OF CABBAGES AND KINGS | Trouble Grows For Farage’s Reform… As Childhood Past Now Haunts Nigel | Farrukh Dhondy

“On the rosary of my breath,

I pronounce your name.

I trust that as in life, in death

Our love remains the same

I know what our togetherness meant

And find it hurtful and passing odd

That facts in your mind are so bent

They can only be understood by God.”

From Unlit Gardens, by Bachchoo

Nails galore in the UK Reform Party’s coffin. Till last week this neo-Nazi British outfit was outdoing both Labour and Tories in the popular polls.

Then trouble. First, Nathan Gill, Reform’s leader in Wales, was sentenced to ten years in prison for passing information as a paid agent of the Russian State.

This fellow was very close to Reform’s Fuhrer, Nigel Farage, who, after the conviction and media tumult that followed, insisted that Gill was a very minor associate of the party.

Excreta of the male bovine species!

But what else could Fagman (he’s reputedly a chain-smoker and chain-pint-guzzler) Farage say?

Then some Reform MPs and councillors have been accused of racist attitudes, comments and bullying civil service staff -- and when asked, Fagman said he is not instituting an inquiry to look into these allegations. If he did, and an independent inquiry found these individuals had done what they are alleged to have, then the ranks of Reform would be considerably deflated, presuming Faggy would get rid of them?

And now, the third blow. The recollection of twenty of the pupils who shared Farage’s school years in Dulwich College, South London, attributing nasty attitudes and comments to him.

Dulwich was founded by the actor Edward Alleyn in 1619, as an act of charity to educate boys from poor families. The story goes that Alleyn was playing Faust in Marlowe’s play and saw real devils on stage. He screamed and the performance was aborted. Priestly advisers told him that his exorcism would be aided by charitable deeds. And so, Dulwich College.

It's now a leading British “public” school in London, which P.G. Wodehouse, among others, went to. Nigel Farage was there in the 1970s.

Now around twenty pupils have told Guardian reporters that, as a young man and adolescent, Nigel was constantly giving Seig Heil salutes in the classroom and alluding to Adolf Hitler as his hero.

Very specifically, the Jewish producer-director Peter Ettedgui, who was Farage’s co-pupil and whose grand-parents escaped detention by the Nazis, remembers him saying that the Nazis were right to perpetrate the killing of Jews in gas chambers and then letting out a hissing sound to imitate the release of gas.

He recollects Farage calling black and Asian pupils “wog” and “Paki”.

Another black student, it is alleged, was placed in detention by Farage when he was promoted to be a school prefect for purely racial reasons.

Tim France, another contemporary, remembers Nigel Farage repeatedly singing “BM… BM… we are British Nazi men!”, and saying “gas ‘em!”, with Nazi salutes.

Others substantiate these recollections, though when Fagman was interviewed about them, he said that he can’t remember intentionally hurting or insulting anyone and he may have indulged in boyish “playground banter”.

His denials are not very convincing, and it wouldn’t come as a surprise if the allegations perversely contributed to a rise in his popularity among British racist and anti-Semites. But my calculation, gentle reader, is that the general British public don’t appreciate or take to that sort of bully-boy, and yes, the coffin-nail allegory stands.

One may ask if adolescent memories are reliable. Mine are vivid.

A recollection:

My sister’s ex-husband was, with his eighteen-year-old stepson, holidaying with me in London. He mentioned a specific date on which he had to be in Mumbai as the stepson had a once-in-a-lifetime interview for membership of an exclusive Mumbai club. A committee would interview and admit or reject him, but really the decision practically lay with the secretary. I asked who this secretary was, and they said he was a “Mr Sirur”.

I asked if his first name was Vasant and, quite surprised, they said it was.

“In which case”, I said “all you need to do is go into the interrogation and loudly say ‘soo soo kooroomooroo, chamadi bawdi, naki samari’, and if the committee look doubtful, nod and say ‘popo canmule, manji aava baaji’. You’re in!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” they asked.

“This Vasant Sirur”, I replied “was in my class at school and he’d constantly shout these self-composed meaningless phrases loudly in class, in people’s faces and randomly in the playground!”

They looked curious.

“And one day in a class which was being taught by Mr Oliver, the Deputy Head, Sirur made a loud ‘yaoon, yaoon’ kind of noise from his throat while Mr Oliver’s back was turned to the blackboard. Mr Oliver was shocked and turned round, asking Sirur why he was making that noise.

“I was asking Dhondy to borrow his pen,” Vasant said.

“Ask him again,” Mr Oliver said.

Sirur turned to me, saying: “Please Dhondy, may I borrow your pen?”

“Does that sound the same?” Mr Oliver asked, a sort of general question, and the class variously replied: “Yes sir, just the same…” Mr Oliver took it no further.

From the evidence, it would seem Nigel has carried these attitudes from his boyhood, but of course, now that he is seeking votes, he feels he has to deny that he ever did or still holds them.