Griffin given rough ride by TV audience

Published on Thursday 22 October 2009 22:15

BNP leader Nick Griffin was last night confronted by furious audience members over his racist views as he took part in the BBC's Question Time.

During the programme, he was loudly booed by the audience and criticism from panellists and audience members was largely greeted with cheers and applause.

Earlier, hundreds of protesters had gathered outside the BBC TV Centre in London. At one point, about 25 protesters broke through the cordon and made it inside the centre, but were removed from reception by police and security.

The programme started by asking if the BNP were right to associate themselves with Winston Churchill. Jack Straw said it was unfair the BNP had hijacked the image of Churchill, adding: "We only won the First World War, we only won the Second World War … because millions of black and Asian people joined us."

Mr Griffin was booed when he responded saying his father had been in the RAF, while Mr Straw's father was a conscientious objector.

Mr Griffin told the audience: "My father was in the RAF during the Second World War. I am not a Nazi, I never have been."

It was then Mr Griffin came under vociferous attack from a black man in the audience, who said: "For one minute, can you not think what people like my parents or others from Asian, black or Pakistani backgrounds brought to this country?

"No, all you are thinking of doing is trying to poison politics and poison the minds of people in this country. The vast majority of this audience find what you stand for completely disgusting."

The audience broke out in cheers and clapping.

At several points, Mr Griffin claimed that many of the quotes attributed to him in the media were wrong. David Dimbleby asked him if the statements about him being a Holocaust denier were wrong. Mr Griffin replied: "I do not have a conviction as a Holocaust denier."

Confronted by a Jewish boy in the audience about why he was a Holocaust denier, he said: "I cannot explain why I used to say those things, any more than I can tell you any more why I changed my mind. European law prevents me from doing so."

Mr Straw said: "There is no law here that stops you from explaining yourself. As a justice minister, I promise you if you want to explain, why you don't believe them, go ahead."

Mr Griffin also denied he was anti-Muslim, saying: "If Muslims are staying in this country, they must do so on the understanding our country must remain a British and largely Christian country."

Put to him that he had once said that Adolf Hitler had gone a "bit too far", Mr Griffin said: "That's an old one of those lies. I never said such a thing. I am the most loathed man in the eyes of Britain's Nazis.

"They loathe me because I have brought the British National Party from being, frankly, an antisemitic and racist organisation into being the only political party which, in the clashes between Israel and Gaza, stood full square behind Israel's right to deal with Hamas terrorists."

Mr Griffin was jeered when he defended his decision to share a platform with a leader of the Ku Klux Klan, saying it had been a "non-violent" organisation.

An Asian man was cheered as he told Mr Griffin: "You'd be surprised how many people here would have a whip-round to pay for you and your supporters to go to the South Pole. It's a colourless landscape, it would suit you fine."

Mr Griffin accused the political elite of imposing an enormous multicultural experiment on the British people, the "indigenous" inhabitants.

Challenged on how he defined indigenous, he said: "The indigenous people of these islands are the English, the Scots, the Irish, the Welsh. These are the people who have been overwhelmingly living here for the last 17,000 years ago. We are the aborigines here.

"The majority of the British people are descended from people who have lived here since time immemorial. We feel shut out from our own country."

Mr Griffin admitted he found the sight of open expressions of homosexuality distasteful.

"I have said a lot of people find the site of two grown men kissing in public really creepy … A lot of us feel that way. I don't know why, it's just the way it is."

An audience member shouted "you're a disgrace".

On the programme, Mr Griffin dismissed suggestions that he had been given "an early Christmas present" by the BBC.

"I regard the BBC as part of a thoroughly unpleasant, ultra-leftist establishment which, as we have seen here tonight, doesn't even want the English to be recognised as an existing people," the BNP leader said.

"All the BBC have done is follow the rules they set some years ago. It would have been wrong to keep us off any longer."

Following the recording, Welsh Secretary Peter Hain – who had appealed to the BBC to drop Mr Griffin – strongly condemned the decision to go ahead with the programme.

"This BBC decision could end up blighting the lives of many decent people in Britain just because they are not white," Mr Hain said.

"The BBC should be ashamed of single-handedly doing a racist, fascist party the biggest favour in its grubby history. That the BNP has publicly thanked the BBC says it all.

"Our black, Muslim and Jewish citizens will sleep much less easily now the BBC has legitimised the BNP by treating its racist poison as the views of just another mainstream political party, when it is so uniquely evil and dangerous."

BBC deputy director-general Mark Byford, however, insisted it had been "appropriate" invite Mr Griffin to appear.

"Members of the audience asked the kind of tough questions that mark Question Time out as the premier television programme where the public put the panellists on the spot," he said.

"We remain firmly of the view that it was appropriate to invite Nick Griffin on to the Question Time panel this evening, in the context of the BBC meeting its obligation of due impartiality."

Earlier, the BNP leader had been smuggled into the BBC TV centre through a side entrance.

Police said the demonstrations outside the building had resulted in three arrests, two for violent disorder and the third of a person wanted on warrant.

Three police officers were injured in the scuffles, one of whom was taken to hospital with a head injury.

The BBC's Glasgow centre at Pacific Quay also attracted about 100 protesters, while about 30 targeted the BBC's offices in Edinburgh, although the scenes were more dramatic in London, where a red flare was ignited and the demonstrators clashed with police.