This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A candidate for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party in the European elections described majority-black inner cities as being dominated by “a culture of physical violence, selfishness and predatory sex”, it has emerged.

James Bartholomew, a journalist and author who is standing in the south-east region, called black neighbourhoods of US inner cities “a Lord of the Flies culture” where “uncontrolled male adolescent values” are the norm.

Separately, he also argued that the family was threatened by the rising status of women, something he said had gone “too far” in certain places.

Bartholomew has repeatedly praised the work of Charles Murray, a US writer whose 1994 book The Bell Curve, on the supposed vital role of measured intelligence in predicting life outcomes, has been criticised as both unscientific and, in parts, racist.

Bartholomew, who in 2004 published his own book about what he says is the need to greatly pare back social security systems, also backed Murray’s idea that to tackle illegitimacy, governments should abolish all support for single mothers.

The most eye-catching comments come in a Daily Mail article from 1993 in which Bartholomew discussed what he said was the threat to the UK social order from the spread of trends seen in black communities in US cities “where the family structure has all but disappeared”.

Citing the views of Murray, Bartholomew said that “the degeneration of black society in America is a warning of what could happen to society as a whole”.

The article added: “The danger, as he sees it, is that America as a whole will become like black inner cities. A Lord of the Flies culture will dominate in which uncontrolled male adolescent values become normal: a culture of physical violence, selfishness and predatory sex.”

Bartholomew approvingly cites Murray’s apparent solution – to stop all support for single mothers.

He wrote: “This measure would force single mothers to seek the support of others. When they succeed, the child will benefit from the involvement of other adults in bringing it up. Those mothers who cannot obtain such support will be driven to place their babies for adoption.”

The policy would also be beneficial in restoring “the shame attached to illegitimacy”, he added.

While the article mainly cites Murray’s views, Bartholomew makes it plain he supports these, calling them “truths which, in our keenness to allow people to live any kind of life they may choose, we have ignored”.

Bartholomew has praised Murray’s ideas in subsequent articles, including one in 2007 where he again notes the powerful benefits of social stigma.

In a talk in 2016 to a conservative campaign group, the Family Education Trust, Bartholomew argued that while he supported the improved status of women, it was like a revolution in that “these things tend to go too far”.

In the same talk, he accused certain types of feminism of “acting against the interests of the family in general and children in particular”.

Guto Bebb, the Conservative MP who is a supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, said more traditional Tories “will be horrified by these views”.

He said: “It seems more and more that the Brexit party are an alliance of the beyond-the-pale right and the extreme left united only by their desire to create chaos and despair in Britain.”

In a statement, Bartholomew said the 1993 article was written when “John Major was prime minister; Charles and Diana were still married, and Janet Jackson was topping the charts”.

He said: “None of this has anything to do with the Brexit party or my candidacy in the European elections.”

Bartholomew said he had written and spoken many times about the British welfare state, and that his book involved research in 11 countries.

“I believe a welfare state is an inevitable part of a modern democracy,” he said. “My aim is to find ways of making the welfare state avoid the unintended consequences and produce the kind of results that people want and expect.”