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Nigel Farage has denied – albeit through a spokesperson – that he ever said anything racist or antisemitic when he was a teenager.
The Guardian has spoken to 20 of his contemporaries while at Dulwich College in south London who say otherwise – more than half of them on the record.
So, who is telling the truth? That has become the crux of the row that has engulfed the leader of Reform UK.
His spokesperson insists “there is no primary evidence. It’s one person’s word against another” and he has accused the Guardian of seeking to smear Farage.
But here are a selection of the many voices who have claimed they were either victims of, or witnesses to, that kind of deeply offensive behaviour.
1. Peter Ettedgui
“[Farage] would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘gas them’, sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers […] I’d never experienced antisemitism growing up, so the first time that this vicious verbal abuse came out of Farage’s mouth was deeply shocking. But I wasn’t his only target. I’d hear him calling other students ‘Paki’ or ‘Wog’, and urging them to ‘go home’. I tried to ignore him, but it was humiliating. It was shaming. This kind of abuse cuts through to the core of your identity.”
Peter Ettedgui said he wasn’t Farage’s only target. He would urge other students to ‘go home’. Photograph: Dave Benett/Getty Images
2. Anthony Butler
“Peter Ettedgui’s recollections of Nigel Farage’s naked racism and antisemitism in his schooldays left me with a sense of deep regret. A contemporary and classmate of Farage, I clearly recall him relentlessly hectoring and bullying Ettedgui with shouts of “stupid yid” in the playground. Peter was a small, rather shy and sensitive boy, and Nigel was a physical coward who could easily have been silenced.
“But I do not recall anyone doing so […] If he will accept it, I apologise wholeheartedly to Peter Ettedgui.”
3. Jean-Pierre Lihou
“[Farage] used to say things like, you know, ‘Jude’, to Peter, which is the German for Jew, in the way it was said in the 1930s, a long ‘u’ in a menacing way, you know? It’s pretty awful.
“Farage used to say things like ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas em’, you know, that sort of thing. But he also used to sing this song, which I later discovered was based on George Formby’s Bless Them All.
“He had a whole load of ‘lyrics’ on this which are pretty awful. I can remember it verbatim: ‘Gas em all, gas em all, into the chambers they crawl. We’ll gas all the paks, and we’ll gas all the yids, and we’ll gas all the coons and all their fucking kids.’”
Jean-Pierre Lihou said Farage used to say things like ‘Hitler was right’. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
4. Martin Rosell
“[Farage] certainly made comments to the Jewish guy in that class, Peter Ettedgui […] Comments like, under his breath, sort of ‘Jew’ … and comments about how they ‘missed you’, that sort of thing. He was noticeably more of those times than the rest. He was known for it across the school.”
Rosell is now the chair of the Liberal Democrats in Salisbury.
5. Bob Jope, a former teacher
“Yeah, to another boy. And because I was a young teacher then, it wasn’t my first year, but certainly very close to the beginning [of] my career, I wasn’t really able to handle such kind of sudden out-on-a-limb [incident]. Perhaps an older, wiser teacher. I might have intervened and discussed it or something, but I think I just snapped and said: “Right – out!” […] I think he [Farage] said ‘Shut up you Jew’ to Peter Ettedgui.”
6. Andy Field
“When I became a prefect, he [Farage] said: ‘I’ll show you how to do it.’ He took me for a walk up to the lower school playground, where all the children from about nine years old to 12 would be. And he singled out, completely at random, a kid of Asian extraction, and just put him in detention for no reason whatsoever. I was flabbergasted, absolutely stunned. I was just disgusted, really. No rhyme or reason, just purely based on the colour of his skin.”
7. Mark Haward
“He loved the sound of his own voice; he would come in usually chanting something. He always wanted to be listened to – I distinctly remember him coming in several times chanting ‘Oswald Ernald Mosley’ [the name of the far-right leader of the British Union of Fascists].”
8. Dave Edmonds
“I have a very strong memory of him using the W-word for what we now call people of Afro-Caribbean origin and the P-word for those of south Asian origin.
“I don’t remember being on the receiving end of antisemitic remarks, though of course he made outrageous comments about the war. I don’t think Jews were his main racial preoccupation. He was generally obsessed, as he is now, with the erosion of Britishness.”
9. Tim France
“It was habitual, you know, it happened all the time. He would often be doing Nazi salutes and saying ‘Sieg heil’ and, you know, strutting around the classroom. He was a member of the cadet force, [so] often being in uniform. And, yeah, it might have been for shock value, partly, but I think, you know, clearly, he also is very rightwing politically.
“He was saying really, really unpleasant things, really things that you just knew were wrong. You can’t really defend it as being a joke, or that he was too young to know any better. We were 18.”
10. Nick Gordon Brown
“What he would do was he would loudly and frequently support that National Front policy at the time for repatriation […] I always remember his words – he used to refer to as our ‘black and brown friends’ with that grin, with that tone of voice, that anyone who sees him on the TV now will be so used to […] that was a constant narrative.”
11. Luke Gray
“He was proud to be a racist at school. That was his shtick – he was the school pet racist. […] A nasty foul mouthed racist and happy and proud to say he was. No contrition at all, trying to pretend it’s just a joke. I’ve heard him say every racial slur you could possibly imagine.”
12. A former pupil, from a minority ethnic background
“I was very small in one of the junior classes of the time, and you know that the sixth-formers were probably 17, very tall, much taller than me. And that person’s walk, it’s the same walk he has now, I’ll never forget it.
“He walked up to a pupil, flanked by two similarly tall mates, and spoke to anyone looking ‘different’. That included me on three occasions; asking me where I was from, and pointing away, saying: ‘That’s the way back’, to wherever you replied you were from.”
13. A former pupil
“What sticks in the memory most is not just his odious and prejudicial opinions towards black, Asian and minority ethnic students, but how central and public these views were to his whole school persona.
“How brazenly and actively he identified with them, wearing them loud and proud as badges of honour.”
14. A former pupil
“I was in the CCF [combined cadet force] with him from 1979 to 1982 or so […] [Farage] did teach the younger members of the CCF the infamous ‘gas ’em all’ song, or at least led the singing of it on CCF coaches to training areas.”
15. A former pupil
“He was very strong-minded and had strong views about particular races. The word “yid” was frequently deployed, used about 50 times in a row.
“I remember one particular thing he would do, a gesture, where he would put his left hand over his left eye and make a wanker sign with his right hand and chant ‘Moshe Dayan [an Israeli defence minister] is a wanker!’ Jews were regularly cited.”
16. A former pupil
“His behaviour towards cadets of ethnic background was no better than to those of Jewish religion. He held a cadet rank of sergeant or similar so was able to issue work/task details of his own devising. All pretty grim and pointless usually – guess which ethnicity or religion got the wrong end of his stick?”
17. A former pupil
“He was someone who always had slogans. He would repeat things ad nauseam. He would certainly say: ‘The National Front is the white man’s front.’ Whenever we watched a film in class and there was a black face he would say: ‘are you English?’”
18. A former pupil
“I remember him singing on occasions, leading those songs. I definitely heard him singing racist marching songs at various occasions. If it comes to it, I would happily stand up in court and say it. My overriding memory is just nasty little shit and a racist.”
