Martin Smith reflects on how one song and two singers came to represent opposition and resistance to Hitler in the Second World War
One of the most beautiful and certainly most popular songs of the Second World War was Lili Marlene.
A poem written in 1915, it was first recorded by German singer Lale Andersen in 1939 and was titled Das Mädchen unter der Laterne (The Girl under the Lantern). Another hugely popular version was recorded by Marlene Dietrich, a German exile living in the USA.
The German forces’ radio station, Soldatensender Belgrad (Soldiers’ Radio Belgrade) popularised Andersen’s version of the song and played it on rotation. Its powerful transmitter meant that both Nazi and Allied frontline soldiers in the Mediterranean, Europe and the East listened.
The record became a huge hit among both German and Allied soldiers.
Yet the Nazis, and in particular its propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, detested the song. They believed that its pessimistic and defeatist lyrics were bad for the morale of German troops.
Goebbels also had a visceral hatred of Andersen.
Goebbels snubbed
Andersen was not involved in any anti‑Nazi resistance movement, but she rejected the state’s anti-Semitism. Her support for the Jews of Germany was known by the Nazi authorities – they had intercepted her “friendly” correspondence with German Jewish refugees living in Switzerland.
Recently translated Nazi documents of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto record that Andersen was invited to perform a concert for the Nazi ghetto guards. Andersen refused the invite.
This snub was too much for Goebbels, he had Andersen arrested in 1942 and charged with “undermining the troops’ morale”.
The singer’s popularity probably saved her from being sent to a prison camp, but she was barred from performing.
Over the following year, German soldiers made demands on their leaders to see Andersen perform and in particular hear the song Lili Marlene.
As the situation in the Eastern Front deteriorated and the German army suffered a series of military defeats, Goebbels was forced to rescind the ban. He allowed Andersen to perform again in late 1943, but on one condition – that she did not sing that song.
At her first concert after the ban was lifted the audience stamped their feet and demanded she sang Lili Marlene. When the audience realised that she was not going to sing it, they sang it themselves.
The Nazis officially banned the song in 1944.
Hypnotic version
Across the Atlantic, a German in exile, singer Marlene Dietrich, was also singing her version of the song.
Unlike Andersen, Dietrich publicly opposed the Nazis. She cut her teeth in the left cabaret scene in Weimar Germany and became a major film star in Germany during the 1920s.
Spencer Tracy (as Chief Trial Judge Dan Haywood) and Marlene Dietrich (as the widow of a Nazi general, who gives witness) in the fictionalised account of one of the trials of nazi generals, the film ‘Judgment at Nuremberg‘
In 1930 she moved to Hollywood, USA, and became a huge box office star making a series of major films including The Devil is a Woman, Shanghai Express and Blonde Venus.
Steven Bach’s excellent biography, Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend argued that she held left/liberal political convictions. He revealed that she and film-maker Billy Wilder helped Jews and dissidents escape from Germany. In 1937, her entire salary for Knight Without Armor ($450,000) was used to help Jewish refugees.
In 1939, she became a US citizen and renounced her German citizenship. When the USA entered the war in 1941, Dietrich became one of the first Hollywood stars to help sell war bonds.
She sang for Allied troops across Europe. When US troops entered Germany, she performed for them on the front line. The song the troops always wanted to hear was her hypnotic version of Lili Marlene.
In 1944, the Morale Operations Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) initiated the Musak project – musical propaganda broadcasts designed to demoralise Nazi soldiers. Dietrich recorded Lili Marlene for the project, it was hugely popular.
Dietrich would remain a major star for decades after the war. In 1961, she appeared in Stanley Kramer’s film Judgment at Nuremberg, a powerful portrayal of the post-war Nazi trials.
In it, Lili Marlene makes a memorable appearance sung by a choir and hummed by Dietrich as she walks along the street with Spencer Tracy discussing the poignancy and beauty of the German lyrics and her hatred of Hitler.
