Ralph Atkinson

I'm the black sheep of an old Yorkshire Family, living in happy exile in London for over twenty years until the fight against the EU called. After a misspent childhood travelling in Africa and Latin America I made a bad habit of picking up qualifications at places like East London University, Teesside University, The London College of Printing and Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Other aberrations have included doing political cartoons, writing the odd script for comic books, painting 'sequential art' in oils and growing old varieties of stripy tomatoes, blue corn and white carrots on my allotment.

In between fighting by elections up and down the country for other people, I worked as a designer and then as a manager in assorted print and publishing companies. I gave up my career in print to teach Technology and IT in some of Medway and London's toughest schools.

In 1999 I worked with London neighbours of all political persuasions to get a £1m grant to refurbish my local park (Manor House Gardens) and being press officer for a successful local campaign to save three libraries (Manor House, Blackheath, and Grove Park) from closure by New Labour. These campaigns incidentally ended the career of my local councillor, Lewisham Labour Mayor David Sullivan, through my several comic letters to the press. Many thanks by the way to the Old Socialist who told me Sullivan was known as 'Scissors' by his friends.

On the strength of my campaigns I was invited to become a Parliamentary Prospective Candidate by Lewisham Liberal Democrats, however the closure of large parts of Ford Dagenham in London (where many of my pupils got work experience in happier times) obliged me to terminate any links with the Lib Dems as they claimed the closures were part of our commitment to Europe.

In 2000 I joined the UK Independence Party becoming founding Press officer of SE London Branch in 2002, and guiding their evolution into the Greenwich and Lewisham Branches by 2006. I was a Euro Parliament Candidate in 2004 and kick started the London Mayoral Campaign by getting boxing Promoter Frank Maloney on London Television with Lewisham Metric Martyrs. (Many thanks for advice from Neil Herron of the Metric Martyrs Campaign) and ran UKIP's mobile street teams across London.

I cost New Labour a safe council seat in Lewisham by standing outside railway stations in the evenings with a leaflet entitled 'Party of Education to close local primary school'. The tired Commuters were not very receptive, until I telephoned the Labour Party, told them what I was doing and demanded to know what they were going to do about it. A whole crew turned up to see me off a public right of way - generating enough fuss to make my leaflet hot property. New Labour lost the seat by 42 votes.

My favourite vote ever gained involved a really big left wing loon mistaking me for a far right loon and threatening to punch my lights out during a street campaign. My retort that "Actually, I could do with the publicity" and "You do seem to have a lot in common with the people you have mistaken me for" changed his mind. The next night I was door stepping and I happened to ring his doorbell and received a new torrent of abuse and the door slammed in my face. However I went back after a moment to ask him if he would please read my leaflet before attributing other peoples views to me. His wife came to the door. "Don't worry darlin' " she said. "My husbands a right W*****. I'll be voting for you".

I was at also at the Hartlepool by Election where we trashed the Conservatives - they got fourth place for the first time since World War II, and at Bromley where we buried New Labour and at Henley where we might have done it again if Harriet Harman MP had not boosted the BNP vote by announcing new discriminatory rules in favour of ethnic and female job applicants on the eve of the poll. The best moment at Hartlepool was a mate of mine being asked if we were evangelists - "That's right!" he said. "We've come all the way from London to save you from the EU".

I was the UKIP General Election candidate at Dulwich and West Norwood in 2005 running against cabinet minister Tessa Jowell. At that time her government were throwing people in jail without trial. Faced with a hostile hustings audience of anti Iraq War demonstrators I won them over by pointing out that "Magna Carta (1215) gives everyone here tonight a right to a fair trial, which means that you Muslims in the audience would have stood a better chance of justice at the height of the Crusades than under this woman's government". Mrs Jowell sent a substitute for subsequent hustings.

I also ran a campaign against the Looney LibCon Lambeth Council 'Wintervalite Tendency' for taking money for Christmas lights form Brixton Market traders then deciding to ban them as offensive to minorities. I campaigned as Santa Claus, opposed by mates as dressed as Councillor Scrooge and Councillor Scumbag, and we conducted a survey of who liked Christmas through the market. We could not find a single person of any persuasion, immigrant or otherwise who was not pro-Christmas. Lambeth had Merry Christmas Banners up on the town hall the same day.

In 2006 I joined the UKIP staff in Brussels as Researcher and MEPs Assistant. My job largely involves a daily head banging trudge through EU documents in order to prepare committee and plenary voting lists. However I have been told I generate about one third of the key material our team turn into press coverage. I also write speeches. My favourite speech pointed out the ridiculous cost of translating EU documents into Gaelic for one MEP who spoke perfectly good English It then demanded that if the Spanish insisted on funding for Galician, Basque and Catalan we British could justifiably claim Cornish, Lollands, Hebridean, Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Scouse, Mancunian, Geordie, Broad Yorkshire, Brummie and Sarf Lunnon. I finished up by pointing out that every European Country could get on the translation train as the Maltese delegation had advised me that the dialect of Maltese found on Gozo was definitely a separate language. The torrent of abuse our MEP received was both amazing and gratifying. The speech went global with Reuters.

I am currently the UK Independence Party’s Number two London Region list candidate for the European Parliament Elections on June 4th 2009. As a result of my three years of International Political experience in Brussels and my many local and By-election campaigns in the UK, I look forward to hitting the ground running on behalf of all of you if I am elected.