| Roger Helmer MEP | |
|---|---|
| Member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands |
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| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 1 May 1999 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | 25 January 1944 London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Alma mater | Churchill College, Cambridge |
| Website | rogerhelmer.com |
| (The picture above is courtesy of the Mises Youth Club) | |
Roger Helmer (born 25 January 1944 in London) is a British politician and a Conservative Party Member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands region. He has described himself as a eurosceptic and is a supporter of the Better Off Out campaign. He was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999 as a Conservative Party MEP, and re-elected in 2004.[1] Helmer currently sits on two European Parliamentary committees (Employment and Petitions), and is a member of the delegation to South East Asian countries and a substitute member of the delegation to Korea.
He was suspended from the Conservative Party whip on 26 May 2005 after voting against party instructions on a motion to censure the European Commission and openly criticising his delegation leader, Timothy Kirkhope, in a parliamentary debate;[2] the Conservative party whip was restored on 13 September 2006,[3] but he remained Non-Inscrit. He joined the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), with the other Conservative MEPs, in July 2009.
On 12 October 2011 Helmer announced that he would resign from the European Parliament at the end of the year, citing "increasing disillusion with the attitudes of the Conservative Party" as the main reason, although admitting that his "twelve-and-a-half years banging my head against the same brick wall in Brussels is perhaps long enough".[4] Helmer expected to be replaced by Matthews who was next on the Conservative party list in the European Parliament election, 2009. However Helmer later announced he was delaying standing down. The Tory party was reported to be looking into golliwog dolls featuring on the front cover of a book published by a company of which his expected successor Rupert Matthews is director and shareholder.[5]
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Born in 1944, Helmer attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Southampton (1955–62), and then won a State Scholarship to Churchill College, Cambridge, where he read mathematics, graduating in 1965.
He started his business career in 1965 with Procter & Gamble in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, going on to hold senior marketing and general management appointments in a range of companies, including Readers Digest, National Semiconductor, Coats Viyella and the whisky firm United Distillers, now part of the drinks conglomerate Diageo. During the course of his business career he lived and worked in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Korea, and ran businesses in the Philippines, Vietnam, Guam and Saipan.
In September 1998, following his selection as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the East Midlands, Roger left his job as Managing Director of a Leicester textile company, Donisthorpe Ltd (the UK subsidiary of a French textile multinational), to campaign full time ahead of the 1999 euro-elections, and took up his new role as an MEP immediately afterwards.[6]
He was re-elected as a Conservative MEP for the East Midlands Region in 2004.[1]
He was subsequently suspended from the party Whip on 26 May 2005 after voting against party instructions on a motion to censure the European Commission[7] However, on 13 September 2006, he had the Conservative party whip restored,[3] but remained Non-Inscrit. He joined the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), with the other Conservative MEPs, in July 2009.
Having initially advocated the Conservative policy of renegotiating the EU treaties, since 2006 he has been a supporter of the Better Off Out campaign, calling for the UK to leave the EU.[8]
He was appointed Adam Smith Scholar in 2005 by a right wing pressure group in the USA called the American Legislative Exchange Council.[9]
He became Chairman of the libertarian pressure group, The Freedom Association, in April 2007.
In November 2009 he stepped down as the Conservative party's spokesman on employment in the European parliament because he thought the Conservatives' new policy on not supporting a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was "confused" and "essentially cosmetic".[10]
Helmer has published three books. The first two were on European issues, "Straight Talking on Europe" in 2000, and "A Declaration of Independence" in 2002. In April 2006 he contributed an article on "Austria and the EU Constitution" to the blog Make Socialism History. A third book "Sceptic at Large" on a wider range of topics was published in 2011 by Bretwalds Books.