Goebbels was right to fear the power of Lili Marlene, it continued to haunt the Nazis long after the regime was reduced to ashes.
Underneath the lantern, By the barrack gate Darling I remember The way you used to wait T’was there that you whispered tenderly, That you loved me, You’d always be, My Lili of the Lamplight, My own Lili Marlene
Top Photo: During Marlene Dietrich’s visits to Europe to sing before Allied troops in the Second World War Lili Marlene was always top of the request list
This article first appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of Searchlight
Searchlight has been reporting for several months on the increasing radicalisation of right-wing parties. Not just the obviously racist and neo-nazi right, but the constellation of parties and groups that are just outside the Conservative Party (and sometimes overlap with the Tory right).
The clearest example of this came a fortnight ago when David Kurten (above, left), leader of the Heritage Party (which broke away from UKIP in 2020) publicly aligned himself with nazis mourning the death of Ursula Haverbeck, (above, right) one of the world’s most notorious Holocaust deniers.
Kurten wrote (wrongly) that Haverbeck had “died in prison in Germany under anti-free-speech laws for ‘Holocaust denial’.”
Note the scare quotes around ‘Holocaust denial’, implying that Kurten doesn’t believe that such a concept exists, just as he didn’t believe that the pandemic existed. He went on to call Haverbeck’s case “a grave injustice”.
Kurten clearly cares nothing for either political truth or historical truth. His first and most basic error is that Haverbeck died not in prison but in her own bed at home in Vlotho, Germany. She left prison four years ago after serving a two-year sentence.
It’s true that Haverbeck has repeatedly been in court and given further prison sentences, but none of these had been enforced. And the reason she has been in court so many times is that she set out deliberately to break German law.
This was a tactic promoted by Haverbeck’s fellow nazis Ernst Zündel and Horst Mahler. They believed that by defying the law and getting sent to prison, they would stimulate the growth of a larger and more militant neo-nazi and Holocaust denial movement.
That’s why Horst Mahler, for example, responded to his prison sentence by writing an even more extreme antisemitic hate manifesto and having it smuggled out of his jail cell, then after his release skipping bail and fleeing to Hungary, knowing this would result in further prosecutions.
None of this amounts to “injustice”, let alone “grave injustice”. As with any other law in any democratic country, one can agree or disagree with whether particular acts should be criminalised. But once a law is on the statute book, there is nothing unfair about the criminal justice system setting out to punish someone who deliberately and repeatedly breaks the law.
Until the late 1960s it would have been perfectly legal for someone like David Kurten – whose father was Jamaican – to be abused in the street, or at school, or in his workplace, or denied employment or refused service in a bar or restaurant, solely because of his race. As with any other law, those against inciting racial hatred or discriminating on grounds of race were debated in Parliament, and some people opposed them on free speech grounds. But no-one could in 2024 set out to break those laws by abusing Kurten repeatedly and grossly, then claim “injustice” if they were prosecuted.
Before setting out to defend Haverbeck, Kurten should have informed himself about just who she was.
Ursula Haverbeck was a lifelong, dedicated nazi. Her political activity was at first linked to her partner and eventual husband Werner Haverbeck, who served to the rank of Untersturmführer in Hitler’s SA and SS.
Werner Haverbeck joined what became the Hitler Youth in 1923, ten years before Hitler came to power, and first attempted to become a full member of the Nazi Party in 1926 even before he was old enough to be eligible. He joined the SA (the notorious stormtrooper section of the party) in 1928, and the SS in 1936.
At various times Haverbeck served on the personal staff of Hitler’s deputy führer Rudolf Hess, and in academic and propaganda branches of the Nazi Party.
Because Kurten is an idiot as well as being a far-right extremist, he accompanied his social media posts with a photo of a modern nazi in fancy dress (Cecily Amanda Forrell) under the mistaken impression that this was a photo of the young Haverbeck.
But then accuracy has never been Kurten’s forte. He repeatedly spread disinformation and conspiracy theories during the pandemic, and under his leadership Heritage has become the most obsessively anti-vax of Britain’s far right parties.
