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

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

Early years and education

Nick Griffin was born in North London and grew up in Halesworth in rural Suffolk, England. Initially educated at a public school, St Felix School, Southwold, Suffolk, 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 (3rd) 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 Peace, of which he is chairman.

Parents' involvement in left-wing politics

Griffin's mother, Jean, was the Peace 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 after he answered the Peace hotline on behalf of his wife, the Peace membership secretary, when she was unavailable. At the time of his expulsion, Edgar Griffin was vice-president of Iain Duncan Smith's party leadership election campaign in Wales.

Career in politics

The NF and the ITP

Griffin was involved with the youth wing of the Conservative Party from about the age of 12. He got involved with the far right at the age of 15 when his father, Edgar, took him to meetings of the National Front (NF). By 1978, Griffin was a local secretary for the NF. He became a member of the NF governing body, the National Directorate, in 1980, when he also set up the NF Student Organisation. During this period he became close to Roberto Fiore, an Italian neo-fascist then living in London and wanted in Italy in connection with the 1980 Bologna Massacre. Fiore worked for a tour agency that Griffin was involved in and became an important influence on Griffin's subsequent political development. (Searchlight magazine, 1983.)

In November 1983 Griffin and Joe Pearce resigned from the NF leadership, circulating a statement in which they complained about Martin Webster's role in the party. The statement said they were leaving to avoid Webster turning the crisis into a witch-hunt against them, but looked forward to rejoining. The following month Webster was relieved of his post as National Activities Organiser, and Pearce and Griffin were reinstated (Griffin to his previous role as Publicity Officer).

For some years in the mid-80s, Griffin hosted summer white power music concerts at his father Edgar's home near Huntingfield, Suffolk, featuring such bands as Skrewdriver, which was associated with the NF through first Rock Against Communism and then the White Noise Club.

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. The Political Soldiers believed in the formation of a "new man" along quasi-religious lines, one who would oppose the "materialism" of both capitalism and communism. The ITP continued the movement towards the underground, and right-wing Catholicism, that the Political Soldiers had started.

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.

The BNP

While still a leader of the ITP, Griffin became involved with another far-right nationalist group, the 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. He later became editor of The Rune, an anti-Semitic magazine published by the Croydon BNP. Griffin edited it until 1997. 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 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 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.

The BNP has dropped its former policy of compulsory repatriation of ethnic minorities in favour of "voluntary repatriation" aided by resettlement grants. Their stated policy on those who remain is that they will be allowed to stay as "guests", provided they obey British laws. Griffin has announced that the BNP will protect democracy if elected, and has promised referenda on subjects such as fox hunting and capital punishment.

Under the BNP's constitution, Nick 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.

Criticisms of Griffin

Griffin has had many detractors. He is widely regarded in Britain as a neo-Nazi and a fascist, both of which he disputes. Many have also criticised him for meeting with David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and visiting Libya at Muammar al-Qaddafi'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

Griffin has made statements that deny the existence of the Holocaust and has in the past made anti-Semitic remarks.

In issue 12 of the BNP publication The Rune (see above) 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 the same year he wrote a pamphlet, "Who Are The Mindbenders", which alleged that a cabal of Jews controlled the British media, "providing us with an endless diet of pro-multiracial, pro-homosexual, anti-British trash."

In his defence during his 1998 prosecution (see below), 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."

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". The BNP currently has a Jewish councillor, Patricia Richardson, and has stated that it has Jewish members.

Criticism of homosexuality

Griffin has publicly expressed his distaste for homosexuality. After David Copeland's 1999 bombing of the Admiral Duncan gay pub in Soho, London, Griffin wrote: "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."

Martin Webster, for whose ousting from the NF leadership Griffin was partially responsible, published on the internet in 1999 a leaflet, "Come for an 'Outing' Down Memory Lane", claiming that he and Griffin had a 4-year homosexual relationship that ended in 1981. The story was reported in the Sunday Times.

