Gerard Batten

Gerard Batten, MEP

This article is part of the MEPedia project of Spinwatch.

Gerard Batten (born 27 March 1954, London) is a British MEP for London from UK Independence Party. He also served the previous term (20.07.2004 - 13.07.2009).

Affiliations

• Member, Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs
• Substitute, Committee on Legal Affairs

Outside of the European Parliament, Batten is a supporter of Better Off Out and anti-EU project of the right-wing libertarian Freedom Association.

Former Affiliations

• Member, Subcommittee on Security and Defence
• Substitute, Committee on Foreign Affairs

Record and Controversies

Declaration of Financial Interests

• Nothing to declare.

CounterJihad connections

Prodi allegation

Batten raised allegations that Romano Prodi was a KGB agent during the 2006 Italian election campaign, at a time when Prodi was the front--runner, according to the EU Reporter:

In his one-minute speech during Strasbourg plenary, Gerard Batten (UK, IN/DEM) told how Alexander Litvinenko, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, and currently living under political asylum in the UK, was informed by FSB deputy chief, General Anatole Trofimov of the high amount of communist activity operating in Italy. With reference to the KGB, Litvinenko was told, “Romano Prodi is our man there”.

Stop Islamisation of Europe demo petition

On September 11 2007, Batten accepted a petition from Anders Gravers protesting a ban on a Brussels demonstration by Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE).

Counterjihad Europa

Batten spoke at the Counterjihad Brussels 2007 conference in October 2007 alongside far-right figures such as Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang Ted Ekeroth of the Sweden Democrats.

'Charter of Muslim Understanding'

The end of Batten's foreword to the proposed 'Charter of Muslim Understanding' which called for special denunciations of violence from Muslims

In 2014 it emerged that Batten had written the foreword for the 2006 'Proposed Charter of Muslim Understanding' authored by former Muslim convert to Christianity and counterjihad activist Sam Solomon. According to anti-Islamophobia monitoring group TellMAMA, he had commissioned Solomon to write it and orginally launched it in Strasbourg in December 2006.

The document suggested Muslims ought to sign a a five-point declaration including a rejection of violence. The Tory MP Robert Halfon called the call 'frightening' and 'sinister', comparing the proposal to a first step towards making Muslims wear 'a yellow star', as Jews were made to in Nazi Germany.

Ban on new mosques in Europe

According to The Guardian, Batten had previously, in 2010, proposed a ban on the building of new mosques across Europe.

Praise and support for Geert Wilders

In 2008, Batten attempted to show anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders' film Fitna, widely regarded as Islamophobic for the way it implied the Koran inevitably inspires violence, in the European parliament. After he was prevented from doing so, he and Wilders held a press conference together.

In 2009, Batten wrote an article for the Freedom Association in which he called WIlders 'brave man trying to defend western civilisation in the face of its own loss of the most basic instinct of self-preservation.'

Far-right friends

Ex-UKIP MEP Nikki Sinclaire has claimed that Batten has been 'hell-bent on attacking Muslims', is 'incredibly paranoid' and 'talks about the gradual takeover by the Muslims of Great Britain and sharia law'. She has also alleged that he is 'very good friends' with far-right European politicians like Dutch MP Geert Wilders and members of Belgium's Vlaams Belang. According to the Huffington Post, she stated 'I often see him in the parliament with those MEPs.'

Meeting with EDL donor and strategist

In March 2011, an article by anti-fascist organisation Searchlight noted that Alan Ayling (aka Alan Lake), then a donor to and strategist for the English Defence League (EDL), had boasted in an interview with the Daily Star, a British tabloid newspaper, of links to Gerard Batten.

As a result, on 7 March 2011, Batten appears to have issued a statement in which he admitted meeting Lake in autumn 2010, knowing he was associated with the EDL. The statement was tweeted by former UKIP aide Jasna Badzak. In it, Batten wrote:

Being aware of the phenomenon of the EDL, I wished to establish my own independent assessment of them. I decided therefore, on my own initiative, to meet with Mr Lake. We met in full public view in a cafe in Liverpool St Station for about an hour or more.

Mr Lake gave me his assurances that the EDL were a non-racist, non-violent organisation and that is only concerned with combating the ideology of extremist and fundamentalist Islamism and had no prejudice against Muslims as such. I decided that no further meetings were either necessary or appropriate.

'Dismantling multiculturalism'

Batten reportedly authored a four-page paper entitled 'Confidential draft – Dismantling Multiculturalism' in 2011, which was sent to members of Christian Concern with whom he also held a meeting. The document argued that multiculturalism had failed, called for a ban on Islamic finance as well as kosher and halal slaughter and stated: 'Islamic fundamentalism is the cuckoo in the western multicultural nest. We can either address it now or be destroyed by it in the course of time'.

In 2010, Christian Concern's Paul Diamond had defended Batten's wife in court in a case over a TV license.

Views

On immigration

In 2010 Batten wrote a paper for UKIP entitled 'Immigration - Action Overdue!', a lengthy document outlining his thoughts at length on the effect of immigration on Britain. It included the claims that due to what he referred to as 'white flight' many parts of Britain are 'more like enclaves of Pakistan, Bengal or India than English cities' and stated that 'the English will become a minority in their own land'.

Personal information

Curriculum Vitae

• Hand bookbinder (1972-1976). Manager, British Telecom (1976-2004).
• In the UK Independence Party: founder member (1993).
• Member of the National Executive Committee (1993-1997, 2002- ).
• Party Secretary (1994-1997).

Contact

Address: Parlement européen, Bât. Altiero Spinelli, 04F243, 60, rue Wiertz / Wiertzstraat 60, B-1047 Bruxelles/Brussel

Phone:+32 (0)2 28 45920

Email:gerard.batten AT europarl.europa.eu

Website: http://www.gerardbatten.co.uk

Affiliations

• UK Independence Party
• Christian Concern
• Freedom Association
• Sam Solomon

Contact

Website: www.gerardbattenmep.com

Email: gerard.batten@btinternet.com

Address: PO Box 2959, Romford, RM7 1QZ

Twitter: @GerardBattenMEP

External resources

• European Parliament, Declaration of Members' Financial Interests: Gerard Batten, 16 June 2009, accessed 03 November 2009.
• European Parliament, MEP Directory: Gerard Batten, accessed 05 February 2009.
• European Parliament, MEP Directory: Gerard Batten, accessed 08 September 2010.

Articles

• Farage rejects far-right extremists courted by his UKIP MEP colleague, 15 November 2013.
• Rowena Mason, Ukip MEP says British Muslims should sign charter rejecting violence, theguardian.com, 4 February 2014.
• Alex Stevenson, Disgust in Westminster as Ukip MEP stands by Muslim charter, politics.co.uk, 5 February 2014.
• Asa Bennett, Meet Gerard Batten, The UKIP MEP Scare-Mongering About Islam, Immigrants And Bilderberg, Huffington Post, 21 May 2014.