Had he bothered to do any research before looking for another online “free speech” bandwagon, Kurten would have discovered that the Holocaust denial scene is packed with both neo-nazis and those who (like Haverbeck) are the original article.
Ernst Zündel, one of the world’s most prolific publishers of Holocaust denial literature, was already an active follower of the Canadian nazi Adrien Arcand, long before taking up fake history. Arcand proudly called himself the “Canadian Führer”.
David Irving, the best-known British holocaust denier, was a young supporter of Sir Oswald Mosley in the late 1950s and actively promoted racist causes as a student, before beginning a lifetime of acting as a nazi apologist with close connections to both Third Reich veterans and violent British extremists.
Anthony Hancock, the Brighton printer who produced Holocaust denial material for clients worldwide, was a second generation racist and fascist, as well as a criminal forger and fraudster. Another active Holocaust denier in Britain was Richard Edmonds, who spent almost fifty years as a leading official of nazi parties: first the NF, then the BNP, then the NF again.
Germar Rudolf, now 60, who is probably the most active Holocaust denier on today’s scene, was a student activist in several far-right groups before beginning his “research” into the Auschwitz gas chambers.
Manfred Roeder, one of the earliest German Holocaust deniers, was also leader of a nazi terrorist gang, convicted for his role in a group that firebombed asylum seekers’ homes, leading to two murders.
Pedro Varela, Spain’s most active Holocaust denier, has served several prison sentences and was also President of the most notorious Spanish nazi group CEDADE. He worked closely with one of the pioneers of Holocaust denial, the fugitive Belgian nazi Léon Degrelle who was a Standartenführer in the SS and a personal favourite of Adolf Hitler.
When David Kurten stands up for the “freedom” of Holocaust deniers he is standing up for some of the most active hatemongers in the world. Holocaust denial is a key part of neo-nazism and antisemitism. If Kurten doesn’t realise that, he is too stupid to be leading a political party. If he does realise it and doesn’t care, then he is a disgrace to British politics and should be treated as a dangerous extremist.
It’s been an eventful few months on the Tommy Robinson front since Searchlight last went to press. He has orchestrated two national rallies in London, only one of which he was able to attend, gone on the run in a number of European countries, come back, been jailed, and may now be forging a political alliance with the new look Christian-nationalist UKIP. Read on …
Some 15,000 are estimated to have attended his end of July “Unite the Kingdom” rally in Westminster. As always, the date was chosen to fall close to a court appearance, in this case, a contempt of court hearing arising from the libel action he lost in 2021 over allegations he made against a Syrian schoolboy. When the boy and his family sued for libel, they were awarded £100,000 in damages. Robinson, aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also had to pay costs and was made subject to an injunction not to repeat the allegations. This is absolutely normal procedure in a successful libel case. But it was not one with which Robinson had any intention of complying.
He went on to repeat the allegations in a documentary he claimed he had nothing to do with, but Hope Not Hate assembled a dossier of evidence demonstrating clearly that he was deeply involved. That evidence went to the Attorney General who decided that it merited prosecution. Then, Robinson went one further: he showed the documentary at the July rally in Whitehall in an open and flagrant contempt of court. Further charges were inevitably added to the charge sheet.
Instead of facing the charges, he skipped the country. But that only added to his problems. His first attempt to flee, crossing the channel by Eurotunnel, ended up with him refusing to co-operate with a port police search, by not handing over the PIN to his phone. This led to him being arrested and bailed on suspicion of an offence under the Terrorism Act. He skipped back to London, jumped on a Eurostar train and headed off to Europe again, this time successfully.
Rest and recreation
As Searchlight has had cause to point out before, Robinson enjoys Irish citizenship and travels on an Irish passport. This allows the fervent Brexit supporter to spend as much time as he likes in Europe – and he takes full advantage of this, based for most of the year in the south of Spain tanning himself and indulging his favoured mood-modifying recreational pursuits.
