10th March 2011: Yesterday, Dominic Carman (right), the Liberal Democrat candidate in the recent Barnsley By-Election, was interviewed by Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics Show.
During the interview he accused the Barnsley people of intolerance and homophobia. He then made an unprovoked attack on me. He said, "He is an avowed Nazi and an admirer of Adolf Hitler".
It is on record that I was a member of the National Socialist Movement between the ages of seventeen and eighteen. I am now sixty-three, nearly sixty four - forty six years ago, nearly half a century! From the age of eighteen, I have been a committed supporter of Parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. The parties of which I have been a member, since then, have all been committed to democracy.
Many Labour politicians have been members of the Communist Party in their teens, twenties and even thirties. Dennis Healey was a member of the Communist Party at the height of the Stalinist purges. Would anybody be allowed to call Mr. Healey an avowed Communist and admirer of Joseph Stalin? However, Andrew Neil allowed an exactly comparable accusation about me to stand as though it were incontrovertible fact.
I am not a supporter - avowed or otherwise - of Hitler or any other totalitarian. I am utterly opposed to aggressive wars, the ill treatment of people on any ground and I am committed to democracy and individual freedom.
Carman's irrational and malicious outburst can be explained by the fact that he was pushed into sixth place by an independent, who was beaten by us. His public denunciation of his late father, the famous barrister, reveals a disturbed and vengeful personality.
It is not insignificant that Carman was a member of the National Front in the late 1970s when he was in his teens. If the National Front had been a nazi organisation (which it most certainly was not), he would by that fact alone now be "an avowed Nazi and an admirer of Adolf Hitler". The real object of Carman's obsessive hatred is himself.
Andrew's video response can be found here.
Please help Andrew set the record straight.
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