This thread has been triggered off by Biscuitman quoting me on the Peter Baker trial thread and, no offence Biscuitman but you left out a sentence of the quote which to me justifies why I raised the fight back issue. Please allow me to explain, I wrote:-
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When are the victims of the leadership's disgraceful behaviour going to re-group & fight back?
Are any of the victims or the 'old' Lechlade group planning to launch a new party and deliberately target UKIP or Veritas members?
Let me know please, I'd be very interested.
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I joined this forum 2 years ago and quickly became oriented to the Lechlade Group way of thinking about how UKIP should progress. I did fully intend to come to an LG meeting a year ago but a last minute hitch prevented me.
I still maintain that leaving Europe can only be done via a Westminster vote and thus can only be done by a majority of MPs in the ruling party. Even if there is a majority of MPs in the house, you cannot guarantee a co-ordinated vote for withdrawal. What’s all this to do with Lechlade? Well, I fondly believed, and still do, that UKIP could become a broad church party i.e. have a spectrum of policies to attract voters from all parties and I saw LG as a vehicle to invigorate the old UKIP leadership. Somebody else once put it succinctly (sorry I can’t remember who to give credit to), that if NF only targets disaffected Tories, UKIP will stay a disaffected Tory pressure group
Throughout the leadership campaign it became obvious to me that NF particularly wanted no truck with any potential opposition to his vision. Despite:-
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Our meetings were attended by many party luminaries: Roger Knapman, Nigel Farage, Gerard Batten, Derek Clarke, Geoffrey Kingscott, Malcom Wood, Steve Harris, Steve Allinson, Lawrence Webb and many branch chairmen.
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I believe I have seen many posts herein quoting NF derogatory comments about the LG (as usual I can’t find them when I want to quote them)
I admit to being pretty politically naïve – but it seemed obvious to me that NF would purge his enemies when he won. However, they all seemed to have helped him by lying down & being trampled underfoot. I accept that I didn’t know what it was really like on the NEC and the top of UKIP and with hindsight the resignations are understandable.
As an avid forum watcher, I was dumbfounded in the weeks after the election that nobody seemed to suggest a fight back. Following the Peter Baker farce I felt I had to say something even though I’m a million miles from being your typical backroom agitator.
I do take heart from Biscuitman’s last sentence though.
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Whether we will take to the road again is open to discussion, we've had invites and I'd like to do a few but at the moment, as I said it is a watching brief for now.
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