This time he ended up in a luxury resort in Ayia Napa in Cyprus where he stretched out on his sunbed and relaxed until he was tracked down and photographed, whereupon he skipped off again, this time to Athens.
By now, however, England was becoming engulfed in the racist riots, which broke out after the dreadful murder of three young girls in Southport. Robinson’s racist street-gang mates were in the thick of it and one of his lieutenants, Danny Tommo, went online to directly incite violence: “Every city must go up!” he ranted. Robinson was more circumspect, but streaming from his sun lounger he betrayed his evident satisfaction as the anti-Muslim hatred he has been cultivating for years erupted into a festival of racist violence.
He eventually ended up in one of his favourite hidey-holes, Benidorm in Spain, where he sunned himself until his return at the end of October.
By this time, he was in legal jeopardy on two fronts: the contempt charges were almost certainly going to get him jailed; but now there was also a potential Terrorism Act charge looming. He had to answer bail on the Terrorism Act matter on Friday 25 October and appear in court on the contempt charges on Monday 28th.
True to form, he tried to put pressure on the authorities by convening his next London “Unite the Kingdom” demonstration for the weekend in between those two dates. It had originally been scheduled for two weeks earlier, on 12 October, but was moved to the end of the month at his insistence.
Bailed and banged up
In the meantime, online, Robinson pleaded with his gullible supporters to pump money into his “legal fund” and issued thinly veiled threats to the authorities – and Keir Starmer in particular – that his “movement” would be furious were he to be jailed.
It didn’t play out quite as he had hoped. When he arrived at Folkestone police station to answer bail on the Friday, the day before the rally, he was charged with an offence under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, and bailed. But an arrest warrant was then executed for the contempt charges. This meant he was banged up in custody and would not be attending his Saturday event.
The rally went ahead anyway, but attracting only the same sort of numbers as the July demo – some 15,000‑20,000 – it was not the mass outpouring of outraged racist sentiment that he had been counting on. The mood was downbeat, the speakers were largely dull, and thousands did not even bother to hang around to see his latest documentary offering on a big screen. Then, on the Monday, appearing at Woolwich Crown Court, he was sent down for 18 months, with the judge’s words that “no-one is above the law” ringing in his ears.
The fact that he chose to plead guilty to all 10 contempt charges did not play well with many sections of the far right. For months he had been pleading for funds for his legal case, assuring everyone that he was going to fight it even if this was expensive. In the end, he surrendered and went off to jail quietly, but with some £100,000 pocketed and money still pouring in. Organised far-right groups like Patriotic Alternative and Alek Yerbury’s National Rebirth Party led the charge, accusing him of using the case to line his own pocket.
Sneaky stunt
There has, however, been one significant political development out of all this.
When she resigned as leader of UKIP during the general election campaign, Lois Perry said that one reason she was quitting was that there was something “sinister” going on “at the very top of the party”, where some people “wanted to go after quite an extreme viewpoint”.
Specifically, she said, they wanted a tie-up with Tommy Robinson. That now appears to be happening. Her successor, convicted thug Nick Tenconi, has been driving UKIP in a new direction, as a party of the Christian nationalist new right. But it has been haemorrhaging members over the past year and its leaders, Tenconi and chairman Ben Walker, have been looking enviously at Robinson’s ability to raise large sums of money, seemingly with little effort.
Tommy Robinson is now wooing UKIP and its leader Nick Tenconi (bottom left); Robinson is pictured (top) with his fixer and UKIP NEC member Richard Inman (right) and Laurence Fox (centre), and (bottom right) with UKIP ‘Lead Spokesman’ Calvin Robinson
Only days before returning to the UK, Robinson said in an online interview: “UKIP are far stronger than any other political party. I believe that Nick has shown great leadership … You need a people’s party that is not going to kick the working class and not going to deem them as racist and far right which [Reform UK leader] Nigel Farage has done multiple times.
