Nick Griffin has thanked the BBC and praised the “hysterical” reaction of the political elite for giving his far-right British National Party unprecedented publicity.
In an interview with The Times, he said that the bitter row over the decision to invite him on to this evening’s Question Time had attracted record donations for the party.
Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, understood that his invitation was “a very important symbol”, he said. “I thank the political class and their allies for being so stupid. The huge furore that the political class has created around it clearly gives us a whole new level of public recognition.”
Although the BBC was “institutionally biased” against him, he believed that it had shown a degree of principle in allowing him to appear. “Thank you, Auntie,” he said.
Mr Hain’s eleventh-hour attempt to prevent Mr Griffin from appearing on Question Time was rejected by the BBC Trust last night. He said that the corporation was culpable of a huge boost for racist and fascist politics, “which is totally obnoxious”.
Mr Griffin claimed that on Tuesday, after he compared Britain’s most respected military generals to Nazi war criminals, the BNP enjoyed its “best ever single day” with telephone donations. He said that the party’s website attracted 77,000 unique visitors, second only to the day that he was elected to the European Parliament in June. In the past, the BNP has been accused of overstating its level of donations.
The BNP leader hopes to present himself as a credible “mainstream” political figure and put his party on course to win its first Westminster seat in next year’s general election.
He predicted that “a whole crop of new, quite high-quality, serious political people” would sign up to the BNP after tonight’s appearance, although he admitted that his party could not even find a venue to hold an AGM to discuss changes to its whites-only policy, being enforced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
He repeatedly insisted that he had banished the racist and neo-Nazi elements from his party. He likened the BNP to dissidents who fought totalitarianism in Eastern Europe and Zimbabwe.
Mr Griffin accused President Obama of being an “Afrocentric racist bigot” whose comments about the legacy of slavery would encourage black youths to attack white children.
As Holocaust survivors prepared to protest outside BBC Television Centre in London, Mr Griffin said that Adolf Hitler was a “very bad thing” but had “no real relevance for Britain today”.
The BNP leader, who regularly receives death threats, said that his biggest concern about this evening’s event was “that I might get shot on the way in”. The BBC refused to comment.
Nick Griffin: ‘They’re stupid to let me appear, but they want to make me look an idiot'
Nick Griffin wants to be seen as the leader of a respectable modern nationalist party campaigning for organic local vegetables, the end of the war in Afghanistan and measures to combat climate change — not to mention the restoration of the “overwhelmingly white make-up of the population”.
He has, at least according to the BBC, earned the right to be seen and heard by dint of a level of electoral success unprecedented for the extreme Right in Britain. The question remains, however, whether anyone should believe that the fashionably-suited Mr Griffin is really different from the jack-booted racists of the party’s — and his — past.
His office in the Strasbourg Parliament, where he met The Times for an interview before his appearance on Question Time tonight, is scrubbed clean of that history. Unlike those who like to place photographs of political heroes along with personal memorabilia from a lifetime in politics, Mr Griffin has bare walls. The only sign of personality in the room is a pack of cheap razors in the bathroom and a few boxes strewn untidily in the corner.
He points out a view of high concrete walls from his window. “They’re trying to tell me something, aren’t they? Maybe they should have strung some barbed wire up here as well.” Accustomed to being treated as a pariah, the chairman of the British National Party is keenly aware that his Question Time invitation is a moment to relish, and potentially an enormous opportunity.
He congratulates himself for having backed the BBC — which, he says, is institutionallly biased against the party — “into a corner” over his right to appearance, before offering sarcastic gratitude to “the political class and their allies for being so stupid” as to allow it.
He concedes, however, that the opportunity also has risks. The other panellists, he suspects, will want to “make me look like an idiot”, but is confident he will “do OK”. Indeed, Mr Griffin has long since been adept at answering just about any question thrown at him in a way that often discomfits liberal sensibilities.
He likes to condemn Islam, for instance, for its “appalling treatment of women”. In his interview, he repeatedly compared himself to dissident victims of state repression, such as Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia or opposition leaders in Zimbabwe.
His conviction in 1998 for inciting racial hatred was, he says, a “thought crime” Orwellian in its nature. Other BNP leaders who have criminal records were also, in his view, victims of a “corrupt legal system or corrupt lying policeman”.
What about Tony Lecomber, one of his main lieutenants during the “modernisation” of the BNP, who was convicted of attacking a Jewish man and possessing bomb-making equipment? “He was jailed for having an overgrown firework,” says Mr Griffin, who appears to have an intimate knowledge of the cases against all his colleagues. “There was no evidence at all he was going to use it against anyone.”
He adds: “You shouldn’t be saying that we’re a party of criminals. You should say we’re a party that includes people who have gone to prison for their principles.”
