My previous post on Nathan Gill MEP is the most popular I’ve ever written. It even got taken up by the print media, or rather, it was cursorily written up by the Wasting Mule with that account then repeated by newspapers from the Independent to the Belfast Telegraph plus BBC Wales which, unintentionally no doubt, introduced humour with a quote from Peter Hain accusing Gill of “bare-faced hypocrisy” (when it comes to hypocrisy Mr Hain is a man who knows of what he speaks). Martin Shipton, who wrote the Mule account, focused solely on the contradiction inherent in Gill representing a party that is anti-immigration and anti-EU while employing workers from eastern Europe and the Phillipines. As if that were all there is to it. It’s not, there’s a lot more.

As might be expected, one ‘paper that got involved rather more enthusiastically was the Hull Daily Mail, through its reporter Angus Young. First with this, and then this. The second report is the more interesting for a number of reasons. First, it shows us a younger, fresh-faced Nathan Gill. Also because it tells of his (or someone’s) plans for Plane Street Methodist Church off Anlaby Road in west Hull. A report of the fire suffered by that building on November 5th 2001 can be found to the right (click to enlarge). The report quotes Gill as blaming the fire on kids with fireworks, but my informant describes the fire as being more “suspicious”, and says it followed the refusal of planning permission for the building.

In this report Gill is described as “general manager of Kingston Care, based on Holderness Road, east Hull”. Holderness Road we know well from my previous post; Gill had a number of properties there and it is also the location of a Mormon church, but Kingston Care is a new player in this farce. The only company I can find with such a name is based in York, and is in the business of the “provision of lodgings” (see below left). No member of the Gill family is mentioned among its directors. This company was finally struck off in November 2006. Could there have been two companies, operating at the same time, in the same area, with the same name? Seems unlikely. So was Gill working for Kingston Care?

The newspaper reports thus far have, without actually using the word, described Gill as a gangmaster, a term we more usually associate with those using east European labour in agriculture, or illegal Chinese immigrants for cockle-picking. He housed migrants who either worked in the Gill family business or else were contracted to Hull city council and other bodies. With the latter paying Gill £x to supply labour, and him paying those workers £x minus his cut, on top of which, he was getting paid rent by everyone living in his bunkhouses, almost certainly in cash. This recruitment of foreign labour is defended by Gill on the grounds that he couldn’t get local labour, though comments to the Hull Daily Mail articles question this claim.

My original informant made contact again yesterday, to tell me that Nathan Gill, together with his brothers-in-law, was operating migrant labour accommodation in other cities, Portsmouth and Plymouth were mentioned. The rents were collected, presumably in cash, by a “Polish Lithuanian” who was then – according to my informant – falsely accused of theft when money went ‘missing’ from Burgill Ltd. It is suggested that if this ‘rent-collector’ could be located, and was prepared to talk, then the potential for bean-spilling would be considerable. I was also told of Nathan Gill and his sister(s) being sent to the USA to marry approved Mormon spouses! Which, if true, would presumably mean that the brothers-in-law allegedly involved with Gill as gangmasters would be US citizens? And seeing as they are all Mormons, I have to ask again; was this Gill’s personal scam or a business venture to improve further the already healthy finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? After all, they were exploiting Catholic Poles, little better than heathens in the eyes of Mormons.

This information, if true – and my informant has been very reliable up to now – means that Gill wasn’t just recruiting workers for care homes in Hull due to a shortage of local recruits, but was in the migrant labour business big time, as I say, a gangmaster. In fact, the exploitation of migrant labour, rather than care homes, may have been his – and the family’s – business. In which case the care homes could be viewed as a ‘front’. Enquiries now need to be made in Portsmouth and Plymouth to see if evidence can be found for Gill operating in these cities as he was in Hull.

Finally, just before posting I received another contribution, suggesting that what Gill had told the Wasting Mule, about Burgill Ltd sinking “when the HSBC ended its borrowing facility in the wake of the banking crisis”, may be untrue. My informant suggests that what really happened was that a creditor lost patience and filed for compulsory liquidation. Plausible, for Burgill was always run at a loss. Quite amazing, considering that it had two sizeable income streams: the Gill care home(s), Hull city council and other clients; then the rent from an unknown number of foreign workers. My guess is that Nathan Gill and his associates were making a lot of money from their activities but not all of it – perhaps very little – went through the Burgill accounts. This would explain the “skimming” allegations made by my informant and the suggested interest of the tax authorities. It may be worth going through the Burgill accounts with a fine-tooth comb.

