Flying Free (9 page)

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.

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 M
₄
?’

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).

Nobody much wanted ‘UK’ or ‘United Kingdom’ in the party’s name. It is cumbersome and enables the unthinking to associate us with British supremacists. We were not a nationalist group, but believers in
self-determination
for all people, peoples and cultures. On the other hand, we happened to be British and happened to be battling in this instance on our own behalf against a specific threat in an international arena.

‘UK Independence Party’ was resolved upon quite simply because it succinctly declared our origin and our principal aim. Further resurgence and reform must wait until our own nation had won freedom from the EU. From the outset, the committee decided that they would refer to the Party by its acronyms. ‘United Kingdom’ would not be used on letterheads or in conversation. We would be the UK Independence Party or UKIP.

So far, so good.

Now the enduring headaches were set in place. Sked’s hasty Constitution, affording an absurd degree of security of tenure to the leader, was adopted. The General Committee named itself the Executive Committee and limited itself to fourteen members (of whom, it appeared, I was one), and the party would hold an annual conference during the traditional autumn conference season.

On to battle-plans. UKIP would contest the 1994 European elections. Gerard Batten and John Harvey would recruit eighty-seven candidates. Gerard would also approach wealthy individuals and organisations for badly needed financial support.

He had already written to one James Goldsmith, the ultimate ‘wrong but wromantic’ gambler, asset-stripper, buccaneer and cosmopolitan lone
wolf who had already supplied considerable funding to the European Foundation, a Eurosceptic think-tank. Goldsmith had replied, ‘I am grateful for your suggestions. However, I will continue to fight for the cause, but on a non-party-political basis.’

He must have kept tabs on this insolent new grouping, however, and observed its rise because, of course, in the 1997 general election, his
short-lived
Referendum Party was to steal much of our thunder, supply a focal point for Eurosceptic feeling in Britain and, incidentally, prove a rich source of talent for UKIP.

My absence meant that I also missed the first skirmish in another dispute which was to torment us in years to come. It was, of course, purely academic, even fanciful at the time, but the committee now considered just what it would do should we manage to return members to the EU Parliament.

Sked was adamant and high-principled. In taking his seat, a member could be seen as legitimising the parliament and British participation in the European project, which our members could evidently never do. The seat must remain vacant. John Harvey suggested that successful candidates should visit Brussels just once, make a speech demanding independence and retire to Britain.

Helen Szamuely, a woman and so, for all her brilliance, never so academic or so principled as to abandon pragmatism, held, as would I, that the voters deserved something more than a high-minded and ultimately impotent gesture in exchange for their votes, and that a UKIP MEP would be uniquely privileged to increase public awareness of the corruption and waste in the parliament.