This is a guest post by Hasan Afzal of Stand for Peace
Councillor Grant French was, until very recently, a UKIP councillor who serves in Stocksbridge Town Council. In 2010, Mr French was the UKIP PPC for Penistone & Stocksbridge. After a number of twitter users complained about Mr French’s twitter feed, we decided to check it out. It appears Mr French made a number of controversial tweets which could be interpreted as anti-semitic.
Here is Mr French saying the Jewish race is endemically racist:
Here is Mr French questioning the holocaust:
In the tweet below, it appears Mr French believes that ‘free speech’ is curtailed because of ‘their masters’, this appears to be consistent with the far-right belief of Jewish conspiracies running the world:
Mr French continues to use the conspiracy line:
Here, Mr French considers the ‘Jewish race’ as racist and his explanation for Israel’s existence is built on ‘uniculturalism’ and ‘teaching its [Israeli] children racial supremacy’:
Bizarrely, Mr French considers the Arab/Israeli conflict as a conflict of ‘multiculture’:
After being ridiculed by three separate tweeters, he resorts to calling other twitter users ‘nazis’:
Finally, Mr French taunts a Jewish user for questioning his beliefs, asking ‘how many non-Jews in your family?’:
When these tweets were made aware to us, we did some research on Mr French and found a few other interesting opinions Mr French holds. In a Christian blog in 2010, a user called ‘Grant French UKIP PPC’ (who we assume is, indeed, Mr French), said the following to Nick Clegg’s message to Christian voters: “he’d be making sure enough homosexual slant was being put on sex lessons for 7 year olds“.
It appears Mr French commends those of faith, unless you happen to be from a different one. In the same website, he made the following comment on religion in Britain: “Over the Brown/Blair years Britain has become far more religious. Places of worship are popping up everywhere. Only one slight problem, they’re Mosques“. Oh dear.
It appears though, that unlike other manifestations of far-right sentiment in the party, UKIP have been quick to listen to our concerns and have acted on that. In a statement to Stand for Peace, a UKIP press officer had the following to say:
“Grant French has fully apologised for his comments. He has offered his resignation as chairman our of the Stockbridge and Penistone branch which has been accepted.”
Good. I’m glad to see UKIP took this matter seriously and came to the opinion that someone of Mr French’s opinions can have no place in their party.
I don’t believe UKIP is a racist party, but does it have a sizeable minority of members who believe anything from Muslims making up a fifth column to ‘zionist’ masters inhibiting free speech? You bet.
