UKIP's Scottish chairman has boasted about going undercover to spy on political opponents in order to protect Nigel Farage on his recent trip to Scotland.
Arthur Misty Thackeray bragged about how he and a colleague "covertly" attended a meeting of groups planning an anti-Ukip protest last week.
In an email to party members, Thackeray said he had taken the security "counter measures" ahead of a visit to Edinburgh by Ukip leader Farage, which attracted a large protest from groups opposed to his anti-immigration message.
Updating Ukip members on the "fantastic" event, Thackeray wrote: "As you will probably have seen there was a counter protest by far-left extremists aimed at intimidating our members.
"The threat posed by these violent groups is such that Nigel now has a personal security detail," he said.
"What you may not be aware of are the counter measures we deployed to address this protest, which included [treasurer] Rob Sale and I covertly attending the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) planning meeting."
RIC said Thackeray and his friend had been clocked as soon as they walked in.
A spokesman said: "This just goes to highlight the bizarre nature of Ukip politics, which have no place in 2014."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article