Christopher Gill

Christopher Gill RD
Gill in 2010
Member of Parliament for Ludlow
In office 11 June 1987 – 7 June 2001
Preceded by	Eric Cockeram
Succeeded by	Matthew Green
Personal details
Born	Christopher John Fred Gill (1936-10-28) 28 October 1936 Wolverhampton
Nationality	British
Political party	UKIP (previously Conservative)

Christopher John Fred Gill RD (born 28 October 1936) is a politician in the United Kingdom, and a former member of the National Executive Committee of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). He is also the current President of The Freedom Association (TFA). A former Conservative Party Member of Parliament, he was one of the Maastricht Rebels of the mid-1990s.

Biography

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. In 2006 he retired as Chairman of his family's sausage-making business, F.A. Gill Ltd.

Gill served as Conservative MP for Ludlow from 1987 to 2001, when he stepped down. He was known as the "Butcher from Ludlow" because of his family company being a meat processing firm. He had the Conservative Whip withdrawn over the EC Finance Bill on 28 November 1994.

As a constituency MP, Gill fought against the closure of local cottage hospitals. Gill was also known for being an expert on areas of European Union legislation, and he was a notable Eurosceptic.

During the course of Parliamentary sessions up to 2001, Gill voted in favour of giving greater autonomy to schools, against removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords, and against equal rights for homosexuals.

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. He resigned his membership of the Conservatives shortly before leaving Parliament in 2001. From 2007 to 2010 he was an elected member of UKIP's National Executive Committee. In 2010 he stood for Ludlow as a UKIP candidate, coming fourth with 2,127 votes, 4.4% of the total, losing his deposit but almost tripling the 2005 vote. At the time of the election, Gill stated that his reasoning for standing was "I am standing against 'call me Dave's' Tories because I cannot tolerate their utter contempt for the concerns of voters on matters of immigration, economy, individual liberty and the broken promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty".

Publications

• Whip's Nightmare: Diary of a Maastricht Rebel. The Memoir Club. 2003. ISBN 978-1841040868.
• Cracking the Whip. Bretwalda Books. 13 December 2012. ISBN 978-1909099067.

External links

• Official website
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Christopher Gill