Prejudice

An open letter to my friend Gareth.

I am reminded of my time at university, in particular the occasions my friends and I would go to the bright lights of Broad Street on a Saturday Night, just a few chaps, no girls (one of the occupational hazards of studying Electronic Engineering) (OK, to be honest, one of the occupational hazards of being a total geekazoid).

Having ironed a shirt, polished shoes, walked into town and queued outside one of the smart new bars in Birmingham's rejuvenated city centre, being denied entry by virtue of our gender was galling. "Sorry lads, not tonight", the all too familiar message from the door staff. After politely enquiring why, I was always told (less politely, sometimes) that this was because we were a group of lads, and it's always groups of lads that 'cause trouble'.

How dare they? They didn't know me, or my friends. How could they make the judgement that we were a gang of drunken hooligans hell-bent on causing trouble? All we wanted was to do enjoy a few drinks and find new ways to fail miserably at chatting up similarly aged young women far, far out of our league.

Let's get things into perspective, I was a young, white, straight man being denied entry to a bar. This was no 'Rosa Parks' moment. I wasn't being denied a job, a place at a school or the chance to vote. But I'll bet the knot in my stomach, the sense of injustice, the anger at being unfairly excluded was exactly the same - albeit at one hundredth of the magnitude of that felt every day by people who are gay, disabled or of an ethnic minority, for reasons that can make their lives very difficult indeed.

It is for this reason that I object so strongly when I hear people casually labelling us Ukippers as 'racist', 'sexist', 'xenophobic' or 'homophobic' on the basis of an unpleasant utterance by a misguided voter or party member. It's horrible. It's wrong, and we don't deserve it. I feel that old familiar knot in my stomach.

If a party member says something out-of-order, they are reprimanded and kicked out. When a voter expresses an unsavoury opinion, there is no hesitation in setting them straight on our fair policies. No question. The vast majority of the 50,000 Ukip members are fair-minded, decent people who want to make a positive difference to their country. The bitter irony is that labelling them, or our party on the basis of the actions of a few individuals is a prejudice, just like the any of the abhorrent 'isms' mentioned above.

It is to the shame of the major parties and the left-wing fringe that they have adopted the strategy of attempting to discredit UKIP by throwing these names at our party. Not only is this prejudiced and unfair, it robs those words of their true impact. Soon, the words 'fascist'* and 'racist' will come to mean 'I don't agree with you'.

* Fascism is described in the dictionary as the 'forcible suppression of opposition and criticism'. If that's not a perfect description of the tactics employed by the labour-funded thug-groups 'League Against Fascism' and 'Hope Not Hate' in their campaign to silence UKIP, I don't know what is.