Nathan Gill was employing people for whom he was also landlord. Anyone who crossed him risked losing both job and ‘home’, in a strange land, with whose language and customs they were unfamiliar. An arrangement owing more to the nineteenth century or the third world than twenty-first century England. This would have given him a very powerful hold over these unfortunate people.

                                                  *

This other informant earlier sent me news of doings on Anglesey, mainly concerning Michael Ronald Gill, Nathan Gill’s father. In 1988 Gill senior was sent down for indecent assault, with other charges of rape and buggery left on file. Gill Senior, after 20 years in the RAF, set himself up as a homeopath, with ‘consulting rooms’ in Llanerchymedd. There he hypnotised women, many of them Mormons, persuading them to take off their clothes, after which he ‘treated’ them. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but these women then paid him for his ‘services’. Anyway, read it for yourself, though I should say that the pages from the Holyhead & Anglesey Mail were sent to me as A3 photocopies, so the quality isn’t perfect, and page 2 is incomplete. But I’m sure you’ll get the gist of it.

All this tells us that Gill pere is, or was, over-sexed, but there are other nuggets in the report that should interest us more. Among these is the news that Michael Ronald Gill was expelled from the Mormons some five years earlier for “preaching false doctrine”, and left the Gaerwen congregation after “certain problems” . . . whatever these might have meant in practice, we have to assume that it did not mean ostracisation, seeing as Mormon women still sought out his homeopathic talents. Elsewhere in the newspaper report, a representative of Bangor Rape Crisis Line is quoted as saying: “In the past he (Gill) has already served 18 months for theft . . . “. So what was that about? Was the crime committed back in Hull, or after the Gills decided to inflict themselves on Wales?

I am grateful to Cneifiwr for drawing my attention to this amazing coincidence. Here we have two Englishmen, with the same surname, of roughly the same age, moving to western Wales and practising very similar scams in order to satisfy their sexual perversions. A truly amazing coincidence. Are they related? (I had picked up on this Carmarthenshire case earlier, and covered it in my Neighbours From Hell post, but failed to remember it when writing about Nathan Gill and his father.)

My overseas contributor also drew my attention to this news item from October 2011. Used tyres were being illegally stored and sorted at an address in Menai Bridge before being exported to Ghana. A search warrant was executed for an address in Llangefni. Now, think hard, who do we know living in Menai Bridge, with a very close family member living in Llangefni? Anyone tempted to dismiss this as yet another example of Jack the Lad behaviour should ponder that imported worn tyres is one of the biggest causes of deaths on Ghana’s roads. This was no victimless crime.

Despite all that, I would not have brought up the now elderly Ronald Gill’s crimes were it not for two things. First, Nathan Gill himself, more than once, entertains us with talk of “the family business”, which means he was a business associate of his ‘homeopath’ father. Second, Ronald Gill became a shareholder in Burgill Ltd.

                                                  *

From what I know of the Gills, I wouldn’t trust them to run a burger van. They come across as a dishonest, dysfunctional and rather odd crowd. I can’t help thinking that, if they’d been poor, then the social workers would have been in there when the father was sent down in 1988. But despite everything, they managed to put over a mirage of pious, middle class respectablity which we now know was a deceit. But shouldn’t we have known this earlier, before the European elections of May 22nd?

If we refer back to my May 15 post, Wales Euro Elections 2014: Runners & Riders we see 44 candidates representing 11 parties standing for the 4 seats.  Most can be dismissed as no-hopers (and that includes the Liberal Democrats), which leaves us with the top candidates of five parties. The No 1 candidates for Labour, Conservative and Plaid Cymru were all seeking re-election, they were known, as were many of the others. The only unknown quantity guaranteed to be elected was Nathan Gill. He should have been the focus of the election coverage – Who is he? What do we know about him? The Welsh media made no such enquiries.

I am convinced that if what we know now had been known to the electorate before the election then Ukip would have got many fewer votes. It might not be stretching things too far to say that the Welsh media, or the lack of one, could be largely responsible for Wales being lumbered with Nathan Gill.