Nick Griffin

Nick Griffin MEP-elect
Nick Griffin addressing a BNP press conference in Manchester, in June 2009
Chairman of the BNP
Incumbent
Assumed office September 1999
Preceded by	John Tyndall
Personal details
Born	1959 (age 64–65) Barnet, Hertfordshire, England
Political party	British National Party
Spouse	Jackie Griffin
Residence(s)	Llanerfyl, Powys, Wales

Nicholas John Griffin (born 1959) is a British far-right politician. He is chairman of the British National Party and Member-elect of the European Parliament for North West England. He is married with four children, and lives in Wales.

Griffin was born in Barnet, London, and was educated in Suffolk. He joined the National Front aged 15, and following his graduation from Cambridge University became a political worker for the party. In 1980 he became a member of its governing body, and later wrote articles for right-wing magazines. He was the party's candidate for the seat of Croydon North West in 1981 and 1983. He left the National Front in 1989, and in 1995 joined the British National Party, becoming its leader in 1999. He stood as the party's candidate in several elections, and in 2009 was elected as a member of the European Parliament for North West England in the 2009 European Elections.

In 1998 Griffin was convicted of incitement to racial hatred, receiving a suspended prison sentence. He was charged in 2005 with the same offence, but following a retrial was cleared. Griffin has been criticised for his political and religious views—he has denied the veracity of the Holocaust, and has written several anti-Semitic articles. He has also criticised Islam. In 2007, he participated in a controversial debate at the Oxford Union.

Early life and education

File:Nick griffin matriculation.jpg

Griffin at his matriculation at Downing College, in 1977

The son of former Conservative councillor Edgar Griffin and his wife Jean Griffin, Nicholas John Griffin was born in Barnet, then in Hertfordshire now Greater London, before moving to Southwold in Suffolk aged eight. He was educated at Woodbridge School in Woodbridge, and won a sixth-form scholarship to the independent St Felix School in Southwold, becoming one of only two boys in the girls' school.

Griffin had read Mein Kampf by the age of 13, and two years later he joined the National Front. Aged 16 he stayed at the home of National Front organiser Martin Webster. Webster was openly gay, and in a four-page leaflet written in 1999 claimed to have had a homosexual relationship with Griffin, then the BNP's publicity director. Griffin has strongly denied the relationship.

In 1977, Griffin went to Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied History and Law. During a union debate his affiliation to the National Front was revealed, and his photograph was published in a student newspaper. Undeterred, he later founded the Young National Front Student organisation. He graduated with a 2:2 and a boxing blue, having taken up the sport following a brawl with an anti-fascist party member in Lewisham. Griffin boxed three times against Oxford in the annual Varsity match, winning twice and losing once. In an interview for The Independent he stated he gave up because of a hand injury. He claims to be a fan of Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe, and an admirer of Amir Khan.

Political career

1970s–1990

Following his graduation Griffin became a political worker at the National Front headquarters. As a teenager he had accompanied his father to a National Front meeting, and by 1978, he was a national organiser for the party. He helped set up the White Noise Music Club in 1979, and several years later worked with white power skinhead band Skrewdriver.

In 1980 he became a member of the party's governing body, the National Directorate, when he also set up the National Front Student Organisation. In the same year he launched Nationalism Today with the aid of Joe Pearce, then editor of the NF youth paper Bulldog. As a member of the National Front Griffin contested the seat of Croydon North West twice, in 1981 and 1983.

The National Front had, since the election of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher, seen a distinct drop in its membership. As a result the party became more radicalised, and a dissatisfied Griffin, along with fellow NF activists Derek Holland and Patrick Harrington, began to embrace the ideals of Italian fascist Roberto Fiore (Fiore had arrived in the UK in 1980). By 1983 the group had broken away to form the NF Political Soldier faction, which advocated a revival of country 'values', and a return to feudalism, with the establishment of nationalist communes. Writing for Bulldog in 1985, he praised the black separatist Louis Farrakhan, comments which were unpopular with some members of the party. Griffin also attempted to form alliances with Libya's Colonel Gadaffi, and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, and praised the efforts of Welsh nationalist movement Meibion Glyndŵr.

Following a disagreement with Harrington (who subsequently formed the Third Way), and objections over the direction the party was headed, in 1989 Griffin left the National Front. Along with Holland and Fiore, he helped form the International Third Position (ITP), a development of the Political Soldier movement. He left the organisation in 1990.

In the same year he lost his left eye in a serious accident, when (by his account) a discarded Shotgun cartridge exploded in a pile of burning wood at his home. He has, since then, worn a glass eye. Griffin attributes his inability to work to the loss of his eye, and his subsequent declaration of bankruptcy (the accident occured in France, where he later lost money in a failed business project). For several years thereafter, he abstained from politics. His parents gave him financial support, and he also stewarded a public Holocaust denial meeting hosted by David Irving.

