Silver Cross of St. George: Roger Helmer
all the hypocrisy surrounding the European Union, one man has stood out from the crowd. A former business executive, Roger Helmer was elected as a Conservative MEP for the East Midlands in 1999, 2004 and 2009. A Eurosceptic by nature he regularly asked inconvenient questions of the European Parliament and refused to be gagged by the Tory leadership when it came to misrepresenting or hiding the political, social and economic truth.
In 2005 he had the party whip withdrawn when he defied instructions on a point of principle and although it was restored the following year he remained Non-iscrit, a term for those who sit non-aligned in parliament. A member of the ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists), he campaigned vigorously about the injustices and double standards which he perceived all around him and regularly challenged views which he felt were being put forward as facts without any proof.
Exasperated by his own party’s failings, in October 2011 he announced his resignation after admitting “Twelve and a half years banging my head against the same brick wall in Brussels is perhaps long enough!”. He expected to be succeeded by fellow Eurosceptic, Rupert Matthews, who was next in the queue from the original Conservative party nominations. However, the party leadership reneged so he promptly withdrew his retirement and switched to UKIP (the United Kingdom Independence Party), for whom he became an outstanding ambassador in the fight to publish the truth about the cumbersome bureaucracy and manipulative political bias of the European Union, as well as the anti-brexit reasoning shamelessly peddled by the BBC, Guardian, Financial Times, Independent and other media outlets.
Working closely with other Eurosceptic politicians, Roger sought to challenge views and ideas which suddenly became fashionable when espoused by powerful lobby groups who persuaded those in authority to accept their radical ideologies without thinking them through first. High on his list were the church abandoning its Biblical stance on various issues; those who hijacked and changed the original meaning of certain words for anti-religious ends and personal gain; how the National Health Service could be run more efficiently; and especially the climate change lobby whom he felt glossed over, ignored or manipulated inconvenient and unproven data about alleged global warming.
A key member of the Freedom Association, Roger is a political realist who, in the face of globalism and its faceless tycoons, has championed truth and free speech. If we are to survive the current vindictive restrictions and anti-religious laws created by those in authority then we need more people like him to speak out. The world is in grave danger so, in appreciation of his campaigning career, we are pleased to endow Roger with our Silver Cross of St. George and wish him a long and happy official retirement.
and behind it were small rooms which were used for the activities.
I went there until I was 17 or 18 and there were still air raids going on. We would shelter below the stage or outside in the brick-built surface shelters. — IRENE DELBOSQ, DORRINGTON, LINCOLNSHIRE.