junius

This email was sent by Dr Abbott to numerous UKIP members.

Several times my website has pointed out that most of the world's popular games and sports began in Britain because we Brits understood the importance of rules. You can't have a game without them.

Rules have to be fair, agreed and understood ahead of time, and obeyed. If the rules are broken, there are penalties. The rules are not to be ignored or changed in the middle of the game. The umpire or referee has to be unbiased.

This is the British way, and it has worked for centuries. Without rules that are understood and willingly obeyed, nobody wins and nobody has a good time.

Lack of success and a distinct lack of a good time now distinguish UKIP.

Where UKIP has rules, they are ignored if it suits the leadership. Often there are no rules and no rule book. Minutes are not always kept. Rules are selectively applied to favour the few and to afflict others. Lack of fair play is sapping the life of our party.

A recent manifestation was the selection process for the MEP lists. A man who had once been my hero was going to be the trusted umpire who would ensure that the rules for the selection process were fairly applied. Instead there were significant breaches of those rules. Lynnda Robson described breaches that affected her in some detail, and we have all had communications about rule-breaking from many other complainants.

This uneven application of the rules is a disgrace. It seems to have been directed by the leadership.

Until our party leadership adopts again the ethics of its members, which is to say British habits of keeping to the rules, fair play and honesty, it is hard to envision any future success for the party.

This situation is tragic because we were looking to the party to lead us out of the morass of the EU. Instead the leadership seems to have adopted the EU's reckless attitude toward rules and indifference to ethics, particularly Judaeo-Christian ethics.

I am sending this to several interested party members. If you are an NEC member, please vote with your conscience at NEC meetings, and do not succumb to the continuing pressure that legitimizes rule-bending. If you are not a member of the NEC, but have friends who are, please encourage them to do the right thing.

Yours sincerely,


David

David F Abbott MRCP

junius

Here is Mr Denny's reply.


David, You say:- If you are an NEC member, please vote with your conscience at NEC meetings, and do not succumb to the continuing pressure that legitimizes rule-bending. I always have done so. Are you suggesting I do not?

Douglas.

junius

Here is Mr West's reply:


Dear David,

Thank you for your email. I am glad to see that there are still people of principle and honesty on the NEC.

We have all witnessed UKIP’s collapse since 2004 and the sharp decline in membership numbers. I personally feel saddened that our party has been reduced to little more than a cult where the cry is ‘the Leader is always right!’ Under the current leadership we will be lucky to get a single MEP elected or re-elected in 2009.

Perhaps the fact that this outrageous debacle has occurred will spur members to push for greater competence, honesty and transparency in our party, especially at the very top. A true leader listens to his members. He does not ignore them. I hope that in the future a new leader will appoint honest, competent staff and officers, find competent legal support and generally act in a more professional manner. UKIP needs a clear and visible structure of accountability. It would seem that although the NEC are in the main liable they are in many instances men and women of straw without the courage or integrity to speak out against injustice. Their recent refusal to accept Mr Merchant’s recommendations, the unlawful removal of Eric Edmond and their inability to adhere to the Party Constitution are simply the latest examples of this.

May I congratulate the handful of NEC members who are fighting for transparency, honesty and a sense of responsibility. Once I did not believe the rumours or the statements of past leadership contenders, past chairmen and past NEC members who had quit in disgust after failing to reform UKIP and make it a true alternative to the old party system. Sadly it has become all too obvious that the party in its present form is corrupt, bullying and incompetent. Unless it is cleaned-up now UKIP will remain unelectable. However, I still hope and believe that a better, stronger UKIP will emerge once the current leadership has been replaced.

I have been accused by senior UKIP individuals of being naïve. Some have even suggested that I should ignore the corruption and ‘move on’. I have always replied to them that to ignore the problem means that you are part of the problem. This is something I am not prepared to do. I believe in my Country. I am a Patriot who wishes to see Great Britain free to make her own laws. I want to see this land governed by our own Parliament who are, unlike the EU, accountable directly to the people. I still believe that UKIP can become a force to be reckoned with but only if it can be reformed.

Nigel Farage would do well to heed the words of Oliver Cromwell who when faced with an inept and incompetent clique of self-serving MPs used these words: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

Yours sincerely,
John West
Chairman UKIP Ipswich & East Suffolk
Secretary UKIP Suffolk Coastal

SponPlague

Last time the membership kicked out the NEC for rule-breaching, guess what: they rigged the election rules, and most of the discredited ones returned

junius

Of course.

