Kilroy on the ropes after bid to woo black voters backfires

Guy Adams | Tuesday, 1 March 2005 Source: The Independent

An attempt to counter claims that Robert Kilroy-Silk's new political party is a racist organisation has rather gloriously backfired.

When he launched Veritas a few weeks back, Kilroy - who was sacked by the BBC for describing Arabs as "suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors" - appointed a black former boxer, Winston McKenzie, as his spokesman for sport.

By way of a sop to the ethnic minorities, the Jamaican-born McKenzie last week gave his first ever interview to the black newspaper The Voice. And what an interview it was.

Explaining his party's views on immigration, McKenzie said there should be a limit on the number of children from ethnic minorities allowed into Britain - because they are budding criminals.

"We need to limit the number of them coming in. In four or five years, our prisons will be overcrowded because these children will turn to crime," he said. "Because these children come here and don't understand the culture, they become frustrated and cause trouble in the schools and then all black people are given the label of 'bad parents'."

Yesterday, race relations campaigners condemned the comments. "It is desperately disappointing when a would-be black politician takes on the mantle of the oppressor," said Simon Woolley, a director of Operation Black Vote. "He's subjecting new arrivals to the same treatment meted out to his parents' generation."