Two Ukip chairmen in Merseyside quit over Hillsborough row

Two Ukip chairmen in Merseyside have resigned in protest at the “crass insensitivity” of the party’s handling of the controversy over Paul Nuttall’s claims about Hillsborough.

Adam Heatherington and Stuart Monkcom handed in their resignations from the party this week after the Ukip leader’s admission last week that assertions on his website about losing close friends in the disaster were false.

Victims’ families reacted with dismay to Nuttall’s admission. Margaret Aspinall, the chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, whose 18-year-old son James died in the disaster, described it as “appalling”.

The resignations will come as a blow to the Ukip leader, days before he attempts to unseat Labour in the Stoke-on-Trent Central byelection on Thursday.

In 2012, Heatherington, 41, became the youngest candidate to stand for elected mayor in Liverpool.

The former IT lecturer questioned Nuttall’s ability to lead after the controversy and issued an apology.

“We have been affected personally and professionally by words that were not said in our name. With this in mind, we wish to apologise to the people of Liverpool and the Hillsborough families for any offence caused, and have done what we consider to be the only honourable thing we could do, which was to resign and disassociate ourselves from Ukip,” he said.

“I felt that supporting a libertarian party was the right thing to do in order to effect change within the political system in this country. Unfortunately that dream has been shattered and the potential of Ukip has been squandered by people who have demonstrated they are not fit to lead at present.”

Monkcom, who was chairman of Nuttall’s Ukip branch in Liverpool, said he had decided to resign because of the “crass insensitivity” displayed by some high-profile people in the party towards the disaster.

It is understood that Monkcom’s comments also refer to Arron Banks, the millionaire Ukip funder, and the party’s former leader Nigel Farage.

Banks was criticised after he remarked on Twitter that he was “sick to death” of hearing about Hillsborough and claimed that people were “milking” the tragedy.

In Monkcom’s statement, he said he found the “upsetting” attitude shown by individuals in Ukip “intolerable”.

“Although the timing of our resignations is unfortunate in light of upcoming elections, both Adam and I wish to make it clear, where the painful subject of Hillsborough is concerned, with closure not yet in sight, this unprofessional approach and crass insensitivity from high-profile people closely within and without Ukip is upsetting and intolerable,” he said.

“We identify most strongly with all the good people of Liverpool and most importantly the families of the Hillsborough victims, who have fought so hard and long for justice, in their condemnation of the way Ukip has handled these issues, and have resigned our positions and membership of Ukip forthwith.”

Nuttall first publicly claimed to have been at Hillsborough in a letter to the Liverpool Daily Post in July 2010. He raised the matter again last May, telling the BBC1’s The Politics Show North West he had been in the overcrowded Leppings Lane end of the ground.

He said he believed the police officers responsible for the disaster should be prosecuted. “I think people should carry the can for their actions,” he told the programme.

Nuttall was 12 at the time of the disaster on 15 April 1989, and was a pupil at Savio high school in Bootle, Merseyside. One of his former teachers, a Roman Catholic priest, told the Guardian that the school believed it had been aware of the identities of every boy who had been at Hillsborough, in order to help them through a difficult period, but Nuttall was not among them.

A fellow pupil at the school said the Ukip leader had never mentioned being there. “I have been very good friends with Paul for more than 25 years,” he said, adding that during this time, they had never spoken about Hillsborough.

While the teacher and friend expressed surprise that Nuttall had said he was at Hillsborough, their comments do not prove that he was not present.

Nuttall’s admission about the inaccurate statement on his website came in an interview with Liverpool’s Radio City news. The interview followed his denial that he had lied about being a survivor of the disaster, in which 96 Liverpool fans were killed at an FA Cup semi-final.

When the presenter Dave Easson, who was at Hillsborough on the day of the disaster, showed him the evidence that the claim had been made on his website, Nuttall replied: “I haven’t lost a close, personal friend. I’ve lost someone who I know.”

Nuttall maintains that he was at Hillsborough on the day of the disaster and only “scum of the earth” would suggest otherwise.

Ukip gave the Guardian two statements on behalf of Nuttall, one from his father and another from a Ukip employee, saying they and Nuttall had been at Hillsborough. The statement from Nuttall’s father gave an incorrect age for his son at the time.

At the Ukip conference in Bolton last week, an emotional Nuttall refused to answer questions from reporters asking him to prove he had been at Hillsborough and described the episode as a “smear campaign”.

Nuttall has not commented on the resignations. His only press statement on Monday morning was a warning to the House of Lords not to act as “Peter Mandelson’s poodle” by delaying the Brexit bill.

Ukip’s hopes of winning Stoke-on-Trent Central are fading in the light of Nuttall’s troubled campaign. Party sources put his chances as “very low” and sought to downplay the significance of a defeat.

Meanwhile, Hillsborough campaigners have rejected a claim that Nuttall was prevented by the Labour party from joining their group.

At the weekend, Farage said: “For years the Labour party have tried to keep him out of the whole Hillsborough debate purely for party political reasons.

“He has tried in the past to join the various groups and he has literally been excluded from them.”

But Aspinall said the organisation was not one that people could join, because it was a group of those who had lost loved ones.

“We have never heard from Mr Nuttall,” she said.

Ukip’s chances in the byelection were dealt another blow when the Stoke Sentinel newspaper obtained CCTV footage showing one of the party’s canvassers urinating on a voter’s property while delivering leaflets.

The voter, named by the newspaper as Marjorie Pinches, a widow aged 73, can be seen and heard confronting the canvasser and telling him to leave. At this point, the man apologises and tries to force his way into her home.

Pinches’ family have handed the CCTV footage to police. Ukip later apologised for the incident.