'I'm no racist' claims ex-Ukip councillor expelled for saying she dislikes 'negroid features'

A councillor expelled by Ukip after saying that she had a problem with “negroes” has insisted that she is not racist and did not regret making the comment.

Rozanne Duncan, who had been a prominent member of Ukip in the Thanet South seat where Nigel Farage is running for Parliament, was filmed on BBC documentary Meet the Ukippers saying that she dislikes “negroid features.”

Mrs Duncan said she felt “betrayed” after being expelled in December for bringing Ukip “into disrepute.”

In the documentary due to be be broadcast tonight on BBC2, Mrs Duncan was recorded as telling Ukip press officer Liz Langton Way: “The only people I do have a problem with are negroes. And I don’t know why.”

“I don’t know whether there is something in my psyche or whether it’s karma from a previous life or whether something happened to me as a very, very young person and I’ve drawn a veil over it – because that sometimes happens, doesn’t it?”

“But I really do have a problem with people with negroid features”

She was forced out of Ukip after the party became aware of her comments.

Appearing on BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House programme today, Ukip leader Nigel Farage said Ms Duncan's comments were "horrible and "unacceptable".

He said that they were the sort of "statements we seem to get from Conservative defectors".

"[Her lack of regret] really proves my point that clearly she doesn't have any understanding of the deep offence she has caused - so we took the right decision."

Duncan claimed that there was a “hidden agenda” behind her expulsion and insisted that there was nothing “racist or derogatory” in what she said.

“I don’t regret saying it. I don’t regret anything, that’s the truth. I still honestly believe that what I said was never at any time racist or derogatory.”

“I used the word ‘negroes’ as you would do Asians, Chinese, Muslims, Jews. It’s a description, it’s not an insult – in the same way as you would say, ‘What do you mean by Jewish? Well, they belong to a community, they have got a certain faith, they have usually got noses that have got a bit of curve to them, married women – if they are orthodox Jews – wear wigs’. It’s a description.”

The BBC documentary also features Ukip’s Thanet South chairman Martyn Heale speaking about the media attention over his brief past membership of the National Front.

In the programme he says: “For Christ’s sake, I was never a member of the Gestapo. I was not a member of the Stasi, I never served of a term of imprisonment in my life.”

Speaking of his brief membership of the national front he said “I wasn’t quite aware that it was as extreme as they said and after I think a year and a half my wife and I decided that it was not the right thing for me to do so I left,” said Mr Heale

Additional reporting by PA