The Malaysian Insider

LONDON, Oct 23 — Far-right leader Nick Griffin denied yesterday he was a Nazi during a television debate which provoked political uproar, as police scuffled with anti-racist demonstrators outside the studio.

In the first appearance by a far-right leader on the BBC’s flagship political programme, Griffin said successive governments had committed genocide against their people with their immigration policies and that Islam was at odds with the fundamental values of British society.

The political elite had imposed “an enormous multicultural ... experiment, on the British people,” Griffin, 50, said during a turbulent, hour-long debate in which he was jeered and sometimes laughed at by a largely hostile studio audience.

The BBC’s invitation to Griffin to appear as a panellist on “Question Time,” which regularly attracts three million viewers, divided British society.

Anti-racism groups and some politicians argued the BNP should not be given a platform on the publicly-funded BBC while others backed the invitation on free speech grounds.

Some 500 demonstrators, waving placards reading “Stop the Fascist BNP” and shouting “Smash the BNP,” protested outside the BBC complex in West London.

Before the debate they surged through a security barrier, breaking through a line of yellow-jacketed police officers, and a handful burst into the BBC building. Police said six people were arrested and three police officers were hurt.

Griffin, whose party wants a halt to immigration and Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, was quizzed by fellow panellists and members of the studio audience about comments he had made about World War Two and the Nazi Holocaust.

“I am not a Nazi, I never have been,” he said.

Asked if he had ever denied the Holocaust, Griffin did not answer directly, saying only: “I do not have a conviction for Holocaust denial.”

Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who reversed the ruling Labour Party’s previous refusal to share a platform with the extreme right to appear on the show, attacked Griffin as a “fantasising conspiracy theorist” who defined his politics by race.

“The British people will have nothing to do with that,” he said.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said earlier the choice of panellists was a matter for the BBC but added he thought Griffin’s appearance would backfire on the right-wing party.

Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black woman MP, said Griffin’s appearance was “wrong and offensive.”

Griffin looked flustered during much of the debate.

One audience member suggested he should be sent to the South Pole. “It’s a colourless landscape, it will suit you fine.”

A black audience member accused him of poisoning the minds of British people.

In June, Griffin and another BNP member won seats in the European Parliament elections, a first for the party, which got more than 900,000 votes, six percent of the total.

The party, which advocates voluntary repatriation of immigrants, has won support in some urban areas among a working class suffering through a deep recession and competing for jobs and services with immigrants.

It has no seats in the national parliament but will field hundreds of candidates in a general election due by next June.

Some political commentators have noted that Jean-Marie Le Pen, veteran leader of France’s far-right National Front, used his television debut on a similar French political show in 1984 to bolster support and recognition. — Reuters