Nigel
Farage
‘Deeply
shocking’: Nigel Farage faces fresh claims of racism and antisemitism at school
Nigel
Farage
Bafta-winning
director among contemporaries urging contrition and apology from Reform UK
leader, who denies the allegations
Daniel
Boffey, Mark Blacklock and Henry Dyer
Tue 18
Nov 2025 15.00 GMT
It is the
hectoring tone, the “jeering quality”, in Nigel Farage’s voice today that
brings it all back for Peter Ettedgui. “He would sidle up to me and growl:
‘Hitler was right,’ or ‘Gas them,’ sometimes adding a long hiss to simulate the
sound of the gas showers,” Ettedgui says of his experience of being in a class
with Farage at Dulwich college in south London.
Ettedgui,
61, is a Bafta- and Emmy-winning director and producer whose credits include
Kinky Boots, McQueen and Super/Man: the Christopher Reeve Story.
Back then
he was a 13-year-old boy at a loss as to how to handle what he describes as a
sudden and inexplicable intrusion of antisemitism in his life.
This is
the first time Ettedgui has spoken in such detail of his alleged experiences,
but he is not the only one.
In recent
weeks, the Guardian has heard allegations from more than a dozen school
contemporaries of Farage who recount incidents of deeply offensive behaviour
throughout his teenage years.
This is
not the whole picture. Others who knew Farage then remember he was bumptious,
rude, provocative and enjoyed being the centre of attention, but do not recall
the behaviour described by Ettedgui and others.
There is
no claim that Farage the man must still hold the same views as the ones
ascribed to Farage the boy. But their memories of him left marks – ones that
haven’t dissolved with the passage of time, and are often revealed again when
he talks about issues such as immigration.
They say
they want to see more moral clarity from a man who could be Britain’s next
prime minister.
What is
troubling, one explained, is the lack of contrition in the intervening decades.
A couple of ex-pupils who have spoken to the Guardian say they are deeply
ashamed of their own part in singing “racist” songs.
The
question some want answered is: what about Farage?
Just
hearing that aggressive, hectoring tone again, my blood ran cold
Peter
Ettedgui
When
claims of this kind were first made about him more than a decade ago, Farage
admitted saying “some ridiculous things … not necessarily racist things… it
depends on how you define it”.
Now,
though, the man whose party is leading in all major opinion polls and says he
expects to be in Downing Street, appears to have changed tack.
In legal
letters to the Guardian, he has emphatically denied saying anything racist or
antisemitic when he was a teenager.
He has
also questioned whether there is any public interest in airing allegations that
date back over 40 years.
After
weeks of asking, a spokesperson for Reform UK gave a statement. “These
allegations are entirely without foundation,” they said. “The Guardian has
produced no contemporaneous record or corroborating evidence to support these
disputed recollections from nearly 50 years ago.”
‘I wasn’t
his only target’
For
Ettedgui, it is a question of character.
“My
grandparents had escaped from Nazi Germany, and had always talked with deep
gratitude about how they felt welcome in the UK,” he says.
“I’d
never experienced antisemitism growing up, so the first time that this vicious
verbal abuse came out of Farage’s mouth was deeply shocking. But I wasn’t his
only target. I’d hear him calling other students ‘Paki’ or ‘Wog’, and urging
them to ‘go home’. I tried to ignore him, but it was humiliating. It was
shaming. This kind of abuse cuts through to the core of your identity.”
Ettedgui
said he didn’t feel he could talk about it with his family or teachers. “So I
just buried the whole experience and got on with life. Many years later, a
friend sent me a link to a video of Farage berating EU commissioners. Just
hearing that aggressive, hectoring tone again, my blood ran cold.”
Farage
could suddenly “switch from hostility and become disarmingly affable, even
charming”, Ettedgui says.
“But from
my experience, there’s no doubt in my mind that he was a profoundly,
precociously racist teenager … I’d like to know why he’s never owned up or
shown the slightest contrition.”
