Nick Griffin

Nick Griffin
Chairman of the British National Party
In office September, 1999 – present
Preceded by	John Tyndall
Personal details
Born	1959 Barnet, England
Political party	British National Party
Spouse	Jackie Griffin
Residence(s)	Powys, Wales, United Kingdom

Nicholas John "Nick" Griffin (born 1959) is a British politician. Since 1999 he has been the Chairman of the British National Party (BNP).

Background

Nick Griffin was born in Barnet and grew up in Halesworth in rural Suffolk, England. Initially educated at two Suffolk private schools, St Felix School (in Southwold) and Woodbridge School, Griffin studied history and then law at Downing College, Cambridge. Griffin boxed while at Cambridge and became a boxing blue. He graduated with a third class degree in History with Law (Tripos I History 2 years/ Tripos II Law 1 year). Since leaving university, Griffin has worked in agricultural engineering, property renovation and forestry. In recent years he has been a full-time political writer and organiser of the British National Party, of which he is chairman. Since 1990, Nick Griffin has a glass left eye following a serious accident when a shotgun cartridge buried among burning rubbish exploded .

Griffin's mother, Jean (nee Thomas), was the BNP candidate against Iain Duncan Smith at the 2001 Election, and his father, Edgar, was a member of the Conservative Party and a former councillor. In August 2001, Edgar Griffin was expelled from the Conservative Party. At the time, he had been vice-president of Iain Duncan Smith's party leadership election campaign in Wales.

Career in politics

National Front and International Third Position

Nick Griffin became involved with the far right at the age of 15 when his father, Edgar Griffin, took him to meetings of the National Front (NF). By 1978, he was a local secretary for the NF.

In 1980, he became a member of the NF governing body, the National Directorate, when he also set up the NF Student Organisation. In 1980, Griffin launched Nationalism Today with the aid of Joe Pearce, editor of the NF youth paper Bulldog and twice imprisoned for incitement to racial hatred. Nationalism Today became the springboard for the Third Positionist ideas that the NF later adopted. Writing in Nationalism Today in 1985, Griffin praised the black separatist Louis Farrakhan, saying, "white nationalists everywhere wish [Farrakhan] well, for we share a common struggle for the same ends: racial separation and racial freedom".

Griffin left the NF in 1989 in a split with Patrick Harrington. Harrington went on to form the Third Way. Meanwhile, Griffin joined with Derek Holland to form the International Third Position (ITP), which developed from the Political Soldier movement that had formed within the NF. Given the secretive nature of the ITP, it is hard to establish exactly when Griffin left, although he was still part of its leadership in mid-1993.

British National Party

While still a leader of the ITP, Griffin became involved with another far-right nationalist group, the British National Party (BNP). By 1993 he was speaking at BNP meetings and writing pseudonymously for BNP publications.. In 1995, he officially joined the party.

For a time Griffin edited Spearhead, a publication owned by then party leader John Tyndall. Between 1995 and 1997, he was editor of The Rune, an anti-semitic weekly . In 1998, he was prosecuted in connection with the magazine (see below).

In September 1999, Griffin was elected as head of the BNP. He embarked on a campaign to make the party "electable" by shedding its perceived racist, extremist image. These changes included an emphasis on the need to dismantle multiculturalism, which the BNP claim has a destructive influence on both immigrant and British culture. This realignment was designed to position the BNP alongside successful European far-right groups, such as the French Front National. The campaign would also involve moves against Tyndall, who was expelled from the party for a time in 2002 along with his closest allies, Richard Edmonds and John Morse.

Under the BNP's constitution, Griffin is solely responsible for the party's legal and financial liabilities, and has the final say in all decisions affecting the party. While he routinely consults with various colleagues on matters which affect them directly, he is not bound to do so. Some areas of policy have been delegated to other BNP leaders, but Griffin has retained the right to make the most important decisions.

1998 public order conviction

In 1998, Griffin, along with Paul Ballard, was convicted of violating section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, relating to incitement to racial hatred for his editorship of issue 12 of The Rune, published in 1996.

The complaint regarding the magazine was made by Alex Carlile QC, who was the Liberal Democrat MP for Montgomeryshire at the time. He had asked the police to obtain for him a copy of the magazine, which they did. After reading it, the MP called the police again and complained about its content, whereupon the police raided Griffin's home and charged him. He was convicted and received a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was fined £2,300.

This conviction has been said to be contradictory to Griffin's outspoken demands for "law & order", although Griffin claims that the law under which he was convicted "is an unjust law and he therefore has no obligation to follow it".

2005 prosecution and 2006 retrial

On 14 December, 2004, Nick Griffin was arrested on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred, relating to a BBC documentary broadcast in July 2004, in which he was recorded at Morley Town Hall (in a constituency which later went on to elect a BNP councillor in 2006) as saying that Islam was a "...wicked and vicious faith". He was the 12th person to be arrested following the documentary and the second most prominent after BNP founder John Tyndall, who had been arrested two days earlier. Griffin was released on police bail the same day but, the following April, was charged with four offences of using words or behaviour intended or likely to stir up racial hatred.

On 6 February, 2006, a jury at Leeds Crown Court returned not guilty verdicts on two of the charges and was unable to reach a verdict on the other two. The Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would seek a re-trial.