Griffin has repeatedly denied Webster's claims. In a 2006 interview with the Daily Mail, he said: "I did stay at his flat when I was 16, not knowing he was a poof. Webster still denied it to senior people. Nobody knew."

Recent election campaigns

In June 2001, Griffin ran as a BNP candidate in the constituency of Oldham West & Royton and got 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 that happened just before the June 2001 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 is currently standing in the 2007 Welsh National Assembly Elections in the South Wales West region.

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 (see under BNP above), 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 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 claimed by opponents 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 aired in July 2004 in which he was recorded as saying that Islam was a wicked and vicious faith. He was released on police bail the same day.

Griffin was the 12th person to be arrested following the documentary and the second high profile arrestee in this case after BNP founder John Tyndall, who was arrested on 12 December 2004.

On 6 April, 2005, he was charged by police with four offences of using words or behaviour intended or likely to stir up racial hatred.

Around 14 January, 2006 Nick Griffin set up a 'Free Speech on Trial' Blog to gives daily updates on his thoughts and those of the other defendant, Mark Collett, during the trial.

On 6 February, 2006, he was acquitted of two of the charges at Leeds Crown Court. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the other two charges, and the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would seek a re-trial .

Abu Hamza stood trial at the same time as Nick Griffin. Hamza's verdict came soon after Griffin's acquittal on two charges under the same provisions of the Public Order Act and with a possible retrial on two more where the jury failed to reach a verdict. This has led to comparisons between the two cases within the broader debate of free speech in the UK.

In early November 2006, Nick Griffin and Mark Collett's retrial began in Leeds. On Friday 10 November 2006, both men were unanimously found not guilty on all counts of inciting racial hatred. Government ministers have called for a review of existing race hate laws in response to the controversial outcome of this trial.

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.

After the trial, Collett accused the BBC of having "abused their position" and of being a "politically biased organisation" for inciting the trial.

In response, a statement from the BBC said its job was to "bring matters of public interest to general attention", but that "the question of whether criminal offences have been committed is of course a matter for the police, prosecuting authorities and the courts and not for the BBC".

Support for Griffin's right to free speech

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

Trivia

Coincidentally, like fellow far-right political figure Jean-Marie Le Pen, Nick Griffin has a glass left eye following a serious accident in 1990 when a shotgun cartridge buried among burning rubbish exploded .

Elections contested

References

1. Searchlight magazine, January 1984
2. Searchlight magazine, February 1988.
3. Patrick Harrington, "The Politics of Failure", Third Way magazine 17, nd (mid-1993)
4. Patrick Harrington, "The Politics of Failure", Third Way magazine 17, nd (mid-1993)
5. Nick Ryan, "England's green and unpleasant land", The Times, 10 April 1999
6. Spearhead magazine, June 1999, p364
7. Tom Robbins, "Gay Tiff Reveals Soft Side of Far Right", Sunday Times, 5 September 1999
8. Nick Griffin quoted in David Jones, "A Very Plausible Bigot", Daily Mail, 29 April 2006

External links

Official sites

• BNP Website
• Griffin's "Chairman`s Column" on the BNP website
• Nick Griffin's personal "Free Speech on Trial" blog
• Nick Griffin's personal blog regarding current issues

Articles and speeches by Griffin

• Griffin's address to the May 20-22, 2005 Second International European American Conference, New Orleans Conference, LA, (transcript)
• 'The Celts', undated article by Griffin

Interviews with Griffin

• Right Now! Magazine Interview with Nick Griffin
• BBC Interview with Nick Griffin
• Interview with Serge Trifkovic

Articles about Griffin

• BBC profile of Griffin
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/programmes/2001/bnp_special/the_leader/default.stm BBC Special report on Griffin]
• Searchlight profile of Griffin
• "The Problem is Mr Griffin" by John Tyndall, Spearhead magazine online.

• Arrest of Nick Griffin

• British National Front politicians
• British National Party politicians
• Leaders of political parties in the United Kingdom
• 1959 births
• Holocaust deniers
• Living people
• Alumni of Downing College, Cambridge
• People from London
• People from Suffolk
• British conservatives