Farage at
the time was 13 or 14. Too young to know better? A second pupil from a minority
ethnic background claimed he was similarly targeted by a 17-year-old Farage.
“I was
very small in one of the junior classes of the time, and you know that the
sixth-formers were probably 17, very tall, much taller than me,” he said. “And
that person’s walk, it’s the same walk he has now, I’ll never forget it.
“He
walked up to a pupil flanked by two similarly tall mates and spoke to anyone
looking ‘different’. That included me on three occasions; asking me where I was
from, and pointing away, saying: ‘That’s the way back,’ to wherever you replied
you were from.
“And it
was a very horrible ordeal. Honestly, at the time it was just quite perplexing.
Walking from the upper school, via the middle school, past different amenities,
through a gap into the lower school playground, right?
“You’ve
walked all that distance to do what you want to do. I thought to come over and
just say that? I mean, he will never be forgotten.”
The
former pupil said sometimes Farage and others would wait at the lower school
gate for pupils being dropped off by their parents.
“The
thought of it still creates fear and anger within me, and the look you get from
a person who does not see your humanity but just that you look different and
has reached a conclusion about you before you even open your mouth to speak.
“It’s a
look I have received many times in my life and it’s a look you simply never
forget. That feeling you get when being dropped off at school and just as you
have got out of the car, happy to go to school, you can see the group of taller
pupils waiting to inflict mental damage and then you are totally deflated. Aged
nine, no one should have to go through that.
“It is
hard to understand why such a person would dedicate so much time to [it], but
it is even more worrying that if such a person misused his minor position of
power at that time so instinctively, what such a person would do with more
power.”
‘It’s a
trust thing’
Critics
and supporters of Farage may argue over whether it is fair to judge him on what
he is alleged to have said as a teenager, but one thing seems certain: the
scrutiny of his life will continue and probably intensify.
For more
than three decades, he has been a fixture of the British political scene,
arguably a weather-maker like no other.
He helped
to secure Brexit in 2016, and Reform is posing an existential threat to the
Conservative party, as well as eating into Labour’s vote.
It is why
Keir Starmer made Farage the focus of his speech at the Labour party
conference, accusing him of crossing a “moral line”.
In the
run-up to it, the prime minister had labelled Reform’s policy of scrapping
indefinite leave to remain as “racist” and “immoral”.
The
deputy prime minister, David Lammy, went on to claim in a television interview
that Farage had “flirted” with the Hitler Youth as a young man, a comment that
was described as “disgusting and libellous” by unnamed Reform sources. Lammy
subsequently clarified that Farage had denied such claims.
The
deputy prime minister had been referencing allegations reported by Michael
Crick when he was a reporter for Channel 4 News in 2013, and then in a book he
published in 2022.
Crick had
obtained a letter from an English teacher at Dulwich college, Chloe Deakin. In
it, she had opposed a decision in 1981 by the master of Dulwich college to make
Farage a prefect when he was 17, describing him as having “publicly professed
racist and neo-fascist views”.
Deakin,
who did not know Farage personally, went on to say that a colleague had
reported that at a combined cadet force (CCF) “camp organised by the college,
Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night
shouting Hitler Youth songs”.
Bob Jope,
74, a teacher at the school at the time, told the Guardian he remembered
Deakin’s letter, and how it had been written after a staff meeting where the
issue of prefects was discussed.
“On this
particular meeting … it was by Dulwich standards quite dramatic. A number of
people spoke up expressing anxiety about Farage being a prefect.
“And a
few spoke in his defence, fewer in fact. The main thing seemed to be that his
attitude towards some of the younger boys and his attitudes towards those of
other races weren’t necessarily making [him] an ideal prefect.
“That was
the feeling – that [he] wasn’t kind of the right thing to be sort of prefect
material. Some staff had heard things about things he’s meant to have said on
CCF training weekends and so on. Which he later denied having ever said or
done, but again, these things came [out] at the meeting.