Such defiance sits uneasily with his oft-stated demand for “law and order”, but Mr Griffin suggests that the criminal records of party members are a reflection of its efforts to re-engage the working class in politics. He claims that they often have convictions for football hooliganism or benefit fraud.
It is notable, however, how swiftly he seeks refuge behind his lawyer’s advice and the legal system when asked whether he is willing to stand by past statements that the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust never happened. “I simply can’t discuss it — not allowed. I can’t even say what I used to believe and why I’ve changed it — without the risk of being indicted in France.”
His effort to present the BNP as a reasonable, even mainstream, force divorced from the far Right in Europe is predicated on the claim that he, and the party, no longer have such views. The purge of neo-Nazis in recent years has made him the “most unpopular man in Britain” among such groups.
Is that because he used to be one of them? “I was not.” What were you? “That’s difficult,” says Mr Griffin after a long pause. “I was certainly a third positionist — neither capitalism nor communism — coming from the rightist tradition. But I have never been a fascist. Fascism is always about worship of the State and I have always regarded the State as a danger to people’s liberty, which is against the English tradition.”
What about when he lamented the lack of intellectual tradition of fascism in Britain in 1999? Mr Griffin says he had been using the term in “shorthand speaking” to the French National Front which, he concedes, does derive some its inspiration from the 1930s.
Does he accept that the anger of British generals this week over the BNP’s use of Winston Churchill and Spitfires in its publicity might be derived from the sense that in the fight against Hitler some of his members might have have been on the other side? “Not a lot of people,” says Mr Griffin. “There used to be some, I would admit, but not any more.”
The BNP leader himself had read “Mein Kampf by the age of 13 and Lenin at the age of 14”. You were a weird kid? “Yes.” Did you have any friends? “I did indeed. Harold Wilson decided he wanted to be Prime Minister at the age of 6.”
Do you hate Hitler? “He was a very bad thing, without a shadow of doubt.” Did Hitler give the far Right a bad name? “He gave the whole concept of separate human identities a bad name. But he is also something from the dim and distant past who has no real relevance for Britain today.”
Mr Griffin, who once called for a defence of white rights with “well-directed boots and fists”, began changing course in 1998. He told the BNP: “We must at all times present [the public] with an image of reasonableness.”
He added: “Of course, we must teach the truth to the hardcore, for, like you, I do not intend this movement to lose its way.” Asked if the past decade had merely been an exercise in rebranding, he says: “I had already decided that things the BNP were saying were futile, a menace and wrong.
“I changed my mind about some things. We used to look at problems with immigration in just a simplistic way.” That was unfair, he says, because the bigger issue was Islam.
He brushes off reports that BNP members encouraged a ten-year-old girl to set fire to a golliwog during their summer festival this year as a “small, bad-taste joke by a little group of people”.
If he had mixed-race grandchildren, he would love them but still be unhappy for “the same reason that African people, West Indian people and Asian people are proud of their traditions and identity”. Skin colour, he adds, is a marker of identity and the merging of disparate ethnic groups into “a sort of Americanised melting pot” threatens to be “catastrophic”.
How does he feel about President Obama? “He is an Afrocentric racist bigot.” He thinks American blacks should have been resettled in Africa “because the two peoples living side by side would cause problems forever”.
For the record: Griffin's views
On the Holocaust
1998 In the witness box before being convicted of inciting racial hatred “I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the Earth is flat . . . I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter day witch-hysteria”
Now “I’m the most unpopular man in Britain among neo-Nazis. Hitler was a very bad thing without a shadow of doubt, he was a mass murderer. He gave the whole concept of separate human identities a bad name. It was an absolute disaster but he is also something from the dim and distant past who has no real relevance for Britain today”
On fascism
1997 To undercover reporter “Britain does not have the tradition of intellectual fascism which is such an important factor in many other countries. While I do have a number of proposals to help rectify this deficiency, the truth is that this is a handicap which we can never overcome completely”
Now “I thought I was talking to the Front Nationale. In the context I was talking of fascism in inverted commas, fascism is a simplistic term”
On tactics
1999 For the magazine Patriot “This is a life-and-death struggle for white survival, not a fancy-dress party. Less banner waving and more guile wouldn’t go amiss”
Now “I turned the party from something that was thoroughly un-British and in some places dangerous, not just to itself but to other people, into something that was electable and tries to be respectable”
On homosexuality
1999 In The Sunday Times “TV footage of dozens of gay demonstrators flaunting their perversions showed just why so many ordinary people find these creatures so repulsive”
Now “I don’t hate gay people at all. But I find the sight of grown men kissing in the street repulsive”
He brushes off reports that BNP members encouraged a ten-year-old girl to set fire to a golliwog during their summer festival this year as a “small, bad-taste joke by a little group of people”.
If only that reporter had asked why they sell golliwog tat on the BNP website...
