THE DECISION MAKERS: Immigration is key for Ukip AM

UKIP is still something of a novelty in the Welsh Assembly, with members representing the party elected to the Senedd for the first time just 18 months ago.

Among them was David Rowlands, who was elected as one of two Ukip AMs for South Wales East, and now the party’s sole representative for the region since Mark Reckless defected to the Conservatives earlier this year.

Born in Argoed, Mr Rowlands has run a series of businesses, including Alice Springs Golf Club in Monmouthshire, and served as a magistrate.

Joining Ukip in 1998, he ran in a series of Parliamentary, Assembly and European elections, before finally winning a seat in the Assembly last May as one of the party’s regional candidates for South Wales East.

He said, although he had previously been something of a floating voter, his Euroscepticism ultimately made Ukip his natural political home.

“I voted for all the parties over the years – Plaid, Labour, Conservatives – as and when either the personality involved was good or their politics seemed right to me at the time,” he said.

“The real motivation for me getting involved in politics is simply that I believe passionately in the unity of the UK and I believe passionately in the sovereignty of the UK.

“I was one of those who actually voted in 1973 to go into the European market because I really felt a free trade market was a great thing, but then I saw it slowly evolving into something different from what I had voted for.

“When people talk about exaggerations, they call them lies, by people who wanted to leave the EU, they pale into insignificance from the lies which were told to take us into the single market.

“They told us we would never have any problems with keeping our sovereignty, we would never be asked to go into a single currency, our fishing grounds were to be sacrosanct, and all those sorts of things we were told at the time were patently not true.”

Mr Rowlands said the main thrust of his choice to join Ukip was the party’s approach to immigration. He said last year’s Brexit vote and the support for the Leave campaign in the South Wales Valleys showed people in the area were concerned about the impact of immigration on their communities.

“Go to Merthyr and speak to the people who live there,” he said. “It wasn’t us driving that, it wasn’t me saying ‘all your ills are from immigration’, they saw how it was impacting on their way of life.

“They couldn’t get their children into the schools they chose and often they saw immigrant families put in front of them.

“The Labour Party couldn’t see where the thinking of the Welsh people was at that time; they certainly weren’t representing the people they’re supposed to be representing.”

But he said his concerns centred not only around the impact on Welsh society, but also the impact on immigrants themselves.

“They’re the ones being exploited,” he said.

“They’re being exploited by other immigrant gangs – it’s not so much the indigenous population, they’re being exploited by their own people to some very, very bad degrees.

“I’ve spoken very often about slavery and it’s one of my key projects to make sure we are addressing this.

“The other major parties are burying their heads in the sand over this for political reasons and I think that’s appalling.”

He added he believed a full assessment of the impact immigration has on the UK should be carried out, taking into account money being sent abroad as a result, the extra strain on services and other costs as well as the benefits, and policies tailored accordingly.

“What we are saying as a party is ‘let’s have a moratorium on people coming into the country’,” he said.

“It’s not a matter, as the Lib Dems keep saying, of pulling up the drawbridge or dragging us away from Europe as if we’re going to be in the middle of the Atlantic.

“It’s about control of the numbers so we can get on top of those who are here.

“As far as I am concerned, and as far as the party is concerned, everyone who is already residing in the country should have the opportunity, if they wish, to stay here.

“It should be written into the rules, and if you read what the Conservatives are doing they are planning on doing that.”

Mr Rowlands said he believed there had been “a lot of wasted opportunities” since the dawn of devolution, and he hoped he could drive Wales’ future forward.

“I think there is a real feeling now that we’ve had some wasted years and wasted money, in that most of the money coming from Europe went to public sector projects,” he said.

“It could have been much better spent.”

Referring to Communities First, the Welsh Government’s anti-poverty scheme, which was scrapped last year after £432 million in investment over 16 years, Mr Rowlands said: “I would be of the opinion that if you gave £1 million to 432 proven entrepreneurs, they would have created a huge number of jobs and wealth.

“I do think there are members now, right across the parties, still stuck in the old ways, but there are some, particularly in the Labour Party I think, who want to push for a much more economics-driven economy or private enterprise type of economy.”

Mr Rowlands said a particular struggle he had faced across his political career was battling against the perception of Ukip in some areas as being driven by racism.

Saying “I would never have joined a party which had racism as part of its ethos”, Mr Rowlands said: “It’s been very hurtful to me at times.

“There have been people involved in every party who are racist or homophobic, but I would say the vast majority of people I’ve met in the party, whether it’s in the grassroots or the higher echelons, I’ve almost never heard a racist or homophobic remark, and that’s the truth.

“If to be patriotic is to be racist, then I suppose you could call us a racist party, but I honestly don’t believe that that is.”

He said he believed the issue was particularly driven by what he called “the fascist left”.

“Fascists believe they are superior to another group of people, it’s mostly been based on race or ethnicity but it can also be based on intellectual superiority, and I honestly believe the far left believe they are intellectually superior to anyone who doesn’t hold their political beliefs,” he said.

“So often they say the people who voted for Brexit didn’t understand it and were ignorant or led up the garden path and so on.

“But actually the general, hard-working working-class person isn’t ignorant about what’s going on, they’re very clued up.”

He said this became especially clear to him when he ran for Parliament in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney in 2015, coming second to Labour’s Gerald Jones.

“When I opened an office in Merthyr I put signs up, and they were all torn down,” he said.

“The locks on the office doors were glued up.

“A large crowd showed up who told us absolutely what they thought of us. I was pushed, jostled and very much intimidated by that crowd.

“I had people coming up afterwards saying ‘I thought that was appalling, please don’t think that’s representative of the people of Merthyr’ and they weren’t because those people were shipped in by, I think, the ultra left-wing unions.

“I saw things posted on Facebook that they were going to burn the place down, they were going to kill us and smash the place up.

“Whenever we put up signs they were torn down or desecrated.

“British politics shouldn’t be about bully-boy tactics.”

But, he said: “The word racist has stuck whether we like it or not.

“It has been thrown at us so often by so many people that we are, to a certain section of society, still looked upon as the racist party.

“People are still writing us off, but actually they’ve been putting nails in our coffin ever since I joined. They’ve never stopped writing us off.

“We’ve never really had representatives in Parliament, apart from two, but you have to realise what we’ve achieved without that. We’ve probably achieved more than any other party in the last 100 years in influencing the thoughts of the British public and being their voice.”