“The
reason I think things were so controversial was that at the end of the meeting
the master said words to the effect: ‘This doesn’t sound quite the right sort
of person to be made a prefect.’ Very soon after, the list of new prefects went
up on the board and his name was there.”
You can’t
defend it as being a joke, or that he was too young to know better. We were 18
Tim
France
The CCF
at Dulwich college was a youth organisation sponsored by the Ministry of
Defence, and Farage was a keen member in the army division.
The
Guardian has spoken to seven fellow members of the CCF, including two who
marched with Farage in Sussex where Deakin alleged he sang Hitler Youth songs.
None of them recalled those specific songs being sung.
But there
are other memories that some feel have not been acknowledged in Reform’s angry
denunciation of Lammy’s comments.
“I was in
the CCF with him from 1979 to 1982 or so,” said one former pupil.
“[Farage]
did teach the younger members of the CCF the infamous ‘Gas ’em all’ song, or at
least led the singing of it on CCF coaches to training areas,” he claimed.
The song,
variants of which were heard on English football terraces in the 1980s, is sung
to the tune of George Formby’s Bless Em All. One version runs: “‘Gas em all;
Gas em all; Gas em all; And into the showers they crawl; We’ll gas all the
niggers; We’ll gas all the Jews; Come on you lads gas em all’.
The
former pupil added: “There were black, Asian and Jewish CCF cadets on the bus.
As I say, one of them asked me not to sing it or make those sort of comments.
And I didn’t.
“I liked
him. I was just being a bit silly. I suppose from that perspective you could
put it down to schoolboy racism,” he said, but added that he believed that with
Farage a “sort of divisive behaviour seems to have persisted”.
He added
of his motivation for talking about events that took place more than four
decades ago: “Just look at the Nolan principles [on the required standards in
public office]: integrity, honesty, selfless commitment, that sort of thing.
Nigel just doesn’t have these qualities.”
The
former pupil noted that Farage had previously conceded in response to Crick’s
reporting that “he might have said silly racist things which some might
consider to be racist or not” – but that a vehement denial had then been issued
in response to Lammy’s comments. “You know there’s just no consistency, so it’s
a trust thing. He would be a terrible leader,” the former Dulwich pupil said.
Patrick
Neylan, 61, an editor, who was in the year below Farage, recalled the singing
of the “gas ’em” song on CCF camps and expressed his own shame at being
involved.
The song
was sung in the CCF on coaches to annoy the teachers, he claimed, although he
did not directly recall Farage being involved. It was “boys being naughty to
annoy the grown-ups. You knew they were wrong, that was the thrill,” he said.
He does not think Farage stood out in terms of his views and behaviour – but he
added of the chants: “I’ve been deeply ashamed of it for 40 years.”
Tim
France, 61, was in the same year as Farage and sat near him in the final year
as a consequence of the class being organised alphabetically. For him, Farage’s
behaviour did stand out. He recalled a similar song being performed by Farage,
who would also “regularly” perform the Nazi “Sieg heil” salute, he claimed.
“In the
sixth form, you know, he became much more kind of political and very rightwing
and shockingly so,” he said.
“We all
kind of grew up in the shadow of the second world war, our grandparents fought
in the second world war. So, you know, you didn’t question that Hitler was
wrong.”
“Somebody
kind of outwardly doing Nazi salutes, strutting about the classroom, you know,
doing, kind of saying things like ‘Hitler was right’ and all that stuff was
pretty shocking and therefore very memorable,” France claimed.
“It was
habitual, you know, it happened all the time. He would often be doing Nazi
salutes and saying ‘Sieg heil’ and, you know, strutting around the classroom.
He was a member of the cadet force, [so] often being in uniform. And, yeah, it
might have been for shock value, partly, but I think, you know, clearly, he
also is very rightwing politically.
“He was
saying really, really unpleasant things, really things that you just knew were
wrong. You can’t really defend it as being a joke, or that he was too young to
know any better. We were 18.”
The
British Movement, later called the British National Socialist Movement, was an
extremist organisation active in the late 1970s.
