The couple believe Rotherham metropolitan borough council hoped they would “sink into the background” after social workers took the ethnic minority children away because they were members of the UK Independence Party.

The wife said: “These people will just do it again. They came round like the mafia and said we are taking the children because you are members of Ukip.

“We do feel that they had a hidden agenda. It was in their interests for us to keep quiet. These people thought we would just quietly sink into the background [but] we are not just going to go away and remain quiet, we have been so badly treated.”

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, condemned the council’s decision as “indefensible” over the weekend after The Daily Telegraph revealed that the children had been taken away.