‘Deeply shocking’: Nigel Farage faces fresh claims of racism and antisemitism at schoolNEWS | 19 November 2025It 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.
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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.”
View image in fullscreen Right to left: Peter Ettedgui, Ian Bonhote, Robert Ford and Lizzie Gillett after winning the Bafta for best documentary for Super/Man: the Christopher Reeve Story this year. Photograph: Dave Hogan/Hogan Media/Rex/Shutterstock
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.”
View image in fullscreen Dulwich college, where there was disagreement about whether Farage should be made a prefect. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
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.
View image in fullscreen Nigel Farage standing with a Brexit supporter during Ukip’s Brexit ‘battle bus’ tour in Kingston, London, in 2016. Photograph: Lauren Hurley/PA
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.
View image in fullscreen ‘He loved the sound of his own voice,’ said one former fellow pupil. Photograph: Nathan Howard/Reuters
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.”
View image in fullscreen A picture from a Dulwich college magazine of the combined cadet force with a boy believed to be Nigel Farage seated on the ground (centre, reaching towards his feet). Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
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.”
View image in fullscreen Farage sparring with the media after making a general election campaign speech as Brexit party leader in Bolsover, Derbyshire, in 2019. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
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.”
View image in fullscreen Andy Field. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian
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.
View image in fullscreen Farage celebrating with Sarah Pochin after defeating Labour by six votes to win the Runcorn and Helsby byelection in May. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
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 21. 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.”Author: Henry Dyer. Daniel Boffey. Source
