The company owned by the billionaire Conservative donor Lord Bamford has donated £200,000 to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The JCB chair, who has given millions of pounds to the Tories and bankrolled Boris Johnson’s wedding celebrations, disclosed the donation at the weekend, alongside one of equal size to the Conservatives.
The Staffordshire-based heavy machinery manufacturer said it had donated to the Tories and Reform because it wanted to support parties that “believe in small business”.
JCB is the world’s third-largest construction equipment company, with 22 plants on four continents, employing 19,000 people worldwide. Its sales turnover in 2024 was £5.8bn.
Bamford, who retired as a Conservative peer last year, took over the business started by his father in 1975. His family is one of the richest in Britain, with wealth estimated at £9.5bn by the Sunday Times.
The donation to Reform marks the latest shift by Bamford to build closer connections with the party after funding an £8,000 helicopter trip for Farage last year. Reform has previously said its leader and Bamford are friends.
JCB was a prominent business exhibitor at Reform’s annual conference in Birmingham in September, parking one of its familiar yellow diggers in the hall of the National Exhibition Centre.
Farage has sought to build closer ties with business, as his party, which is leading in the opinion polls, attempts to demonstrate readiness for forming the next UK government.
Several Conservative donors have donated to Reform, including the financier Jeremy Hosking, and Charlie Mullins, who previously donated to the Tories through his business Pimlico Plumbers.
A spokesperson for JCB said it had 800 suppliers in the UK and the vast majority of them were small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
“As a privately owned British family business, JCB has been backing Britain since 1945 and is supportive of pro-business political parties that create the conditions for these businesses to grow and prosper.
“Both the Conservative party and Reform UK believe in small business and it’s for that reason JCB has donated £200,000 to each in recent weeks.”
The donation comes as Farage pushes to win over SME bosses and sole traders, holding a press conference in Westminster on Monday to launch a “small business for Reform” lobby group.
Thanking Bamford and JCB for the donation, Farage said: “They’ve given a lot of money, over £10m, to the Conservatives over the years. But they’re giving us some money because they know we are pro-entrepreneurship, they know we are pro-startup, they know that we are pro-small business.”
The Reform leader said government “only listens to big business”, accusing the Tories of having betrayed small business owners who thought Brexit would cut regulation.
Speaking at the event, Kevin Byrne, the founder of the online tradesperson directory Checkatrade, said he was backing Reform because Farage’s party would “back the makers, fixers, [and] doers”.
“Imagine if success was recognised, and appreciated and applauded in the UK,” he said.
Byrne, who was awarded an OBE in last year’s king’s birthday honours for his services to industry and to consumer protection, and who holds a British Citizen Award for Business, founded Checkatrade in 1998 in Selsey, West Sussex. He sold the company in 2017 to HomeServe for £74m.
