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Reform UK has been accused of embracing racism after it picked a former academic who argued that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not necessarily British as the head of its new student organisation.
Matthew Goodwin, who is now a hard-right activist and prominent Reform supporter, has confirmed on X that he has been made the honorary president of the new Students4Reform organisation.
It comes after Goodwin argued, also on X, that even being born and brought up in the UK did not mean that people from black, Asian or other immigrant backgrounds were always British.
His argument came in posts the day after a mass stabbing on a train in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. Anthony Williams, 32, from Peterborough, has been charged with 11 counts of attempted murder and other offences.
After the attack was first reported, Goodwin posted on X that “mass uncontrolled immigration” was to blame. He was subsequently challenged by a poster who pointed out that Williams and another black man also arrested – the latter was later released – were born in the UK. Goodwin responded: “So were all of the 7/7 bombers. It takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody ‘British’.”
The suicide bomb attacks in London on 7 July 2005 were carried out by three British men of Pakistani heritage and a British Muslim convert who was born in Jamaica.
In another X post later that day, Goodwin again cast doubt on the idea the men were British. Giving a list of crimes he said had been carried out by immigrants, he cited: “10 people suffering a mass stabbing on a train at the hands of two Black ‘British’ men”.
Mass migration, Goodwin wrote, had “put our own people at risk”, adding: “These migrants do not instantly adopt the host country’s ‘British’ or ‘English’ culture and identity the moment they sign a few papers.”
In a tweet on Tuesday, which quoted the later message, Goodwin wrote: “I stand by every word.”
He added: “People who blow up British children at pop concerts, people who murder British commuters on the London Tube, people who murder British workers on the train home, people who behead our soldiers, people who mass rape our kids might have a British passport but they are not one of us, sorry.”
Contacted by the Guardian, Goodwin pointed to this post, adding that people who were first or second generation immigrants “are more likely to retain cultural traits and habits from parents”.
He added: “Clearly many integrate successfully but fact remains we have British citizens who reject integration in favour of retaining their origin culture. This is as much our failure as theirs but it is the reality we are living with. It is not ‘far-right’ to think this.”
Max Wilkinson, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesperson, said: “Matt Goodwin’s racist rhetoric is a disgrace. It is both abhorrent and entirely predictable that Nigel Farage has chosen Goodwin to poison the minds of young people with his party’s vitriol.
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“Nigel Farage repeatedly insists that racism has no place in his party, yet time and time again he has failed to back up these claims with action. He now has a final chance to prove his integrity: he must immediately strip Matt Goodwin of his role as honorary president of Students4Reform. Failure to do so will confirm that Reform UK not only tolerates but actively embraces blatant racism.”
In reply, Goodwin told the Guardian: “What I said isn’t racist. They devalue the term by saying this.”
A Labour spokesperson said: “When Sarah Pochin made grotesque racist remarks, Nigel Farage did nothing. Now he’s given a senior role in Reform to someone with equally unpleasant views on race.
“Nigel Farage must urgently make clear that this type of language is completely unacceptable and has no place in his party.”
Reform UK was contacted for comment.