France
claimed: “He would chant, ‘BM, BM, we are British Nazi men,’ that really sticks
in my mind.”
He
recalled going on coaches to Exeter and Yorkshire for geography field trips.
“One of the buses was the smokers’ bus. It was like a fog of thick smoke.
Farage called that the gas chamber. He was, you know, joking about it being the
gas chamber: ‘Let’s get back in the gas chamber.’ Then he would be sort of
singing these kind of ‘gas ’em all’ sort of songs.”
France,
who said he clashed with Farage at the time because he had leftwing views,
added: “Look, the trouble with all of this is it is so easy to wipe the slide.
If I was Farage, I’d just say, ‘It never happened, I don’t remember, they’re
all making it up and trying to kind of bring me down,’ or ‘It was all a joke.’
At the very worst he could say it was all a joke. It would still be bad. But
it’s easy to kind of sidestep all of that stuff. That’s why I don’t have a
problem saying it’s true. I remember, very clearly; absolutely 100% true.”
Andy
Field, 61, an NHS doctor who said he knew Farage well because they took the
same train to school, has similarly clear memories.
“When I
became a prefect, he [Farage] said, ‘I’ll show you how to do it,’” claimed
Field. “He took me for a walk up to the lower school playground, where all the
children from about nine years old to 12 would be. And he singled out,
completely at random, a kid of Asian extraction, and just put him in detention
for no reason whatsoever. I was flabbergasted, absolutely stunned. I was just
disgusted, really. No rhyme or reason, just purely based on the colour of his
skin.”
A second
abiding memory for Field is of a peculiar ritual-like show put on by Farage on
a platform at West Dulwich station.
Field
claims Farage, dressed like a dandy, with sharp creases to his trousers and
shiny shoes, set fire to a copy of the school roll. It was said to have more
Patels than Smiths that year.
“He took
it as a symbol of a change in the tide, something that was beyond the pale,
that we couldn’t possibly have that situation,” claimed Field. “He made a
little public ceremony. Anyone who was around could watch. High jinks.”
Field
said: “The bottom line for me is about whether Nigel Farage can be trusted as a
leader. Having seen him up close and having watched his career, I am completely
of the view that he cannot be trusted at all.”
Mark
Haward, 61, a driving instructor, who was a boarder at Dulwich college, said he
had also found the tone of Farage’s response to allegations about his school
days surprising, given he was “very proud and loud” about his views at the
time.
He
claimed: “He loved the sound of his own voice; he would come in usually
chanting something. He always wanted to be listened to – I distinctly remember
him coming in several times chanting ‘Oswald Ernald Mosley’ [the name of the
far-right leader of the British Union of Fascists].”
Haward
said he was speaking out now because he had “noticed he’d been denying the
allegations” about singing Hitler Youth songs.
Haward
did not witness the singing of that song or indeed “person-on-person racism” by
Farage, “but he absolutely used to” chant Mosley’s name quite regularly.
Prof Dave
Edmonds, 61, another Jewish pupil, claimed: “I have a very strong memory of him
using the W-word for what we now call people of Afro-Caribbean origin and the
P-word for those of south Asian origin.
“I don’t
remember being on the receiving end of antisemitic remarks, though of course he
made outrageous comments about the war. I don’t think Jews were his main racial
preoccupation. He was generally obsessed, as he is now, with the erosion of
Britishness.”
Another
former Dulwich college pupil added: “What sticks in the memory most is not just
his odious and prejudicial opinions towards black, Asian and minority ethnic
students, but how central and public these views were to his whole school
persona.
“How
brazenly and actively he identified with them, wearing them loud and proud as
badges of honour.”
The
Guardian has also spoken to pupils who did not remember the use of such
language by Farage.
Crick had
also found that for every person who recalled racist behaviour. there was one
who had no such experience. Farage could be friendly with children from
minority ethnic backgrounds.
There is
no evidence that Farage has ever been a member of far-right organisations.
