Nick Griffin - Policies and Views

Policies and Views

Griffin describes himself as a "moderniser", and "new nationalist", and upon his election as leader of the BNP, according to Guardian writer Francis Wheen, was "contemptuous" of the party's traditional supporters. He has changed the BNP's traditional focus on immigration and race, to a defence of what it sees as "our traditional principles against the politically correct agenda" espoused by mainstream politicians. He has portrayed himself as a defender of free speech, and has repeatedly spoken about multiculturalism. During 2000, he attempted to further the BNP's popular appeal by targeting specific groups, including lorry drivers — some of whom were at the time engaged in mass protests against fuel prices — and farmers. The BNP also produced a journal devoted to rural matters.

The BNP's constitution grants its chairman full executive power over all party affairs, and Griffin thus carries sole responsibility for the party's legal and financial liabilities, and has the final say in all decisions affecting the party. The BNP's policies include a halt to all immigration, the forced repatriation of all illegal immigrants, and the deportation of criminals whose original nationality was not British. It is opposed to a single European currency, and supports British withdrawal from the European Union (EU). It promises to "free the police and courts from the politically correct straitjacket that is stopping them from doing their job properly". It believes that British industry should be prioritised, that foreign imports should be strictly regulated, and that defence spending should be increased. Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would be invited to join a "federation of the nations of the British Isles". Its policy on education includes improving discipline in classrooms, and selective industry training for students. Greater production of home-grown food would be encouraged, and the party supports the National Health Service. It would restore the pensions earnings link, and the decentralisation of government decision-making.

Upon his election to the European Parliament Griffin unsuccessfully tried to form an alliance with right-wing parties (which would have entitled them to extra funding). He has also held talks with other far-right European parties, such as Vlaams Belang and Jobbik. The BNP maintains ties with Roberto Fiore and fascist groups across Europe. Griffin has criticised the Labour government for its attitude toward the BNP, accusing it of treating elected representatives of the BNP as "second-class citizens". Following his election, in a press conference held at a public house in Manchester, he criticised the privatisation of national industries, such as the railway network, and accused MPs generally of being involved in this "… giant looting of Britain". He accused private corporations and the "ruling elite" in Britain of building a "Eurocratic state", a process he called "Mussolini fascism under Gordon Brown." He supported the Gurkhas, stating that the BNP would allow them and their families entry to the country for medical treatment "for as long as they needed treatment, or for as long as they lived." He also suggested the removal of 100,000 Muslims "disloyal to Britain" and their replacement with the Gurkhas.

Griffin has frequently expressed views on Judaism, Islam and homosexuality. His comments on the Holocaust (which he once referred to as "the Holohoax") made as an editor of The Rune, demonstrate revisionism. He criticised Holocaust denier David Irving for admitting that up to four million Jews might have died in the Holocaust; he wrote "True Revisionists will not be fooled by this new twist to the sorry tale of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century." In 1997, he told an undercover journalist that he had updated Richard Verrall's booklet Did Six Million Really Die? and, in the same year, he wrote Who are the Mindbenders?, about a perceived domination of the media by Jewish figures. Despite this, the BNP has a Jewish councillor, Patricia Richardson, and spokesman Phil Edwards has stated that the party also has Jewish members. The BNP has stated that it does not deny the Holocaust, and that "Dredging up quotes from 10, 15, 20 years ago is really pathetic and, in a sense, rather fascist." In an interview with BNP deputy leader Simon Darby, Griffin claimed that the English Defence League was a "Zionist false flag operation", and added that the organisation is "a neo-con operation". He also claimed that the EDL's activities are an attempt to provoke civil war.