“I like UKIP. I actually messaged the lads … Nick [Tenconi] and …Ben Walker, to have a discussion with them.”
Robinson made clear that he has no time for Reform UK, because Farage does not oppose “demographic replacement” and is not committed to “mass deportations”.
“I thought, ‘let Reform be the political party and us be the cultural movement’. But I saw Nigel Farage’s cowardice in the week of taking over, saw him select the Muslim, who funded him the most money, to be the chairman, and I thought, ‘well you’re never going to deal with the Islamisation of this nation’.
“So there does need to be a political party that pushes them, so maybe UKIP’s that solution … I hope to meet the boys when I get back if I’m not in jail.”
UKIP posted this endorsement online adding, laughably, “UKIP stands firmly with Tommy and the British working class”.
Then, only days before the London rally, UKIP Chairman Walker announced the names of the people who would be filling the 11 vacancies on the UKIP NEC. One of those was Richard Inman, Tommy Robinson’s main fixer and the organiser of his London rallies. The platform at the rally was stuffed with UKIP faces. Two of them, leader Nick Tenconi and the party’s Wales spokesman Stan Robinson, one half of the racist Voice of Wales (VoW) online blog and also recently appointed to the NEC, were allowed to speak.
Shamelessly, they also allowed Dan Morgan, Welsh UKIP activist and the other half of VoW, to parade on the platform, despite the fact he is a recently convicted fraudster, involved in a scam that robbed many elderly and vulnerable people of their savings.
Tommy Robinson’s main fixer and newly appointed UKIP NEC member Richard Inman (left) inspires the faithful at Robinson’s July rally; UKIP mates (right) Dan Morgan (left) and Stan Robinson (right) share a beer in the sun while visiting Tommy Robinson in Spain
Both Stan Robinson and Morgan had been hanging out with Robinson in Spain, and accompanied him on the plane when he flew back to the UK.
Stan Robinson used the platform to echo Tommy Robinson in slagging off Farage and Reform UK. They all know that most of their followers voted Reform in the general election so, if they are going to build a new popular racist party, they have to put clear water between them. Calvin Robinson, the right-wing “reverend” who is both on the UKIP NEC and a chum of Tommy Robinson, used his last interview before hopping off to the US to similarly bash Farage.
We can expect the attacks on Farage to become more frequent and vociferous if this unsavoury political marriage between UKIP and Tommy Robinson develops, and they struggle to compete with Reform UK for support from the Islamophobes and racists who threw their votes behind Farage in the general election.
At the end of October, ‘Tommy Robinson’ held his last national ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London. He, of course, was not there having been detained on remand two days earlier. And now he is now serving an 18-month sentence for contempt of court. At the time we wrote that:
“Without the presence of ‘Tommy Robinson’ himself, the whole thing founders. Numbers attending seem to be not much different from those who attended in July, and were largely, and predictably, middle aged and male…
“By the end thousands just couldn’t be bothered staying to watch TR’s latest so-called ‘documentary’ and drifted away.”
Today’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rallies called for various towns and cities around the country, flopped spectacularly, showing once again that without the demagogic presence of ‘Robinson’ (real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon), the ‘cultural movement’ he claims to lead is a mere chimera.
In Rotherham, the scene of an appalling attempted arson attack on a migrant hotel in August, just six (yes, six) right wingers responded to today’s ‘Unite the Kingdom ‘call, huddling together ouside a police station, hugely outnumbered by the anti-racist opposition.
In Coventry, Newcastle and Altrincham, and other centres, big anti-fascist turnouts confronted miniscule groups of fascists – where the fascists bothered to show up at all. A hugely impressive anti-fascist rally in Norwich responded to a very late mobilisation call. The fascists’ biggest turnout was in London where they managed to muster 15 (yes, 15) supporters.
