Rodney Atkinson

Rodney Eric Bainbridge Atkinson (21 March 1948 – 30 May 2026) was an English political and economic commentator and businessman. He was an older brother of comedian and actor Rowan Atkinson.

Early life and professional career Atkinson was born in Gosforth, Northumberland, England on 21 March 1948. He studied German at Newcastle University (BA Hons with distinction in spoken German) and at Durham University, where he earned an MSc in management studies in 1978 as a member of Collingwood College. He was a lecturer at the University of Mainz from 1971 to 1977, and after that worked as a merchant banker in the City of London with Banque Paribas and Grindlays Bank. He was an occasional adviser to government ministers after 1981.

Atkinson ran his own commercial property business based in the North East of England. His website freenations.net contains over 400 articles on political economy, Nationism, geopolitics and the campaign for withdrawal of the UK from the European Union.

Politics Atkinson founded the Campaign for United Kingdom Conservatism in 1994 and co-founded, with Lynn Riley, the cross-party South Molton Declaration in 1999 (re-launched as the British Declaration of Independence for the 2005 general election). He founded the Freenations (freenations.net) website in 1997. He was the Referendum Party candidate in North West Durham in the 1997 general election (5.2%) and the lead UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate for the North East Region in the 1999 European Elections (8.8%).

In 2000, he lost the UKIP leadership election, by 16 votes, to Jeffrey Titford MEP. Atkinson left UKIP shortly afterwards, along with 200 supporters, accusing the then party chairman Nigel Farage MEP and the Eurosceptic journalist Christopher Booker of conducting a "dirty tricks" campaign against him. He also accused the party of being "infiltrated by extremists".

With Norris McWhirter, he laid misprision of treason charges against Francis Maude and Douglas Hurd for signing the Maastricht Treaty. The allegations were dismissed by the Crown Prosecution Service in October 1993, according to a written answer given by the Attorney General, Nicholas Lyell, on 28 October 1993.

Writing In 1994, Atkinson co-authored the book Treason at Maastricht – the destruction of the Nation State, with Norris McWhirter.

Other work includes the books Government against the People (1985), The Emancipated Society (1988), The Failure of the State (1989), Your country Your Democracy – the Threat from the European Union (1990), Europe's Full Circle (1997), Fascist Europe Rising (2001) and And into the Fire – fascist elements in post war Europe and the Development of the European Union (2013).

Death He died on 30 May 2026, aged 78.