Former schoolmates of Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, claim he was deeply racist and antisemitic during his school years, with neo-fascist views, quoting and idolising Hitler.
A Guardian investigation into Nigel Farage and his alleged youthful racist views delved back into his schooldays, detailing vivid accounts from his former classmates in the 1970s of racist, fascist and antisemitic views.
Farage has called the allegations baseless and defamatory.
Nevertheless, Farage’s classmates from Dulwich College, a prestigious private boarding school in south London, included Peter Ettedgui, 61, a director and producer, who said he bore the brunt of Farage’s antisemitic views.
Ettedgui said: “He would slide up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right,’ or ‘Gas them,’ sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the sound of the gas showers.”
The Guardian’s investigation heard allegations from more than a dozen of Farage’s former classmates, who recounted deeply offensive behaviour throughout his teenage years, from as early as 13 years old all the way to his sixth form years.
When claims such as these were made about Farage more than a decade ago, he brushed them off, and admitting saying “some ridiculous things… not necessarily racist things… it depends on how you define it.”
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Prime Minister Keir Starmer has now raised the claims in Parliament and urged Farage to explain himself.
Farage, whose Reform UK party are leading in all the major opinion polls, is claiming the statements are baseless and defamatory.
In legal letters to the Guardian, he denied saying anything racist or antisemitic when he was a teenager.
“These allegations are entirely without foundation. The Guardian has produced no contemporaneous record or corroborating evidence to support these disputed recollections from nearly 50 years ago.”
‘A profoundly racist teenager’
Ettedgui, who claims he experienced antisemitic abuse from Farage, says he wasn’t the only target: “I’d hear him calling other students ‘Paki’ or ‘Wog’, and urging them to ‘go home’.
“From my experience, there’s no doubt in my mind that he was a profoundly, precociously racist teenager… I’d like to know why he’s never owned up or shown the slightest contrition,” Ettedgui continued.
A second pupil from a minority ethnic background claims he was also targeted by a 17-year-old Farage.
“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.”
Th Guardian alleges that at one point in Farage’s time at Dulwich College, his teachers started to pick up on his disturbing views, even to the extent that he was denied becoming a prefect.
17-year-old Farage
Michael Crick, a former reporter for Channel 4 who published a book on Farage in 2022, obtained a letter from a former English teacher at Dulwich College who opposed a decision in 1981 to make Farage a prefect when he was 17, describing him as having “publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views.”
It was also alleged that the same teacher who complained about Farage’s alleged neo-fascist views said she heard from a colleague that at a combined cadet force (CCF) camp, organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler Youth songs.
Other members of the CCF recall Farage singing songs saying: “Gas ’em all; Gas ’em all; Gas ’em all; And into the showers they crawl; We’ll gas all the n**gers; We’ll gas all the Jews; Come on you lads, gas ’em all”.
During Farage’s sixth form days, between the ages of 16 and 18, he allegedly “became much more kind of political and very rightwing, shockingly so”, according to Tim France, 61, who was in the same year as Farage.
France claims that Farage strolling around the class performing “Sieg Heil” salutes “happened all the time.”
Some former classmates of Farage expressed concern over whether such a man could be trusted as a leader for the UK, as he is predicted to be.
Andy Field, 61, an NHS doctor who knew Farage well, said: “The bottom line for me is about whether Nigel Farage can be trusted as a leader. Having seen him up close and having watched his career, I am completely of the view that he cannot be trusted at all.”
Keir Starmer has called on Farage to urgently address the detailed allegations of racist behaviour, which the Reform leader has dismissed as “one person’s word against another.”
The spokesperson for Prime Minister Starmer said: “These are disturbing allegations and it’s vital that Nigel Farage urgently explains himself. You’ve heard the Prime Minister speak just this week about Farage’s weakness in the face of divisive politics in Reform’s ranks.”
Reform UK claimed that the Guardian was attempting to smear the party.
“We fully expect these cynical attempts to smear Reform and mislead the public to intensify further as we move closer to the next election.”