Perhaps most significant, on the day, was the pathetic turnout of Paul Golding’s Britain First, who very late on announced a national demonstration in Lichfield. Now, the venue may have been declared late, but they have been setting this up for the last two weeks, and yet they could still only muster about 50 supporters. This, from the party which Golding claims has 20,000 members. Today’s showing gives the lie to that particular fiction.
At the end of the day, this was the only image they posted from their ‘national demonstration’. Anything else would have been too embarrassing. As if this isn’t…
The truth is that BF is a party on its last legs, kept in existence solely to provide a living for Golding and his ‘co-leader’ Ashlea Simon. Hence the ceaseless grifting appeals for funds for this that and the other. We are witnessing its tortuous grunts and gasps as it expires, still pleading for cash from a dwindling band of supporters who never seem to learn they are being conned.
As we wrote recently: Britain First is approaching the end of the road.
Tony Peters takes the pulse of the terminally ill UKIP, which barely scraped together 40 delegates for its annual conference and has since continued to haemorrhage members
This article appears in the Autumn 2024 issue of Searchlight, and pulls together our recent online coverage of UKIP.
UKIP’s annual conference, held in Nottingham at the beginning of October, marked a new departure for Britain’s fastest shrinking political party. For the first time it was held jointly with Robin Tilbrook’s far-right English Democrats.
Proceedings kicked off, so to speak, with UKIP’s unelected leader Nick “The Kick” Tenconi steaming across the conference hotel car park towards an anti-racist demonstration gathered there, barking into his megaphone: “Who invited you to my conference?”
That’s right, “… my conference”. Now, that would be a bit presumptuous at the best of times, but when you are the completely unelected leader of a political party and have not even yet had to attend an NEC meeting to introduce yourself, it really is a bit rich.
Of course, Tenconi made sure that he was filmed doing this and a video duly posted on YouTube was titled “Nick Tenconi storms through far-left blockade”. What it appeared to show, however, was more like Tenconi “storming” towards the demo, hoping to provoke a confrontation and being rather disappointed when the smiling, chanting anti-racists politely stood aside to let him pass.
The event itself was very poorly attended. As you can see from the photo, the conference room – which at times accommodated both UKIP and ED contingents – had seating set out for only around 80 and, according to Searchlight sources, fewer than half of these were occupied even at peak times.
The majority appeared to be from the ED. And things must have felt a bit odd to participants in a session on “UKIP branding”, considering that pretty much all the “branding” in the room belonged to the ED.
Criminal conviction
But the thin attendance was probably a relief for Tenconi, who might otherwise have had to answer some serious questions about his suitability to lead the party. He had recently faced a damaging revelation that he had a criminal conviction for kicking someone in the head in a night-club brawl.
Then some incendiary material appeared online casting doubts about the sexual morality of the man who turns up at Speakers’ Corner chanting “Christ is King”. It was posted on a Twitter account set up by UKIP dissidents in 2019 and included screen grabs of a number of sex-related posts featuring accounts that, the posts alleged, involve Tenconi.
One was the Only Fans site of Australian Elle Knox who describes herself as “Australia’s Unforgettable Sweetheart & Mens Sacred Sexuality Mentor”, who offers various graphically described online sexual services and pornographic videos. In one exchange, an account named Tenco™ Training Ltd messaged, calling her “Dream girl” and saying “marry me”.
The Tenco Training post incorporates a picture that appears to be of Tenconi. Tenco Training is a company over which he is registered as having significant control and of which he became a director when it was set up in 2014.
Also reproduced was a post supposedly from a contact site for “swinger” couples, in which “Stacey & Nick” state that they are “happy and horny and love exploring sexually!” and seek to make contact with like-minded couples, in various permutations. The accompanying picture also appears to be of Tenconi.
The third appeared to be from a “Nick Marcel Tenconi” Twitter/X account. An existing account in this name was set up by Tenconi in 2011. This alleged post contains Andrew Tate-style advice to young men on how they should treat women.
It says: “Lads – once you‘ve pulled her and/or slept with her and she starts ‘playing the game’ recognise that this is NOT the same as playing games.
