Ukip’s immigration spokesman has apologised for retweeting a cartoon with the slogan “if you want a jihadi for a neighbour, vote Labour”, saying he had not realised its connection to the racist slogan used in the in the 1964 general election campaign in Smethwick.

John Bickley, who is also the party’s treasurer, apologised in a statement to the Huffington Post for offence caused by the similarities to a slogan used half a century ago in the infamous West Midlands campaign.

“Yesterday I retweeted a cartoon about the potential consequences of Labour’s support for uncontrolled immigration without realising it relied on a rhyme that had been used in an election in 1964 in a racially abusive context,” he said, after widespread criticism from Labour MPs and others on social media. The retweet has since been deleted.

This has just been retweeted by Ukip's Immigration Spokesman and party treasurer @JohnBickleyUKIP pic.twitter.com/818P7F0Epn — Owen Bennett (@owenjbennett) February 12, 2017

The cartoon is an original image by Peter Brookes of the Times, entitled Entryism, from August 2015 at the height of Europe’s refugee crisis.

The original shows people clambering into a lorry with the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in the driver’s seat, with one sitting on top of the vehicle waving a communist flag.

The image is a clear play on the accusations that hard-left activists were infiltrating the Labour party to vote for Corbyn, who at the time was competing for the Labour leadership, as well as the party’s attitude to refugees and migrants.

However, in the version retweeted by Bickley, the title has been cropped out, as has the communist flag.

The slogan “if you want a jihadi for a neighbour, vote Labour” has been added manually and is not part of the original cartoon. David Jones, the Twitter account retweeted by Bickley, regularly shares anti-Muslim and far right memes.

After several Twitter users including ITV’s Robert Peston raised the cartoon with the Ukip party leader, Paul Nuttall, Ukip donor and Leave.EU founder Arron Banks said he did not object to the cartoon’s sentiment:

Seems eminently accurate to me https://t.co/O9RlNOEXsf — Arron Banks (@Arron_banks) February 12, 2017

Tottenham’s Labour MP David Lammy said the retweet showed Ukip’s true colours, drawing comparison with the 1964 slogan.

UKIP: bringing the 1964 Smethwick by-election to a campaign near you soon https://t.co/TgrMZTCk2t — David Lammy (@DavidLammy) February 13, 2017

The Lib Dem Dem leader, Tim Farron, also criticised the tweet, calling it “nasty gutter politics of the worst kind”.

He said: “Ukip believe we should pull up the drawbridge, stop the world as they want to get off. No frontline politician should be able to tweet these things and be in charge of their party’s immigration policy. Paul Nuttall needs to sack him, today.”

The 1964 Smethwick campaign became notorious when the seat was won by Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths, against the national trend, amid allegations of racist campaigning by the far right.

The Conservative party insisted the racist slogan was not official party literature, though Griffiths refused to condemn the phrase, saying it was “a manifestation of popular feeling”.

Bickley, who has stood in several byelections for Ukip, said in his statement he wanted to “apologise for any offence caused” because of the racist origins of the slogan, but he did not explicitly apologise for its anti-Muslim sentiment.

The tweet is not the first time Bickley has been criticised for his campaigning tactics. In 2015 as a candidate in the Heywood and Middleton byelection, he accused Labour of a “betrayal of the young white working-class girls of Rotherham and Rochdale, rather than upset immigrant communities” in reference to the grooming scandals in the towns.

Bickley also contested the Oldham West and Royton byelection after the death of veteran Labour MP Michael Meacher. A key target for the party, Bickley only managed to secure an incremental increase in the vote.



Nuttall, who is standing in the Stoke Central byelection, backed his immigration spokesman. He said: “He’s got my support, absolutely, he’s apologised for it. It wasn’t clever and John’s apologised and he’s taken it down.”

• This article was amended on 14 February 2017. A previous version referred to the 1964 Smethwick “byelection”. In fact, it was a general election.