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A senior UKIP official has been forced to delete racists Facebook posts after claiming he accidentally shared them to his followers.

Mr Parkin, who is assistant to North East Euro MP Jonathan Arnott and who has himself stood for Parliament, shared a series of images by the far-right groups Britain First and The New Daily Patriot on Facebook.

One post depicts Enoch Powell - the politician who made the notoriously racist “rivers of blood” speech in 1968 - next to the House of Commons alongside the words “I told you so...”.

He also shared an image of women wearing the niqab which said “share if you find this offensive”.

Another from Britain First, a group which opposes what it calls the “Islamification of the UK” and was founded by a member of the BNP, claims schools who choose to stock halal meat are “wrong”.

Mr Parkin, who is a powerful official in the regional party and sits on panels that assess UKIP’s potential General Election candidates, told the Sunday Sun he accidentally shared them on the social networking site and has now deleted them.

When told about the posts Mr Arnott confirmed he had met with Mr Parkin about the matter but said no disciplinary proceedings were under way.

Mr Arnott said: “Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention. I am now looking in to this, and will be consulting with the party authorities before any decisions are taken.”

Mr Parkin is a long-standing member of the party and his high-ranking role means he helps members to form and shut down branches. He also stood to represent the North East in the European Parliament in 2009 for the party and ran for a Westminster seat in the Stockton North constituency in 2010.

He said: “Anyone who knows me knows that I do not hold the views expressed in those pictures. It’s so easy on Facebook to accidentally click ‘share’ and a post appears on your timeline. If only I’d noticed these were on my timeline by mistake, I’d have deleted them straightaway. Look at these posts, you’ll see there is no engagement or comment from me.

“As a gay man, I know all about discrimination and prejudice, and would never intentionally upset anyone. I’ve visited local mosques in my UKIP role, I work to drive down division not stir it up, and have nothing but respect for my colleagues of all ethnic backgrounds.

“Sadly, modern politics is a dirty game: someone motivated by hatred has trawled back over two and a half years on my Facebook and found three errors. Let he who has mis-clicked ‘share’ throw the first stone.”

The news will be a blow for Mr Arnott, who is a close ally of Mr Parkin’s and who played a key role in attempting to clean up the party, even helping to write a rule book which specifically bans members from having links to organisations like the BNP.

Labour says the posts expose UKIP as a “really nasty party” that is “built on a bedrock of racism and xenophobia”.

MEP for the North East Jude Kirton-Darling said: “It is disappointing to hear that a UKIP member of staff has been sharing racist and unpleasant messages on Facebook.

“UKIP are trying to paint themselves as a more respectable party but it’s just paper thin. You only have to scratch beneath the surface to reveal a really nasty party. We’ve seen things like this time and again with UKIP claiming gay marriage caused flooding. It’s too easy to dismiss UKIP as a joke when you hear things like that but their core values are based on creating division between people and that’s no laughing matter.

“I spoke to a broad range of people on the doorstep who were going to vote UKIP at this election for a whole range of reasons but what people have to know is they’re voting for a party built on a bedrock of racism and xenophobia, no matter how respectable UKIP pretend to be.”