Mark Croucher

I'm so glad that you're against members of the NEC lying and bending the rules to keep their position. Thus I look forward to you joining the campaign to have David Abbott removed for donating money to the BNP, attending BNP fundraising dinners, meeting Nick Griffin, attending the American Renaissance conference - basic premise: blacks are genetically stupider than whites - and then lying about all of the above.

I'll be sure to forward your agreement that such behaviour is disgraceful, and that of John West, to the NEC, who I am sure will appreciate your support in its efforts to clean out the BNP infiltrators.

Best regards,

Mark

Anthony Butcher

Ah, the off-topic, repeat spam attack on David Abbott. You ignored my question last time you raised this.

The very temporary BNP issue of David Abbott was known when he joined the NEC. Your complaints were discussed in depth at the time and supported by Richard Scuhorzewski who agreed with you that it was a problem. However, it was Farage who pushed strongly for David Abbott to be brought on to the NEC, knowing the full history. If the party leader accepted it three years ago, as did most of the NEC, and he has had nothing to do with the BNP since, why do you feel the need to keep running this smear campaign against him? He has never been a BNP member, and as far as I know hasn't met Nick Griffin, but even if he had... so what? You met GLW. Does that make you a GLW supporter? It's a pretty pathetic attack.

If you want to have a go at him, why not concentrate on something he has done while in UKIP, or while on the NEC... i.e. something that is relevant?

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Mark Croucher

Because the more you look at what Abbott says, the less it holds water. Which of course begs the question as to what else he is concealing.

He met Griffin twice at least, which is a touch more than careless. First at an American Renaissance conference, where the BNP leader thoughtfully gave his views on why blacks are thick, and then at a Trafalgar Club dinner - the Trafalgar Club being a BNP fundraising arm. More information about these matters constantly comes to light, and I disagreed strongly with Nigel in any case that Abbott should be retained, particularly as he was so deliberately misleading right from the word go about his links to the BNP.

Without getting into a slanging match about it, I have no problem with former far-righters who have grown up and acknowledged their past mistakes openly and honestly. There are a number within UKIP, as we are both aware. This openness is essential if the party is to defend itself over links to the far-right. Abbott was told when this first came to light that we simply needed to know the truth in order to defend him, and instead UKIP was made to look stupid, because his cast iron assurances that he was telling the truth turned out to be worthless. Instead, there has been a constant drip, drip, drip of allegations against him, most of which, despite his initial denials, have turned out to be true. As a party, this makes UKIP look like it is colluding with him in attempting to minimise the damage rather than being open and honest. Hence my laughter at his call for openness and honesty within UKIP, when clearly he does not seem to believe this should apply to him.

Add to that his attitude to Doug Denny, to whom he had a solicitors letter sent in an attempt to shut him up about this. The very worst in cowardly, bullying behaviour, particularly as he didn't waste his money by sending me one as he would have been told where to go.

Abbott is of course free to be a nazi if he so wishes. It is just unfortunate that he is in the wrong party.

M

Geoffrey Collier

Mark Croucher: While I have no intention of engaging in smears against another person, for the record, David Abbott has been a long-time donor to an organisation assisting Native American's welfare (Red Indians), He worked to help a black American politician enter the U.S. Senate, and also donates to a Jewish political organisation. Obviously you must finds such things objectionable. He refused to join the BNP, but assisted one of their number who was in personal difficulties. It was his difficulties that he was endeavouring to help, not his political views.

Unlike Titford, Nattrass, Carver, Smalley, and others, he did not join an extremist political party, like the New Britain Party, let a lone be one of their parliamentary candidates. Furthermore, he did not ask. a former National Front organiser to be his G.E. agent, or ask a Libertarian, (with unpleasant toleration of certain literature) to be a UKIP MEP candidate. Didn't you, Mr Croucher, support an application by a convicted fraudster to be employed as a UKIP press officer? As the legal gentlemen say, 'He who comes to Equity, must come with clean hands', that also applies in many other situations.

eublues

"Abbott is of course free to be a nazi if he so wishes. It is just unfortunate that he is in the wrong party.

M"

To think that the author of this once had a key PR role within UKIP!