specific la gloire and l’honneur… Then count French battle honours).