I'm quite looking forward to this tonight - though secretly I'm hoping that he's crushed to death in some kind of truck full of bowling-balls incident.
i think it'll be a disaster - i reckon griffin could come out of it looking quite good, it all depends on the questions, and how good the other panelists are.
say theres a question on afghanistan, griffin is for withdrawing troops - that'll play well with the audience. if theres a questions on the royal mail, the bnp are for renationalising key industries so ( i'm guessing ) will probably be on the side of the posties - the bnp are quite left wing in some of their policies. if theres a question on the banks ( after mervin king's statement the other day ), if theres anything to do with mp's expenses - all these sort of things griffin could come out looking quite good on. plus immigration, lots of people are worried about immigration. griffin is a smart performer, and i don't have much faith that the other panelists will do a good enough job of exposing him - i mean up until now i think the media have done a pretty poor job, he must be loving all this.
When you watch the BNP on TV, just remember: Jack Straw started all this To set New Labour against Griffin is simply putting the cause against the symptom
Three years ago this month Jack Straw argued his case for urging Muslim women who attend his MP's surgery to remove their niqab. He said that he wanted to start a debate. In this, at least, he was successful.
The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said "the veil is an invitation to rape"; the Daily Mail columnist Allison Pearson said women who wear "nose bags on their faces ... have no place on British streets"; the then shadow home secretary David Davis argued that Muslims were encouraging voluntary apartheid.
And 16-year-old Daniel Coine insisted he felt threatened: "I'd go further than Jack Straw and say they should all take off their veils. You need to see people face to face. It's weird not knowing who it is you're passing in the street, specially late at night when someone might jump you."
And so Muslim women passed, in the public imagination, from being actually among the group most likely to be racially attacked to ostensibly being a primary cause of social strife – roaming the land in search of white teenagers to physically harass.
Tomorrow night the conversation that Straw started will follow its logical, lamentable path as he takes his seat alongside the British National party leader, Nick Griffin, on the panel of Question Time.
The issue of whether the BNP should be given this kind of airtime has been debated extensively elsewhere in these pages. But there is little doubt that once the BNP is on Question Time, Jack Straw – or indeed anyone in the New Labour hierarchy – is in no position to take the fight to it. The same is true for most of the rest of the British political establishment that will be represented on the panel – they have either actively colluded or passively acquiesced in the political trajectory of the past decade.
But it is no accident that this happened on New Labour's watch and no small irony that Jack Straw should set himself up as Griffin's opponent.
Economically, its neoliberal policies have resulted in growing insecurity, rising unemployment, child poverty and inequality that have alienated the poor and made the middle class feel vulnerable. Politically, its lies over the war, stewardship of the expenses scandal and internal bickering have produced widespread cynicism with our political culture. The ramifications of its role in the war on terror in general, and Iraq in particular, were to elevate fear of a racialised "other" to a matter of life and death at home. "Terror is first of all the terror of the next attack," explains Arjun Appadurai, in Fear of Small Numbers. "Terror ... opens the possibility that anyone may be a soldier in disguise, a sleeper among us, waiting to strike at the heart of our social slumber."
Meanwhile New Labour's race-baiting rhetoric gave the state's imprimatur to the notion that Britain's racial problems were not caused by racism but the existence of non-white, non-Christian and non-British people. This provided little material solace but plenty of vulnerable scapegoats.
Having inflated racism's political currency, New Labour vacated the electoral market so that others with a more ostentatious style might more freely spend it. Once they had made these ideas respectable it was only a matter of time before a party reached a position where it too would earn sufficient respectability to appear on prime time.
New Labour marginalised the white working class, assuming they had nowhere else to go, only to find some of them rush into the arms of the far right. Peter Hain has made an impressive stand over the last few weeks. But during the last election he slammed those who were abandoning New Labour as "the kind of dinner party critic who quaffs shiraz or chardonnay".
But it was always the beer talking. New Labour extinguished all hope of class solidarity and singularly failed to provide principled anti-racist alternatives, leaving a significant section of the white working class to seek cheap refuge in racism and xenophobia. In their identity they see not the potential for resistance against corruption and injustice, but only a grievance. They don't trust government and don't see any alternatives. The coming election simply provides the choice between two parties that share the intent to slash public spending, after the gift of billions to bankers.
There has always been more to the BNP than racism and always been more to racism than the BNP, which is merely the most vile electoral expression of our degraded racial discourse and political sclerosis. Under such circumstances setting Straw – and the rest of the political class – against Griffin is simply putting the cause against the symptom without any suggestion of an antidote.
This has been New Labour's problem all along. While they have long recognised that racism is a problem, it never seemed to occur to them that anti-racism might be the solution. This should not obscure some of the positive things Labour has done – most notably the Macpherson report and the Race Relations Amendment Act. But in the words of the late African American writer James Baldwin: "What it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took back with the other."