On May 2011, in his blog, Helmer said that there should be two categories of rape, "stranger rape" and "date rape" and that a woman who is date raped "surely shares a part of the responsibility". His comments caused uproar, with demands for Helmer to resign or to have the Conservative whip withdrawn again.[11]
On 19 July 2009, on his blog, Helmer defended the Polish Law and Justice MEP, and chairman of the ECR, Michał Kamiński from accusations of homophobia. He went on to write that homophobia does not exist and that the word: "is merely a propaganda device" designed to "denigrate and stigmatise those holding conventional opinions".[12]
This later caused controversy; on 9 August Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of Stonewall, criticised Helmer, saying "If Mr Helmer thinks that homophobia doesn't exist in modern Britain, then perhaps he should be introduced to the families of Michael Causer and Jody Dobrowski. I suspect that their dignity in the face of the murders of their sons by homophobes might cause Mr Helmer to think again". Former minister Geoff Hoon stated that this was "yet another sign that David Cameron has caved in to the views of the extreme elements in his party and removed the Conservatives from Europe's mainstream" and invited the Conservative Party leader to say whether or not he agreed with Helmer's comments.[13]
On 11 August 2009, Helmer defended himself, saying he was not claiming "that there is no discrimination, and that homosexuals do not suffer violence and prejudice from people because sadly, we all know that is not the case." but rather, he states, that the word homophobia has "no meaning" because he has "never met anyone with an irrational fear of homosexuals" and claims that the term is a propagandist one created by the "militant gay rights lobby".[14]
On 16 January 2011, he tweeted 'Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change operation, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to "turn" a consenting homosexual?'[15]
In a letter to the Leicester Mercury on 16 November 2009, Helmer courted controversy by accusing the Church of England of having "abandoned religious faith entirely and taken up the religion of climate alarmism instead".[16] This was in response to a recent inter-faith event in Leicester concerning the challenge of climate change. In response, the Bishop of Leicester, Tim Stevens, said Helmer had not aired these views when he debated climate change in Leicester cathedral and asked whether "this was merely courtesy, or was it because the opportunity for a platform meant more to him than exposing his views to scrutiny or challenge from a live audience".[17]
On 19 September 2010, on his blog, Helmer stated of the Catholic Church that: "it would be perfectly fair to describe it as systemically paedophile."[18] Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the religious affairs correspondent Damian Thompson stated that: “I’d vaguely heard of Helmer as a leading Eurosceptic. Clearly he’s also a bigot. His Catholic constituents are deeply offended by his vile comments, and rightly so.[19] Local outrage within the Catholic community was confirmed by an article in the Nottingham Post on 21 September 2010.[20]
In November 2005, Roger Helmer admitted that he regularly breaks speed limits on motorway runs. He argued that “No matter how fast you are going, you get people passing you” and confirmed that he has recently been caught speeding with his Jaguar, driving at 38 mph in a 30 mph zone. In response, Mary Williams OBE, Chief Executive of Brake, the national road safety charity, said: "For an MEP to regularly speed on motorways is irresponsible and sets a bad example to the people he represents. Speeding is illegal and speeding drivers put lives at risk through their selfish, dangerous actions.” [21]
Helmer was criticised in an article in the Daily Telegraph on the 10 February 2010 regarding MEPs’ pensions. The article by Bruno Waterfield criticised an attempt by Roger Helmer and other Conservative MEPs to water down attempts to overhaul their expenses arrangements. Helmer replied, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph printed on the 13 February 2010, that accusations relating to protecting his pension rights, protecting his anonymity and seeking further public funding for pension contributions were false.[22]
In August 2009, Helmer courted controversy when he supported his fellow MEP Danial Hannan's criticism of the NHS. Speaking to BBC Radio 4's PM programme, Helmer stated that: “I think Dan has done us a service by raising these issues which need to be looked at. If 80% of Americans are getting better health care than we are in the UK then we ought to ask why, and we ought to ask how are we going to deliver equally good results.” The attacks by Helmer and Hannan led Conservative leader David Cameron to release a statement to the BBC saying: "The Conservative Party stands four square behind the NHS,"[23]
In April 2004, Helmer was named by Friends of the Earth as one of the worst voting MEPs on environmental issues, voting in what they claimed was an environmentally friendly manner in only one out of ten possible "eco-friendly" votes.[24]
On 15 September 2009, Helmer was criticised in The Daily Mirror for “backing the brutal culling of baby seals.” In an email to a 17-year-old animal rights campaigner, Helmer stated that beating "dumb" cubs over the head was "humane" and that they deserved to die because they were "guilty" of eating too many fish. Helmer went on to write: "Your sympathy for dumb animals does you credit but save your concerns for people rather than them."[25]
In December 2010, Helmer courted controversy by attending the Cancun Climate Change Conference and by spending public funds on a billboard campaign in his local area attacking government spending on the issue of climate change. Leo Hickman, writing in the Guardian newspaper, questioned who was funding his attendance at the conference after it was confirmed that he was not there in an official capacity representing the EU or the Conservative Party – who both confirmed that they did not share Helmer's beliefs on the subject of climate change.[26] Within his local region, Helmer was attacked by academics from the University of Derby and the University of Northampton for being “out of step with the overwhelming scientific evidence on the subject of human induced climate change”.[27] In response, Helmer attacked Dr Pope's understanding of science and stated that: “The Information Fund is there to allow all MEPs to communicate their campaigns and inform constituents about their work.”[28][29]
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