1993–1999

Griffin re-entered politics in 1993 and in 1995, at the behest of John Tyndall, joined the British National Party. He also became editor of two right-wing magazines owned by Tyndall, Spearhead, and The Rune. Writing for The Rune, he praised the wartime Waffen SS and attacked the Royal Air Force for its bombing of Nazi Germany. Referring to the election of the BNP's first councillor at a 1993 council by-election in Millwall, Tower Hamlets, he wrote:

The electors of Millwall did not back a post modernist rightist party, but what they perceived to be a strong, disciplined organisation with the ability to back up its slogan "Defend Rights for Whites" with well-directed boots and fists.

— Nick Griffin,

In 1996 during a public demonstration at Coventry Cathedral, he accused British airmen of "mass murder".

Although Tyndall had in 1982 founded the BNP, its links to extremism helped Griffin in his 1999 campaign to replace Tyndall as BNP leader. Griffin embarked on a campaign to make the party electable by taking it away from Tyndall's extremist agenda. He was helped by Tyndall's lack of familiarity with the mainstream media, and following a September 1999 election he defeated Tyndall to become head of the BNP. One of Griffin's changes includes the party's strong emphasis on the the removal of multiculturalism, a policy it claims has a destructive influence on both immigrant and British cultures. This realignment was designed to position the BNP alongside successful European far-right groups, such as the French Front National. Street protests were replaced by electoral campaigning, and some policies were moderated (the compulsory repatriation of ethnic minorities was instead made voluntary). Policies included capital punishment, and corporal punishment for less serious crimes. He presented himself as a Cambridge-educated family man, an image that many voters found more palatable than the more extreme image presented by Tyndall.

2000–2009

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 ensconced in mass protests against fuel prices) and farmers. The BNP also produced a journal devoted to rural matters.

In addition to his earlier candidacies for the National Front, Griffin has stood as the BNP candidate in several English elections. In 2000 he stood as the BNP candidate for the constituency of West Bromwich West, in a by-election triggered by the resignation of Betty Boothroyd. He came in fourth place, with 794 votes (4.21% of those cast).. In the 2001 General Election he was the BNP candidate for the constituency of Oldham West & Royton. He received 6,552 votes (16% of those cast), beating the Liberal Democrats to third place and running a close race for second place with the Conservatives, who received 7,076 votes. He again stood for election in the 2003 Metropolitan Borough elections, for a seat representing the Chadderton North ward. He came second to the Labour candidate, receiving 993 votes (28% of those cast). In the European Parliament Election 2004, where he was the BNP candidate for the North West England constituency, the party received 134,959 votes (6.4% of those cast), but won no seats. In the 2005 General Election he was the BNP candidate for the constituency of Keighley in West Yorkshire, where he polled 4,240 votes (9.2% of those cast), in fourth place.

Griffin was the BNP candidate in the 2007 Welsh National Assembly Elections, in the South Wales West region. The BNP received 8,993 votes (5.5% of those cast), behind the Labour party's 58,347 votes (35.8%). In October 2007 he was an unsuccessful candidate in the Thurrock Council election.

In November 2008 the entire membership list of the BNP was posted on the internet (however the list may have included lapsed members of the party and people who have expressed an interest in joining the party, but have not signed up). Griffin claimed that he knew the identity of the individual responsible, describing him as a hard-line senior employee who had left the party in the previous year. He welcomed the publicity that the story generated, using it to describe the common perception of the average BNP member as a "skinhead oik" as untrue.

He was elected as a member of the European Parliament for North West England in the 2009 European Elections. The BNP polled 943,598 votes (6.2% of those cast), gaining 2 MEPs. Griffin and fellow MEP Andrew Brons were subsequently pelted with eggs as they attempted to stage a celebratory press conference outside the Houses of Parliament. A second venue was chosen on the following day, at a public house near Manchester. A line of police blocked a large group of protesters, who chanted “No platform for Nazi Nick” and “Nazi scum off our streets”.

It is a huge victory. We have been demonised, persecuted and denied the right to hold public meetings. In Oldham alone there have been hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on employing bogus community workers to keep us out. To triumph against that level of pressure as a political party has never been done before.

— Nick Griffin,

Richard Barnbrook (left) and Griffin at a press conference outside the Palace of Westminster in May 2009

In May 2009 he was invited by the BNP representative on the London Assembly, Richard Barnbrook, to a Buckingham Palace garden party hosted by Queen Elizabeth. The invitation prompted objections from several organisations and public figures, including the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, and the anti-facist organisation Searchlight. Griffin later declined the invitation, saying he had "no wish to embarrass the Queen".