The BNP's victories are a product of our politics. Its defeat, when it comes, will necessarily be a product of a change in our politics. But since New Labour's politics enabled the BNP, it is in no position to disable it. The BNP is a bottom feeder. But the system is rotting from the head down.
Nick Griffin Question Time invitation 'bonkers', says BBC presenter Well known presenter condemns Nick Griffin Question Time move, but little sign of BBC staff rebellion
The BBC's decision to allow the British National Party leader Nick Griffin on Question Time was described as "bonkers" by a well known presenter today.
The senior presenter, who did not want to be identified, said that the decision had come about because of the BBC's attitude to fairness and predicted that Griffin would create problems on the panel show.
"I thought [the Question Time decision] was bonkers. The problem is he is so careful with his language," the presenter said.
"Because we have all been at the BBC so long, you get this fairness chip implanted. [Management thinks] 'Isn't it better to lift up the rock and let the bug crawl out?'"
The BBC insider said they feared that Griffin could even find favour with the audience. "You can imagine him talking about British soldiers as 'our boys' and getting a round of applause," they added.
The disagreed with the inclusion of Conservative peer Baroness Warsi.
"Warsi can be a bit shrill. I wish they'd chosen a Conservative who is a bit more erudite."
Another BBC insider said there was little or no sign of a staff rebellion. The demonstrators and extra security were a more pressing matter, they added.
"The only time I've heard it mentioned is when someone wondered how they were going to get into work," this insider said.
A third BBC staff member said the real story would be how the programme handled Griffin, not the decision to include him in the panel.
"In the end you can't really argue with putting them on. It's how it's done in the end," this source said. "It will be about the programme and how he is interrogated. There will be lots of pantomime and people walking out. Any whiff of Griffin getting a easy ride will be highly controversial."
This insider disagreed that Griffin would get an easy ride because of the Question Time format, where members of the public ask the panel questions. "There will be lots of angry questions, of course BBC presenters can't be seen to be angry."
Watching Sky News just now, they're saying that protesters have broken into the BBC to try and disrupt things... good stuff!
It's just a shame that when protesters invaded the BBC Scotland studios in protest at the BBC's scoverage of the Gaza war crimes earlier in the year they weren't covered so closely.
So Question Time, currently it's which party tweedledum, tweedledee or tweedledee and a half; can pander to the anti-immigration movement the most. Light-weights the lot of them, though Bonnie is quite endearing...
Yeah, that Bonnie Greer was really good - she defeated him with the proverbial million butterfly wings. Griffin was a real twat though, laughing at bits where he'd just been attacked for example.
Yeah, that Bonnie Greer was really good - she defeated him with the proverbial million butterfly wings. Griffin was a real twat though, laughing at bits where he'd just been attacked for example.
He was pitifully pathetic wasn't he? Is that the best the 'friendly face' of the far right can muster??
i think griffin was right on churchill - the bnp probably would be the only party that would have him now, churchill was racist. its weird they use the example of indians helping us in the war, when churchill said 'i hate indians, they are a beastly people with a beastly religion' and that 'hindus were a foul race ... and he wished bert harris could send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them'. in the victory broadcast in 1945 churchill thanked australia, new zealand and canada for their contribution to the war effort 'but could not bring himself to mention india' 'although she provided more men and material than the rest put together'. thats not to mention his actions during the bengal famine, but then churchill thought they were 'breeding like rabbits' and that the 'starvation of anyhow underfed bengalis is less serious than sturdy greeks' ...
i agree bonnie greer was good, she was the only one though really - i'll have to watch it again as i wasn't really paying full attention to it
but if he did do well with his target audience then I think that those who are against that kind of insularity may well be more emboldened to speak out after seeing the audience there.
At best he's only appealed to the people who were already arseholes - I hope...
but if he did do well with his target audience then I think that those who are against that kind of insularity may well be more emboldened to speak out after seeing the audience there.
At best he's only appealed to the people who were already arseholes - I hope...
The leader of the British National Party is launching an official complaint about his treatment on the BBC's Question Time programme, claiming he was "bullied".
Nick Griffin says he was the victim of a set-up in which the format of the current affairs debate show was changed "after 30 years".
He said: "That was not genuine Question Time, that was a lynch mob."
At an impromptu press conference in Thurrock, Essex, he told reporters that he was not given the chance to talk about the BNP's policies.
Mr Griffin also complained about the multi-cultural audience, which was largely opposed to his views. He declared: "London is no longer a British city".
During the programme he denied he was a Nazi, but said the Ku Klux Klan are "almost totally non-violent" and that homosexuals are "creepy".
He has been universally condemned in the newspapers with the Daily Express calling him "A disgrace to humanity" and The Independent declaring "He choked".
The Sun's front page carries a picture of Griffin with the words: "I'm the most loathed man in Britain".
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