Christopher Gill

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Christopher John Frederick Gill (born October 28, 1936) is a politician in the United Kingdom. He was one of the Maastricht Rebels and is the current President of The Freedom Association (TFA). He is also a member of the National Executive Committee of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).

Gill was born in Wolverhampton where he was a local councillor and was educated locally at Birchfield Preparatory School and then Shrewsbury School. His national service was in the Royal Navy, serving aboard HMS Modeste and HMS Birmingham. He is a director of his family's sausage making business called F.A. Gills Ltd.

Gill served as Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Ludlow from 1987 to 2001, when he stepped down. He was known as the "Butcher from Ludlow", due to his family company being a meat processing firm. During the Maastricht Rebellion, Food Minister Nicholas Soames threatened to: "close every abattoir you own". He had the Conservative Whip withdrawn over the EC Finance Bill on November 28 1994.

He was a dedicated constituency MP, who fought against the closure of local cottage hospitals. Gill was known for being an expert on European Union legislation regarding farming and also unusually (for a landlocked constituency) fishing.

He served as Chairman of The Freedom Association from 2001, before becoming its President in 2007.

In 2006, Gill announced that he had joined the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), having endorsed the Party's policies at the European Parliament election, 2004 and resigned his membership of the Conservatives shortly afterwards. In 2007, he was elected to UKIP's National Executive Committee.

Gill's autobiography is entitled Whip's Nightmare: Diary of a Maastricht Rebel.

[edit] References

Whip's Nightmare (2003)

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Eric Cockeram	Member of Parliament for Ludlow 1987–2001	Succeeded by Matthew Green