Daily Mail
December 10, 2013
A UKIP councillor has denied racism accusations over comments on immigration made on a video five years ago.
Footage emerged yesterday of Victoria Ayling – a former Conservative election candidate who defected this year – saying she wished to ‘send the lot back’.
The councillor denied being offensive or politically incorrect, and insisted she had been referring only to people in the country illegally.
Party leader Nigel Farage dismissed allegations that she held extreme views as a political smear and indicated his party would stand by her.
Mrs Ayling, a councillor in East Lindsey, Lincolnshire, made the video in 2008, to promote her bid to become a Tory MEP. The Mail on Sunday said it was provided to them by her then husband, who operated the camera. They have since divorced acrimoniously.
In a section published online, she is seen rehearsing her pitch on the issue – talking about the need to control the numbers arriving in the UK and to repatriate ‘the illegals and failed asylum seekers’.
‘That’s not quite policy yet. Maybe I should soften it a bit,’ she says at one point, adding: ‘OK. Send them back.’ In a later take, she says: ‘We must control immigration. We cannot sustain the numbers coming in; the strains on our infrastructure are enormous.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage backed Mrs Ayling and decried the ‘appalling attack on one of our councillors’
‘Control should be done fairly and the points system like they have in Australia and all those coming here should be encouraged to speak English so they can integrate.’
Afterwards, she is heard to say ‘I just want to send the lot back but I can’t say that’ before joking that the remark might be used in future to ‘get back at me, bribery, blackmail’.