Crick has concluded that Farage the man is not racist. Yet concerns about his
views have been raised throughout his political career. It is certainly the
case that he has had to expel extremists attracted to the parties he has led.
Sarah
Pochin, the Reform MP for Runcorn and Helsby, apologised recently after saying
on a talkshow that “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people,
full of Asian people”. Farage said he believed Pochin had not intended to be
racist.
Nick
Gordon Brown, 61, another contemporary at Dulwich college who regularly clashed
with Farage, believes he can see a thread running through from Farage the boy,
who he claimed was a “loud and frequent” supporter of the repatriation of
immigrants, a policy proposed by the far-right National Front at the time, to
Farage the man, seemingly on the cusp of the UK’s highest office today.
“I always
remember his words – he used to refer to our ‘black and brown friends’ with
that grin, with that tone of voice, that anyone who sees him on the TV now will
be so used to,” he said. “That was a constant narrative. I mean, arguably it
was his only narrative and I think that remains his obsession to this day.”
He said
he thought it possible to draw a “straight line” from Farage’s alleged support
for repatriation “to his recent policy proposal, about not feeling comfortable
living next door to Romanians, not liking hearing other accents or languages on
the tube, the Brexit ‘breaking point’ poster, the incendiary tweet after the
Southport attack, the dubious figures he likes to come up with about the
alleged ethnic breakdown of the UK population”.
“The man
I see on TV now saying these things is the 17-year-old I remember from school”,
he claimed.
He has a
very, very consistent world view
Roger
Gough
In his
book, Crick quoted David Emms, a master of Dulwich college who has since died,
as saying that he “thought of [Farage] as a naughty boy who had got up the
noses of the teaching staff for reasons that are his chirpiness and cheekiness.
They wanted to expel him. I think it was naughtiness rather than racism. I saw
good in him and he responded to being made a prefect. I saw considerable
potential in this chap and I was proved right.”
The Rev
Neil Fairlamb, a teacher for 21 years at Dulwich college, agrees. He said he
helped Farage and others in the political society to invite guests to the
school, including the former prime minister Ted Heath and Enoch Powell, just
over a decade after his notorious “rivers of blood” speech about immigration.
In more
recent years, Farage has said that while Powell got it wrong about people of
different nationalities and races being unable to mix, the central thrust of
his arguments about immigration held true.
Fairlamb
also recalled taking a group, including Farage, who pronounced his name as
“Farridge” at the time, on a trip to France.
“He said:
‘Thanks very much, sir. Done that now, no need to go back,’” said Fairlamb. “I
asked why. ‘Because it’s full of the French.’” Was Farage – who today lives
with his French partner – joking? “Not entirely,” he said.
But the
former teacher, who twice stood as a Conservative parliamentary candidate, said
he did not see racism in Farage, and that he believed Deakin’s letter was
motivated largely by her dislike of the college’s culture.
Fairlamb
kept in touch, even visiting Farage in hospital after he was hit by a car at
the age of 26. They have corresponded on and off since.
“He was
objectionable, but I like objectionable pupils,” added Fairlamb. A harmless
contrarian, then, who liked to shock?
Roger
Gough, the Conservative leader of Kent county council until Reform took it in
May, was in the same year as Farage at school and has watched his career
closely since. That summary does not quite ring true for him.
“I think
the truth lies somewhere between the view of him as a consistently extreme
rightwinger and that that he was a gadfly that likes to stir things up,” he
said. “He was a contrarian, but I don’t think that is the whole story. From my
recollection, he was quite preoccupied by immigration … He has a very, very
consistent world view.”
Reform UK
claimed the Guardian was attempting to smear the party.
“It is no
coincidence that this newspaper seeks to discredit Reform UK – a party that has
led in over 150 consecutive opinion polls and whose leader bookmakers now have
as the favourite to be the next prime minister.
”We fully
expect these cynical attempts to smear Reform and mislead the public to
intensify further as we move closer to the next election.”
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