Nigel Farage has admitted that he was “offensive” at school, but insisted that he never made comments “with malice”, as he told the BBC to apologise for racist characters in its 1970s programmes before criticising him over his school days.
More than 20 former pupils who studied with Farage, now the leader of Reform UK, at Dulwich College in the 1970s and 1980s have shared their memories of him.
Peter Ettedgui, a film-maker, claimed that Farage targeted him with racist verbal abuse including growling into his ear that “Hitler was right” or saying “gas them” with a hiss to emulate the sound of gas chambers.
Nick Gordon Brown, who shared classes with Farage between the ages of 16 and 18, said Farage had talked of supporting the National Front’s compulsory repatriation policy, saying it was “an obsession”.
Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, said that those accusing Farage of racism were lying and engaging in “made-up twaddle”.
Farage refused to call the accusers liars, but denied that any of his comments were said in a “malicious or nasty way”.
He said he had received letters from six classmates in support of him, reading one aloud at a press conference in London. “While there was plenty of macho tongue-in-cheek schoolboy banter,” the letter said, “it was humour, and yes, sometimes it was offensive. But never with malice.”
It continued: “I never heard him [Farage] racially abuse anyone. If he had, he would have been reported and punished. He wasn’t. The news stories are without evidence, except for belatedly, politically dubious recollections from nearly half a century ago.
“Back in the 1970s the culture was very different … especially at Dulwich. Lots of boys said things they’d regret today or just laugh at. Whilst Nigel stood out, he was neither aggressive nor a racist.”
After being asked a question about the controversy by a BBC journalist, Farage accused the corporation of “double standards”.
He said: “At the time I was alleged to have made these remarks, one of your most popular weekly shows was The Black and White Minstrel Show. The BBC was very happy to use blackface.”
The show, a popular variety programme that ran for 20 years from 1958, featured white performers in black make-up.
Farage then said: “You did it in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum as well,” a sitcom broadcast between 1974 and 1981 depicting a Royal Artillery concert party and their Indian servants.
The Reform leader also pointed to Alf Garnett, a character from Till Death Us Do Part who regularly used racial slurs, and homophobia in the sitcom Are You Being Served?.
Farage said: “And what about Bernard Manning? Perfectly happy at exactly the same time for Bernard Manning to appear on primetime national BBC comedy, telling jokes for which these days you’d probably get a knock on the door from our thought police and perhaps get a 31-month prison sentence.
“I cannot put up with the double standards of the BBC about what I’m alleged to have said 49 years ago and what you were putting out on mainstream content. So I want an apology from the BBC for virtually everything you did in the 1970s and 1980s.”
Farage also said that comments from Ian Cooper, the Reform leader of Staffordshire council, did not “look very good” and confirmed that he was under investigation.
The activist group Hope Not Hate said it had found “dozens of racist and bigoted posts” on Cooper’s personal accounts on YouTube and X. One allegedly called Sir Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, a “narcissistic Pakistani”, while another post said it was “time” that a black, British-born lawyer “F’d off back to Nigeria”.
Farage said he was “slightly shocked” that there “appeared to be a social media account that had not been declared”. When asked whether Cooper had been suspended, Farage said the party “had to go through due process”.
Sir Keir Starmer criticised Farage for saying that there had been a “cultural smashing” of Glasgow, after media reports found one third of children did not speak English as their first language in the city.
The prime minister said on Thursday evening: “He’s a toxic, divisive disgrace. All he wants to do is tear communities apart. In Glasgow, the diversity, the compassion, is celebrated. It’s part of, not just Glasgow, but Scotland.
“I think it’s particularly poor that he’s reached right into children now to start that divide. All he’s interested in is the politics of grievance, and the politics of division, and he’s doing it to distract because what he doesn’t want to be asked about is the comments that he’s made in the past, which he can’t give a proper explanation for.”
