Biography
Gill was born in Wolverhampton where he was a local councillor and was educated locally at Birchfield Preparatory School and then Shrewsbury School. His national service was in the Royal Navy, serving aboard HMS Modeste and HMS Birmingham. He is a director of his family's sausage-making business, F.A. Gill Ltd.
Gill served as Conservative MP for Ludlow from 1987 to 2001, when he stepped down. He was known as the "Butcher from Ludlow", due to his family company being a meat processing firm. During the Maastricht Rebellion, Food Minister Nicholas Soames threatened to: "close every abattoir you own". He had the Conservative Whip withdrawn over the EC Finance Bill on November 28, 1994.
As a constituency MP, Gill fought against the closure of local cottage hospitals. Gill was also known for being an expert on areas of European Union legislation, and he was a notable Eurosceptic.
During the course of Parliamentary sessions up to 2001, Gill voted in favour of giving greater autonomy to schools, against removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords, and against equal rights for homosexuals.
He served as Chairman of The Freedom Association from 2001, before becoming its President in 2007.
In 2006, Gill announced that he had joined the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), having endorsed the Party's policies at the European Parliament election, 2004. He resigned his membership of the Conservatives shortly before leaving Parliament in 2001. From 2007 to 2010 he was an elected member of UKIP's National Executive Committee. In 2010 he stood for Ludlow as a UKIP candidate, coming 4th and losing his deposit though almost tripling their 2005 vote.
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