Nick Griffin and Mark Collett leave Leeds Crown Court on November 10 2006 after being found not guilty of charges of incitement to racial hatred at their retrial.

In early November 2006, the retrial of Griffin and co-defendant Mark Collett took place and once again both men were found not guilty on all counts, which means that of all the people arrested in connection with the BBC documentary none had been convicted of any offence relating to it. Somewhat controversially, Government ministers have since called for a review of existing laws.

After the trial, Griffin celebrated outside the court with over two hundred supporters and champagne in red, white and blue bottles donated by Jean-Marie Le Pen. "What has just happened shows Tony Blair and the government toadies at the BBC that they can take our taxes but they cannot take our hearts, they cannot take our tongues and they cannot take our freedom," he told his supporters.

Sunday Times journalist Rod Liddle wrote an article 'Alas, I must defend the BNP' supporting Griffin's right to free speech.

Oxford Union debate

In November 2007, Oxford Union president Luke Tryl invited Griffin to speak at a forum on the limits of free speech at the Union, along with other speakers including David Irving. This provoked controversy within the University as the student body was badly divided over the issue. Many supported Griffin's right to free speech, with Junior Common Rooms passing motions in support of the invitations and a vote at the Oxford Union itself being carried by a majority of 2 to 1. Others, including the Oxford University Student Union (OUSU), Unite Against Fascism, Oxford Jewish Society and the Oxford Islamic Society staged protests and argued that Griffin and Irving should be denied a platform which they could use to provide legitimacy for their views. The decision to allow him to speak caused such controversy that many members of the Oxford Union resigned their memberships, including several MPs. That evening, hundreds of demonstrators congregated throughout central Oxford, surrounding the Oxford Union, and blocking people from entering the building. The debate was delayed by more than 3 and a half hours, and when Nick Griffin arrived (he attempted to enter through a side door to avoid being seen), he was pelted with eggs. The Union was unable to carry out a proper debate in the usual chamber, and was forced to hold a side debate in a smaller room, as anti-BNP activitists were present on the floor. Nick Griffin would later blame "The hound-dogs of the Labour government" for persuading people to protest against him.

Recent election campaigns

In June 2001, Griffin ran as a BNP candidate in the constituency of Oldham West & Royton and received 6,552 votes (16%), beating the Liberal Democrats to third place and running a close race for second place with the Conservatives. After the result, Griffin was accused of exploiting racial tensions in Oldham that resulted in the Oldham Riots just before the vote.

In May 2003, Griffin stood for election again in Oldham for a seat on the local council representing the Chadderton North ward, winning 993 votes (28%). He was not elected. In June 2004, Griffin topped the BNP list for the European Parliament for the North West England Constituency. The party received 134,958 votes (6%). No one from the BNP was elected.

Nick Griffin stood in the 2005 General Election in the Keighley constituency, West Yorkshire, where he polled 4,240 votes, 9.16% of those cast.

Griffin contested the 2007 Welsh National Assembly Elections in the South Wales West region.

In October 2007, the BNP announced that Griffin had been selected as Parliamentary candidate for Thurrock in Essex.

Parliamentary elections contested

Date of election	Constituency	Party	Votes	%
22 October 1981 by-election	Croydon North West	NF	429	1.2
1983 general election	Croydon North West	NF	336	0.9
23 November 2000 by-election	West Bromwich West	BNP	794	4.2
2001 general election	Oldham West and Royton	BNP	6552	16.4
2005 general election	Keighley	BNP	4240	9.2

Criticisms of Griffin

Griffin has had many detractors. Some criticisms of him include meeting with David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and visiting Libya at Muammar al-Gaddafi's expense. As Chairman, he is strongly associated with the BNP and has been drawn into many of the controversies surrounding it.

Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial

In issue 12 of the BNP publication The Rune (see 1998 public order conviction) he called the Holocaust "the Holohoax" and criticized the Holocaust denier David Irving for admitting in an interview that up to four million Jews might have died in the Holocaust. Griffin wrote: "True Revisionists will not be fooled by this new twist to the sorry tale of the Hoax of the Twentieth Century." Griffin was eventually prosecuted for his articles in The Rune (see below).

In 1997 he told an undercover journalist that he had updated Richard Verrall's Holocaust denial book Did Six Million Really Die?. He also described his former MP, Alex Carlile, QC, who had reported The Rune to the police, as "this bloody Jew... whose only claim is that his grandparents died in the Holocaust."

In his defence during his 1998 prosecution, Griffin said: "I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the world is flat ... I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria."

Current stance

His more recent public stance in this area is illustrated by the section "It's all a Zionist scam" in his 2005 article "Dealing with Peak Oil Criticisms". Griffin went on record in 2005 stating "This party has finally cast off the leg iron of anti-Semitism and not a moment too soon." The BNP currently has a Jewish councillor, Patricia Richardson, and has stated that it has Jewish members although the party adheres to a strict non-interventionist stance and opposes a foreign policy that supports Israel.

On 6 March 2008, he was interviewed by Kirsty Wark on BBC Two's Newsnight. He pointed out that a disproportionately large number of drug dealers in the UK are Muslims of Pakistani origin.

External links

Official sites

• BNP Website
• Nick Griffin's official blog