UKIP candidate condemned for racist slurs against Welsh Labour leadership candidate Vaughan Gething

Martin Shipton

A far right activist who will be standing as a Ukip candidate in this year’s general election has been strongly condemned after making racist slurs against Welsh Labour leadership candidate Vaughan Gething in an online video.

Stan Robinson, who will be seeking election in Llanelli, is co-founder of the Voice of Wales group with convicted fraudster Dan Morgan.

In a video posted online, the pair joke about the candidacy of Mr Gething, the Welsh Government’s Economy Minister, who is standing against Education Minister Jeremy Miles for the right to succeed Mark Drakeford as Welsh Labour leader and First Minister in March.

In the video, Mr Robinson describes Mr Gething as “tinted” and a “mock diversity” candidate. He also derides Mr Gething for saying that if he wins the election he will be the first Black national leader in Europe.

At the end of his video conversation with Mr Morgan, Mr Robinson announces facetiously that he will “black up” for dinner.

Shocking

A Llanelli Labour source said: “It is shocking that someone standing for election to Parliament should engage in such racist behaviour. The comments made in this video hark back to the prejudices of the 1950s and are totally unacceptable. These people are doing their best to stir up racial hatred and it shouldn’t be tolerated.”

In his profile on Voice of Wales’ website, Mr Robinson boasts about being involved in a notorious strike-breaking campaign aimed at destroying unions in the print industry and supporting the right of cricketers to play in apartheid-era South Africa at a time when former Neath MP Peter Hain was leading a sports boycott campaign aimed at toppling the country’s racist regime.

Nation.Cymru has reported previously how Mr Robinson’s Voice of Wales sidekick Dan Morgan received a six months jail sentence suspended for 12 months for his involvement in an insurance scam that robbed hundreds of ordinary people of their savings.

Swansea Crown Court heard how a call centre was set up to con people on the back of the PPI scandal. It was responsible for an astonishing 53 million scam phone messages.

The fraudsters promised big payouts in connection with mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance policies but in reality their aim was simply to get victims’ credit card details and steal money from them.

Hundreds of people paid up to £550 each after being tricked by the call centre staff into believing they were due substantial PPI refunds, with many of the victims of the scam being elderly and vulnerable.

Six defendants, including Morgan, were convicted at trial in January 2023 but the trial could not be reported at that time due to reporting restrictions ahead of a second trial of their co-accused. All the remaining defendants subsequently pleaded guilty.

Fraud

Judge Huw Rees said the call centre operation had been a “deliberate, planned fraud carefully structured and fraudulent from its inception” and at the heart of the conspiracy lay the defendants’ greed which “overrode any compassion or concern” for the victims. He told the defendants they had routinely misled people about the prospect of PPI refunds and peddled “blatant lies” on the phones, noting the lies “tripped easily off the tongue” for them. He said not only had the fraud affected individual victims who had been left with a feeling of “violation” but had affected the wider public’s respect and confidence in the industry.

Nine admitted conspiracy to commit fraud, six – including Morgan – were convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud following a trial and one admitted money laundering.

In 2021 YouTube removed two channels jointly run by Morgan and Stan Robinson because of their racist content. Welsh politicians and race equality groups condemned the Voice of Wales channel for airing interviews with The Proud Boys, an American far-right group that has been outlawed in Canada, and controversial figures such as former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson.

Organised crime

A week before Christmas 2023, Ukip organised a party at Stamps, a bar in Llanelli whose licence had been challenged by the police because of its alleged links to organised crime.

Entertainment at the party was provided by local comedian Tommy G, 34, who, under his real name Geraint Thomas, was given a nine-month prison sentence suspended for two years in September 2023 after pleading guilty to the crime of malicious communications. The charge arose out of a video he made that targetted a female police officer with “prolonged” sexist and ageist comments which caused her a significant amount of distress.

In April 2023 Stamps was refused a licence transfer by Carmarthenshire councillors after police said some of the people linked to the bar had criminal convictions, including one who was said to have been the “right hand man” in a major conspiracy to supply cocaine.

Dyfed-Powys Police objected to the granting of a new licence on several grounds. It said one individual linked to the application was one of nine who had admitted their part in a conspiracy to supply cocaine in 2020 following a five-month undercover police investigation called Operation Elegant. Police said the Class A drug – more than 2kg of which was seized – was transported between Swansea, Pontarddulais and Llanelli.

The decision notice issued by Carmarthenshire County Council stated: “The sub-committee noted that the police rarely objected to such applications and that the convictions outlined in the police evidence were both serious and numerous. There were clear connections between the applicant and those linked with organised crime. This, combined with the recent incidents at the premises, suggests to the sub-committee that exceptional circumstances did exist in this case.”

Magistrates, however, later granted Stamps a licence to operate with conditions.