We believe it is still outrageous that a democratically elected member of the London Assembly can’t invite who he likes as a guest to the party at the Palace... Nevertheless, because we have no wish to embarrass the Queen and allow the liberal left to do more damage to our institutions, I’ve withdrawn from the idea of going myself.

— Nick Griffin,

I am glad that the BNP leader has recognised that his presence at Buckingham Palace would have been a political stunt, which could have embarrassed Her Majesty... I hope the garden party can now go ahead as intended to honour those who have made an important contribution to their community.

— Boris Johnson,

Criminal charges

1997–1998

In 1997 he co-authored an article in The Rune about Jewish conspiracies to brainwash people in Britain. In April 1998 he was charged with distributing material likely to incite racial hatred. Along with Paul Ballard, he was tried at Harrow Crown Court. Griffin called French holocaust-denier Robert Faurisson, and Nationalist Osiris Akkebala as witnesses, but both he and Ballard were found guilty. The court gave each a nine month sentence, suspended for two years, and a £2,300 fine. Griffin's comments in The Rune had been reported to the police by Alex Carlile. He was also secretly recorded by the ITV programme The Cook Report in 1997 describing his former MP as "this bloody Jew ... whose only claim is that his grandparents died in the Holocaust".

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.

— Nick Griffin,

2004–2006

On 14 December 2004 Griffin was arrested at his home in Wales, on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred, over remarks he made about Islam in an undercover BBC documentary titled The Secret Agent. He was questioned at a police station in Halifax, West Yorkshire, before being freed on police bail. He said that the arrest was "an electoral scam to get the Muslim block vote back to the Labour party", and also claimed that the Labour government was attempting to influence the results of the following year's general election.

The idea is I'm going to be back here in March and bailed until then. At that point the idea is coming up to a general election. It's to demonise us in our electoral chances.

— Nick Griffin,

Griffin's arrest was preceded two days earlier by that of John Tyndall, and the arrests of several other people, over remarks they had made in the same programme. The police had began an investigation into the contents of the programme the day after it was broadcast on 15 July 2004. The following April he was charged with four offences of using words or behaviour intended or likely to stir up racial hatred.

The trial began in January 2006. Griffin stood alongside fellow party activist Mark Collett, who faced similar charges. Prosecuting, Rodney Jameson QC told the jury of speeches that both accused had made in the Reservoir Tavern in Keighley on 19 January 2004, reading excerpts from them:

The prosecution allege that each of the six speeches ... included words which were threatening, abusive and insulting towards, in particular, people of Asian ethnicity. Such words were used with the intention of stirring up racial hatred.

— Rodney Jameson QC,

Griffin was also accused of calling murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence 'a drug dealer and bully who stole younger pupils' dinner money', in an apparent rejection of the supposed racist nature of the teenager's death. In the witness box he defended himself by quoting passages from the Qur'an, backing his argument that his comments describing Islam as a "vicious, wicked faith" were attacking not a race, but a religion. During the two week trial he also used a laptop to post daily updates on a blog on the BNP's website.

The British National Party is a legal, political entity. It has a right in a democratic society to put forward ideas and policies which some might find uncomfortable and some might find even offensive. There has been a tendency in this case to over-analyse speeches, to take one line here and one line there. You have got to look at the overall impact of these speeches - remember the context of each speech.

— Timothy King QC,

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

Griffin and Collett were subsequently cleared of half the charges against them — the jury remained divided on the other charges, and a retrial was ordered. On 10 November 2006, after five hours of deliberations, the jury cleared both men of all charges. Both were met outside the court by about two hundred supporters, whom Griffin addressed with a megaphone:

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.

— Nick Griffin,

Mainstream opinion in this country will be offended by some of the statements that they have heard made. At the same time, of course, the courts make their judgements on these things. But if there is something that needs to be done to look at the law then I think we will have to do that.

— Gordon Brown,

Public debates

In November 2002 Griffin was invited by the Cambridge Union Society to take part in a debate the following January. Titled "This house believes that Islam is a threat to the west", the move was controversial; amongst more moderate speakers, one of those invited was Abu Hamza al-Masri, a fundamentalist Muslim cleric. Once made aware of this, some of those invited threatened to withdraw from the event, and several official bodies criticised the move. The two had met earlier in the year, in a debate chaired by Today programme editor Rod Liddle. Although the debate went ahead, neither Griffin or al-Masri attended.

He was also invited by the Cambridge Forum to a debate on extremism in December the same year, with Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik. The location of the venue was changed twice after protests from property owners, but the threat of a violent confrontation between the Anti-Nazi League and BNP supporters forced the president of the Cambridge Forum, Chris Paley, to cancel the event. Paley called the decision an "own goal" for the values of free speech, and Opik criticised the policy, emphasising his belief in "people's right to make their own decisions in a democracy".

