UKIP leader Nigel Farage cowered behind a Rotherham shop’s closed doors yesterday as anti-racist protesters demonstrated outside.

Mr Farage was visiting the Yorkshire town in an apparent attempt to make political capital out of Rotherham’s tragic record of child sex abuse perpetrated mainly by men of Asian origin.

He was scheduled to cut a ribbon opening a campaign shop in support of Ukip’s Rotherham parliamentary candidate Jane Collins.

But news of his visit leaked out and a crowd gathered outside the shop.

The ribbon-cutting was due at 11am but by 10.30am around 60 anti-Ukip protesters were in attendance.

Among them was George Arthur, one of the leaders of Barnsley’s heroic Freedom Riders — arrested for boarding trains and refusing to pay in protest against the axing of pensioners’ travel concessions in South Yorkshire.

“Farage came to officially open a Ukip election shop to start their campaign in Rotherham,” Mr Arthur told the Morning Star.

“The shop has been open for a few days and Farage had decided to come and enter the whole furore about the sex scandal.”

The government has appointed five commissioners to take over the role of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council because of its failure to act over sexual abuse involving 1,400 young women over a 16-year period from 1997 to 2013.

“Ukip people were trying to exploit the sex scandal, but the only thing they were interested in was the Labour council — not the failure of the police, not the cuts to local social services funding and staff,” said Mr Arthur.

He added that many protesters were carrying protest placards against Mr Farage and Ukip.

“It had just gone down the grapevine that he was coming and there were a lot of local people with hand-made placards because they were incensed at him coming. But we never actually saw him,” Mr Arthur said.

“He didn’t come out at all. I left at 12 and there had been no sign of him.”

Rotherham Labour MP Sarah Champion has accused Mr Farage of “rubber-necking” over the abuse scandal.