Farage responds to anti UKIP foster child outrage

The recent removal of three children from the care of foster parents by a Yorkshire Labour council on the basis of a report that the couple were members of UKIP has some significance among libertarians here in Oz. UKIP Deputy Leader, Paul Nuttall will be a guest speaker at the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) National Conference in January.

The couple had their three foster children taken away by the council, which claimed that their membership of the UK Independence Party meant that they supported “racist” policies. Essentially the claim of racism is neatly spun for political purposes from the UKIP policy of getting back control of migration, a totally different concept.

Nigel Farage is outraged at this decision:
 
 The story is as follows:

The husband and wife, who have been fostering for nearly seven years, said they were made to feel like criminals when a social worker told them that their views on immigration made them unsuitable carers. The couple said they feared that there was a black mark against their name and they would not be able to foster again.  

Campaigners representing foster parents have described the decision as “ridiculous” and warned that it could deter other prospective foster parents from volunteering. Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, described the actions of Rotherham borough council as “a bloody outrage” and “political prejudice of the very worst kind”.  

Tim Loughton, the former children’s minister, said: “I will be very concerned if decisions have been made about the children’s future that were based on misguided political correctness around ethnic considerations. …  

… The husband was a Royal Navy reservist for more than 30 years and works with disabled people, while his wife is a qualified nursery nurse. Former Labour voters, they have been approved foster parents for nearly seven years and have looked after about a dozen different children, one of them in a placement lasting four years. …  

… They were told that the local safeguarding children team had received an anonymous tip-off that they were members of Ukip. The wife recalled: “I was dumbfounded. Then my question to both of them was, 'What has Ukip got to do with having the children removed?’  

“Then one of them said, 'Well, Ukip have got racist policies’. The implication was that we were racist. [The social worker] said Ukip does not like European people and wants them all out of the country to be returned to their own countries.  

“I’m sat there and I’m thinking, 'What the hell is going off here?’ because I wouldn’t have joined Ukip if they thought that. I’ve got mixed race in my family. I said, 'I am absolutely offended that you could come in my house and accuse me of being a member of a racist party’. 

 While some objections to immigration are made on racist grounds, there is no causal link between racism and disagreements with policy. Farage makes it quite clear that the problem for UKIP is the uncontrolled influx, combined with massive unemployment in the UK and the strain on social security and welfare agencies.

The Labour Party, along with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, do not believe the statements they are making on UKIP ‘racism’. These are nothing other than dishonestly glib, throwaway lines designed to give the party apparatchiks something to recite in arguments.