In May 2007 Griffin was invited to address a meeting at the University of Bath by politics student and BNP youth leader Danny Lake. Lake wanted Griffin to visit the university and explain the BNP's policies to lecturers and students. It was, however, viewed by some as an attempt by the party to establish a foothold on the university campus. Eleven union general secretaries wrote to the university's vice-chancellor and asked her to reconsider the decision to allow the meeting. A large protest was planned, and following students concerns over their personal safety the invitation was withdrawn.

David Irving

Several months later the Oxford Union invited him to speak at a forum on the limits of free speech, along with other speakers including David Irving. The invitation proved controversial—it was was condemned by the president of the Oxford Students' Union and race equalities watchdog Trevor Phillips, and MP Dr Julian Lewis resigned his membership of the Union.

A rally against the invitation was held at Oxford Town Hall on 20 November, and included the Oxford Students' Union president, the National Union of Students black students' officer, and the Trades Union Congress south east regional secretary. Representatives of Unite Against Fascism also attended, as well as the University of Oxford's Jewish student chaplain. Several Holocaust survivors also spoke at the rally. On the night of the debate, about 50 protesters forced their way into the venue, and a crowd of hundreds gathered outside carrying banners bearing anti-racist slogans and voicing anti-BNP chants. Police blocked the entrances to the building, and removed the protesters encamped inside. Griffin was accompanied into the premises by security guards. The event was eventually split between two rooms, with Griffin speaking in one, and Irving in the other; many Union Society members were unable to gain access, reducing the audience. Although many present found the debate objectionable, some were supportive of both Griffin and Irving's right to freedom of speech. The Oxford Union later endorsed the debate as a success.

Griffin travelled to the United States and spoke at Clemson University and Texas A&M University, but the reception he received in October 2007 at Michigan State University was markedly different to that in the other venues. Intending to address the "overpopulation of Islamists in Europe", he was repeatedly interrupted, to the point where the event became a question and answer session. He was repeatedly heckled by hostile elements of the audience, and at one point the fire alarm was activated.

Views

Griffin has frequently expressed views on anti-Semitism, 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 Holocaust denial book Did Six Million Really Die?, and in the same year he wrote Who are the Mindbenders?, a publication concerned with a perceived domination of the media by Jewish figures. The BNP however 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." However at least one BNP representative maintains ties with Roberto Fiore and other openly fascist groups across Europe.

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. He has, since assuming control of the party, sought to move it away from its historic identity, although on the BBC's Newsnight on 26 June 2001 he stated that Hindus had been a target as well as whites in the 'Muslim' riots of 2001, and in the August 2001 issue of Identity he claimed that radical Muslim clerics wanted "...militant Muslims to take over British cities with AK-47 rifles". On The Politics Show on 9 March 2003 he appeared to accept the ethnic minorities who were legally already living in the country, but Griffin's court appearances in 2006 centred around his comment that Islam was a "wicked and vicious faith". On 6 March 2008 he was again interviewed on Newsnight; when told of a poll which 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.

— Nick Griffin,

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 in the United Kingdom, and supports a ban on what it perceives as the promotion of homosexuality in schools and the media. In a BBC interview on 8 June 2009 he 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". On 9 June 2009 the Royal British Legion wrote an open letter to Griffin asking him not to wear a poppy lapel badge.

Family and personal life

Griffin lives with his family in a farmhouse in Llanerfyl, near Welshpool, in Wales. He is married to Jackie Griffin, a former nurse who also acts as his assistant and a BNP administrator. They have four children, two of whom have been actively involved with the party, and has a sister. He has recently begun writing an autobiography.

Elections contested

Date of election	Constituency	Party	Votes	Percentage of votes	Source(s)
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	6,552	16.4
2005 general election	Keighley	BNP	4,240	9.2
2009 European election	North West England	BNP	132,094	8.0 (elected)

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Atkins, Stephen E. (2004), Encyclopedia of modern worldwide extremists and extremist groups (Illustrated ed.), Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0313324859
• Eatwell, Roger; Mudde, Cas (2004), Western Democracies and the New Extreme Right Challenge (Illustrated ed.), Routledge, ISBN 0415369711
• Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2003), Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity (reissue, illustrated ed.), NYU Press, ISBN 0814731554
• Ryan, Nick (2004), Into a world of hate: a journey among the extreme right, Routledge, ISBN 041594922X
• Ware, Vron; Back, Les (2002), Out of whiteness: color, politics, and culture (illustrated ed.), University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226873412

External links

• Constituency website
• Nick Griffin's official blog (last updated December, 2007)
• BNP Website
• Matriculation photograph, Nick Griffin is on the right, number 39