Former Dulwich pupil says Farage told him: ‘That’s the way back to Africa’
A former Dulwich college pupil who claims a teenage Nigel Farage told him “that’s the way back to Africa” has said he felt compelled to speak out after the Reform leader’s attempt at “denying or dismissing” the hurt of his alleged targets.Yinka Bankole, who claims he had just started at the school when a 17-year-old Farage singled him out for abuse, said he had decided to tell his story in full after watching the Reform leader’s press conference on Thursday.Farage told reporters that he had never been racist or antisemitic with “malice”.Instead, he launched a tirade aimed at the BBC and ITV for questioning him about an ongoing Guardian investigation into allegations of past antisemitism and racism.Citing television shows including Are You Being Served? and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Farage accused the BBC, which he suggested he would boycott, of “double standards and hypocrisy”, and claimed ITV had a case to answer for airing the comedian Bernard Manning in the 1970s.
Bankole, whose parents, a nurse and an osteopath, came to the UK from Nigeria in the 1950s, said he had found it the “most amazingly disingenuous example of the phrase ‘let he without sin cast the first stone’”, adding: “It was also the final straw.”He said: “I went to the school for a year between 1980 and 1981, starting at a mere nine years of age.I was in the most junior class (JC) at the time, in a college that was so large, consisting of lower, middle and upper schools with an age range from nine to 18.“My hardworking parents celebrated with pictures as proud parents would do when their child is so privileged to attend such a well-reputed educational institution.“It took him a while, I recall, but one day Farage, and at least one other, spotted me in the lower-school playground.
He was about 17 years old.“He towered over me.‘Where are you from?’ he asked.Within seconds of offering my rather confused and sputtering answers, he had a clear response: ‘That’s the way back to Africa,’ with an accompanying hand gesture pointing towards a place far away.”Bankole, 54, an engineer, said that once his “existence as a target was established”, Farage “would wait at the lower-school gate, where I was dropped off for school, so as to repeat the vulgarity”.
He said he would always remember what he described as a “look of hatred he had for me, seemingly simply for existing”.Bankole said: “Without knowing my name, but just looking at me with what appeared to be no appreciation of my humanity and simply because of how I looked.”Farage has variously claimed that while comments that were “banter” more than four decades ago might be seen as bigoted today, he had never said them “directly” to anyone or “with intent” to hurt.Bankole added: “I will leave it to the reader to decide whether this was ‘malicious or non-malicious’, ‘meant with intent or not with intent’, ‘direct or non-direct’.I know how I experienced it.
It certainly felt malicious to me,”Bankole is one of 28 school contemporaries of Farage’s at Dulwich college, a public school in south-east London, who claim to have witnessed deeply offensive racist or antisemitic behaviour by the Reform UK leader,He had previously spoken to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity but decided to put his name to his story because he had been angered by Farage’s response,A lawyer acting for Reform had “categorically denied” that Farage had “ever engaged in, condoned or led racist or antisemitic behaviour” when allegations were first put by the Guardian to the party,Farage later admitted he may have said things in “banter” at school that could be viewed differently today but denied saying anything racist or antisemitic “directly” at an individual.
On Thursday, Farage denied saying anything racist “with malice”.He has repeatedly suggested that the claims are politically motivated and questioned whether it would be possible to remember events from the 1970s and early 80s.Bankole said he has voted for multiple parties over his life and is not a member of any political party.“Farage has suggested that it is simply inconceivable that anyone could recall such events of over four decades ago,” Bankole said.“I would simply ask: can a victim of such abuse ever forget? I know I haven’t forgotten.
I recognise his walk every time I see it on TV as that same walk that used to approach me.“Looking back, it was perhaps a stroke of luck that I left after a year – the high school fees being a contributory factor along with family relocation.“The thought terrifies me of what could have happened if I was there the following year when the bully would have had even more authority.The prospect of him having infinitely more of that in a few years’ time is truly a chilling thought.”The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.
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