Since assuming control of the party, Griffin has sought to move it away from its historic identity, although on the BBC's Newsnight on 26 June 2001 he stated that Hindus and whites had both been targeted in the "Muslim" riots of 2001, and in the August 2001 issue of Identity (a BNP publication) he claimed that radical Muslim clerics wanted "... militant Muslims to take over British cities with AK-47 rifles". When interviewed in August 2009 for RT, he distanced himself from the present-day National Front, which he claimed is "... a group of skinheads running around with no political direction, other than that we suspect which their masters give them." On The Politics Show on 9 March 2003, he appeared to accept ethnic minorities who were already legally living in the country, and, on 6 March 2008, he was again interviewed on Newsnight; when told of a poll that demonstrated that most working-class Britons were more concerned about drugs and alcohol than immigration, he linked the UK's drug problem with Islam, specifically Pakistani immigrants. His inclusion on the programme was criticised by contributor and radio presenter Jon Gaunt, who branded the decision as "pathetic". When asked by The Times about concerns that his recent success was presaged in Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech, Griffin replied:

The divisions are already there. They were created by that monstrous experiment: the multi-cultural destruction of old Britain. There is no clash between the indigenous population and, for instance, settled West Indians, Sikhs and Hindus. There is, however, an enormous correlation between high BNP votes and nearby Islamic populations. The reason for that is nothing to do with Islamophobia; it is issues such as the grooming of young English girls for sex by a criminal minority of the Muslim population ... I am now there to give political articulation to the concerns of the mainly indigenous population. The ethnic populations have always had Labour to speak up for them. Finally their neighbours have got someone who speaks up for them.

In a June 2009 interview with Channel 4 News, Griffin claimed that "There's no such thing as a black Welshman", which was criticised by Vaughan Gething (the first black president of the Welsh NUS and the Welsh TUC, and the first black candidate for the Welsh assembly). Commenting on Griffin's claim, he said "On that basis, most white people wouldn't qualify. It's quite clear that Nick Griffin just doesn't accept that black British people or black Welsh people are entitled to call themselves proper, full citizens of the country." Griffin's interview with Channel 4 News was in response to a decision by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to investigate the BNP's membership criteria, which, it stated, "appeared to discriminate on the grounds of race and colour, contrary to the Race Relations Act." He rejected claims that the BNP was "acting unlawfully" and said "... because we are here, as it was pointed out, for specific ethnic groups — it's nothing to do with colour, your reporter there said that we'll only lift a finger for white people — that's a simple lie." In an interview with the BBC on 8 July 2009, during a discussion on European immigration, he proposed that the EU should sink boats carrying illegal immigrants, to prevent them from entering Europe. Although the interviewer (BBC correspondent Shirin Wheeler) implied that Griffin may have wished the EU to "murder people at sea", he quickly corrected her by saying "I didn't say anyone should be murdered at sea — I say boats should be sunk, they can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya" (a staging post for migrants from Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa).

Following the Admiral Duncan pub bombing by former BNP member David Copeland, Griffin stated "The TV footage of dozens of 'gay' demonstrators flaunting their perversion in front of the world's journalists showed just why so many ordinary people find these creatures so repulsive." The BNP states that, privately, homosexuality should be tolerated, but that it "should not be promoted or encouraged". It opposed the introduction of civil partnerships and wishes to ban what it perceives as the promotion of homosexuality in schools and the media.

Writing for The Rune, Griffin praised the wartime Waffen SS and attacked the Royal Air Force for its bombing of Nazi Germany, and in 1996 during a public demonstration at Coventry Cathedral he accused British airmen of "mass murder". Although unconnected, on 9 June 2009 the Royal British Legion wrote an open letter to Griffin asking him not to wear a poppy lapel badge.

In a BBC interview on 8 June 2009, Griffin claimed that "global warming is essentially a hoax" and that it "is being exploited by the liberal elite as a means of taxing and controlling us and the real crisis is peak oil". He was a representative of the European Parliament at the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference, where he repeated his claim that global warming is a hoax, and called advocates of action on climate change such as Al Gore "mass murderers" by supporting biofuels, claiming that their use would lead to the "third and the greatest famine of the modern era". A Greenpeace spokesman said, "In reality the environmental and development groups he has been disparaging have been in the forefront of concerns about biofuels. Griffin’s claims that climate change is a hoax is one of many curious things going on between his ears.”