Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-12-Speech-1-024"
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"en.20040112.5.1-024"2
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"Mr President, as you will be aware, last Monday my office received an incendiary bomb which was addressed to me but opened by my staff. Could I take the opportunity to thank colleagues for their solidarity and support. It was obviously a shocking incident, although we have to put it in perspective: a lot worse has happened to other Members of this House. What was particularly frightening was that it was my staff who opened this correspondence and that could have included, for example, students on temporary work experience; that was the most cowardly aspect of it.
While we have to take security precautions, I hope that we would not allow barriers to be created between us and the electorate, because that is exactly what the perpetrators want: to undermine democratic society. We have seen plenty of examples of that in the past.
Perhaps the most shocking aspect was a decision by Mr Farage of the UK Independence Party to put out an opportunist press release that was at best in the worst possible taste and at worst an apology for terrorism. Since that press release, my office staff have had injury added to insult by receiving a lot of emails from supporters of the UK Independence Party, or its members, which have been frankly offensive and inflammatory in the extreme, including one suggestion that it should have been a bigger bomb. This has reinforced my view of the UK Independence Party as a group of paranoid reactionaries on the fringes of society who are now clearly prepared to throw their lot in with those who advocate the violent overthrow of governments.
There have been apologists for terrorists in this House before, particularly Herri Batasuna. I am disappointed and ashamed that a British political party should have taken the same stance and I hope you condemn that, Mr President."@en1
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