Farage’s star candidate is ‘apologist for the IRA’
Warrington bomb victim’s father says Brexit Party recruit STILL refuses to condemn attack which killed his 12-year-old son
NIGEL Farage was urged to sack one of his star Euro election candidates last night after the father of a 12-year-old boy murdered by the IRA claimed she had refused to condemn the terror group.
Colin Parry said the Brexit Party’s Claire Fox did not ‘disavow her offensive views’ when he challenged her.
Miss Fox is standing in North West England, which includes Warrington – where Mr Parry’s son Tim was killed when the IRA bombed the town in 1993.
Mr Parry called on Brexit Party leader Mr Farage to sack Miss Fox before the European elections on May 23.
Pressure on Mr Farage grew as another North West England candidate, Sally Bate, quit the party saying she could not stand on the same platform as Miss Fox. The crisis erupted after Mr Parry called Miss Fox an ‘IRA apologist’ on Twitter. He spoke out when it emerged that the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), of which Miss Fox was a leading figure at the time, had defended ‘the right of the Irish people to take whatever measures are necessary in their struggle for freedom’ after the bombing.
Tim Parry was buying a Mother’s Day present when the terrorists detonated two bombs hidden in litter bins in the town centre.
He died in his mother Wendy’s arms five days later. Johnathan Ball, aged three, was also killed and dozens injured.
Mr Parry told the Daily Mail Miss Fox had repeatedly refused to condemn the IRA’s actions in a ten-minute phone call with him on Wednesday. He asked her to ‘apologise for the way that her organisation the RCP and she herself tried to justify the IRA bombing.’
‘She kept telling me the words she used represented her beliefs at the time and her politics were different now. I told her I wanted her to tell me, “Yes I renounce those views now and I am sorry for having held them”. She talked about everything else but this, leaving us to go round in circles for ten minutes. I asked her four or five times to disavow her comments but to no avail.’
Mr Parry was ‘outraged’ Miss Fox thought she was fit to represent a town ‘whose heart was ripped out by the IRA’. He added: ‘If she wins a seat, she will have no respect from the people of Warrington and my advice to her is to stand down now. If she refused, Mr Farage should fire her. He may not have known Miss Fox’s abhorrent views when she was selected but he does now.
‘It is grossly insensitive and inappropriate for him to field her in Warrington and strangely at odds with the image he presents of himself as a patriot. Now he knows the truth he should ask her to step aside or force her to do so.’
When Miss Fox offered to meet Mr Parry and his wife after the election at Warrington’s Tim Parry
‘Insensitive and inappropriate’
Johnathan Ball Peace Foundation set up to honour their son’s memory, he told her: ‘You are welcome to come but I will ask you exactly the same question when you do.’
Miss Bate, who is from Warrington, said she could not stand on a Brexit ticket alongside Miss Fox because of her refusal to ‘categorically condemn the violence inflicted by the IRA’. She added: ‘I stand with Colin Parry and all victims of the Warrington bomb.’
Miss Fox said her political views were well known and she had ‘never sought to disguise them’. She denied she was ‘insensitive to the pain and suffering caused by the bomb’ and praised Mr Parry’s ‘compassion and dignity’.
Dan Price, a candidate for Change UK, said: ‘Mr Farage has misjudged the mood. Warrington is united against terrorism and it is unthinkable that someone like Claire Fox should be its MEP.’
A spokesman for Mr Farage declined to comment on the call to sack Miss Fox. The spokesman said Miss Fox ‘does not condone the use of violence’. The party was sorry Miss Bate had resigned.