“Play back, have fun.
“If she does the latter, dump the bitch. Her emotional instability is tip of the iceberg.”
We cannot be sure whether all – or indeed any – of this material is genuine. We think that it would be pretty easy to fake such images. But it arrived at a time when it seemed intended to figure dramatically in the annual conference, where Tenconi was due to explain his proposed new direction for UKIP as the party of the “new right”, fighting for the restoration of Christian values. And, as Searchlight went to press, Tenconi had not publicly denied responsibility for any of the posts.
Formal pact
ED leader Tilbrook seems pretty relaxed about the allegations. UKIP and the ED are already locked into a formal election pact known as the Patriots Alliance, which is officially registered with the Electoral Commission. However, only two Patriots Alliance candidates featured in the July general election, both are ED members with one standing in a constituency where UKIP had promised not to run against Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and did not want to be seen to be too obviously breaching that commitment.
But, at the same time, the ED ran no fewer than four candidates jointly with the neo-nazi Patriotic Alternative. Tilbrook, who is not short of a few bob, was said to have put up the funding for this curious tie-up – one organisation considerably to the right of the EDs and one that has historically been to its left. However, as the dust settled after the election there were reports that at least some of the money – possibly all of it – had not been forthcoming after all.
Alliances such as this have contributed significantly to increasing the number of disillusioned members deserting UKIP. More traditional anti-European Union, anti-immigration members have not taken kindly to such a dramatic drift to the right, even if it was heralded last year when the party NEC lifted its long-standing ban on former members of nazi groups joining up. Chairman Ben Walker (above, right) said at the time it was to open the door to more “like-minded” people.
Leaving in droves
Although the small and largely compliant conference audience might have suited Tenconi and “Rogue Builder” Walker on this occasion, participation in UKIP has plummeted to catastrophically low levels and is beginning to cause them serious problems. One particular difficulty was reflected in the question being raised by some members (at least) who were asking why they never received their e-ballots for the election of NEC members.
It turned out later that the number of applications to stand (11 – some apparently whipped up very late in the day) exactly matched the number of vacancies, so the lucky candidates could be appointed by chairman Ben Walker without the need for a tiresome election. The lucky 11 included a number of very recent recruits to the party and Tommy Robinson’s right-hand man and event organiser, Richard Inman.
This turned out to be highly significant: there had been a number of clues that UKIP and Robinson might effect some sort of link-up, although this sounded far fetched. However, events in the weeks after the conference were to confirm this remarkable development might be going ahead (see pages 12-13).
The absence of a functioning NEC over the last 6 months or so helps explain how Walker and Tenconi have been able to reposition UKIP as a party of the extreme Christian right without as much as a whisper of formal opposition. Well, almost none. There was at least one dissident voice at the gathering, and the proceedings were livened up when a gentleman ventured that convicted criminal Walker, sacked as a magistrate this year for deceiving the Ministry of Justice about his convictions, should either be expelled forthwith or handed over to the police.
Walker could barely contain his fury. A few lapdogs leapt to his defence, saying he was doing his best in difficult circumstances, but it kind of summed up where UKIP is at the present time: a pathetic, shrinking shell of its former self, terminally ill and barely breathing, kept on life support by convicted criminals Walker and Tenconi.
And, no sooner was the conference over than the resignations continued, with the departure of Wales regional officer Paul Campbell, who also resigned his party membership. In a message on the leadership WhatsApp group Campbell said that he was “disappointed at recent events in particular the leadership election fiasco. I was supporting Bill Etheridge and expected him to win easily”.
In this, Campbell was not alone. Virtually the entire membership expected UKIP veteran Etheridge, a former MEP, to be elected leader in May, and were astonished when newly recruited Lois Perry swept the board with almost 80% of the vote. Perry, of course, did not last long, resigning suddenly during the general election, citing health reasons. Of note is that the actual voting numbers in the leader election have never been published by UKIP chairman Walker, the party’s Returning Officer.
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