Nick Griffin
Without the white race, nothing matters… [other right wing parties] believe that the answer to the race question is integration and a futile attempt to create ‘Black Britons,’ while we affirm that non-Whites have no place here at all and will not rest until every last one has left our land
– Rune editorial written by Nick Griffin
Nick Griffin was elected chairman of the BNP in 1999 but his far-right tendencies go back a lot further. Born in 1959, he was brought up in North London and Suffolk, where his father was a Conservative councillor.
My favourite childhood game was counting the black people on the streets from my car window when my parents drove through London
1972 Aged 13, he reads Mein Kampf.
I made notes in the margin and remember thinking, are the Jews really that bad? The chapter I most enjoyed was the one on propaganda and organisation – there were some really useful ideas there
1974 Aged 15, he joins the National Front
1978 Becomes the NF’s student organiser while studying at Cambridge University
1980 Begins working for the NF, helps found fascist magazine Nationalism Today and joins the party’s governing body, the National Directorate
1981 Becomes head of NF elections department and stands as NF Parliamentary candidate in Croydon West
1982 Becomes editor of Nationalism Today
1983 Tries again as NF Parliamentary candidate in Croydon West. Resigns and re-joins party, appointed publicity officer
1983-6 Forms breakaway group of nationalists, the so-called ‘political soldiers’ who believe in devoting all their time and energy to the nationalist struggle
1986 Travels to Libya in an attempt to raise money from Colonel Gaddafi
1989 Abandons NF to found the International Third Position, a fascist party with a racist agenda identifying Jews, blacks and immigrants as the prime enemies. Co-founder is Italian fascist and terrorist Roberto Fiore, who is on the run after a bomb kills 85 people at Bologna railway station
1990 Leaves politics behind. Loses his eye in an accident, declares himself bankrupt
1993 Re-enters politics at the behest of John Tydnall. After BNP member Derek Beackon is elected to Tower Hamlets Council, he writes:
The electors of Millwall did not back a postmodernist, 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. When the crunch comes power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate.
1995 Joins the British National Party, editing two magazines: the monthly nationalist publication Spearhead and anti-Semitic quarterly The Rune
Publishes Who Are The Mindbenders? – a pamphlet claiming Jews run the media
The mass media in Britain today have managed to implant into many people’s minds the idea that it is ‘anti-Semitic’ even to acknowledge that members of the Jewish community play a large part in controlling our news.
Such is the cowardice of the vast majority of the intellectual prostitutes known as journalists, that it seems that Organised Jewry is able to impose its line on the British press by rather more remote control than in the case of television.
They provide us with an endless diet of pro-multiracial, pro-homosexual, anti-British trash.
1998 Convicted of violating section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, relating to the offence of ‘publishing or distributing racially inflammatory written material’ in issue 12 of The Rune, published in 1996. He is given a nine month prison sentence – suspended for two years – and a £2,300 fine
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 Earth was flat … I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter day witch-hysteria
– from the witness box during his trial
1999 Elected leader of the BNP
TV footage of dozens of gay demonstrators flouting their perversions in front of the world’s journalists showed just why so many ordinary people find these creatures so repulsive
2000 Stands for Parliamentary seat of West Bromwich West
I don’t hate or have any problems with black people other than I hope very much they will remain black people. Other than I hope their children will look as black as they are.
2001 Stands for Parliamentary seat of Oldham West and Royton
Mass alien immigration and suicidally low birthrate means the White Race is poised on the brink of a precipice of rapid and irreversible decline. If we do not step back now, we face political and then psychical extinction. Unite or die.
- BBC’s Panorama 2001
2003 Stands in council elections in Oldham
2005 Stands for Parliamentary seat of Keighley, for the Welsh National Assembly and for the European Parliament
April: Charged alongside BNP Yorkshire Organiser Mark Collett with using words or behaviour intended or likely to incite racial hatred, following The Secret Agent.
BNP leader faces race hate charges – The Guardian
BNP leader denies race hate charges – The Guardian
2006
February: Walks free from court but retrial is ordered
Retrial ordered after Griffin walks free – The Guardian
Yes, Adolf Hitler went a bit too far. His legacy is the biggest problem the British nationalist movement has to deal with. It just creates a bad image
– Mail on Sunday, April 2006
November: Retrial begins
Retrial begins of BNP leaders accused of stirring racial hatred – The Guardian
Freed again
Cabinet rethinks race hate laws after jury frees BNP leaders - The Guardian
There is a strong, direct link from Oswald Mosley to me.
– Mail on Sunday
It’s well-known that the chimneys at Auschwitz are fake, built after the war ended.
– Mail on Sunday
Speaks at conference organised by American Renaissance, a pseudo-scientific racist magazine, sharing the platform with antisemites and Holocaust deniers. The event has links with the Ku Klux Klan
2007 Stands in council elections in Thurrock
2009 Elected to European Parliament, representing North West England, with 8% of the vote – the final seat allocated in the region
Euro elections: Dismay as BNP leader Nick Griffin wins seat – The Mirror
Profile: Nick Griffin – The Sunday Times
Nick Griffin: profile of BNP leader – The Daily Telegraph
The Truth About the BNP’s Nick Griffin – The Sunday Express
A Right Menace: Nick Griffin – The Independent
Nick Griffin in his own words
Asked what he would do with people living in Britain who could not be “sent home”, he replied:
Drop them out of a plane somewhere over Africa. I really don’t care.
- Daily Telegraph, May 2009
Britain is a multi-cultural hellhole and British Muslims are the most appalling, insufferable people to have to live with
– Sunday Times, June 2009
The only measure which is going to stop immigration is to get very tough with those coming over. Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats. I say the boats should be sunk, they can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya
- BBC News, July 2009
Since Islam is not a race based religion there is no offence in criticising Islam.
- Nick Griffin On Islam
Without the White race nothing matters [other right-wing parties] believe that the answer to the race question is integration and a futile attempt to create “Black Britons”, while we affirm that non-Whites have no place here at all and will not rest until every last one has left our land.
- Nick Griffin on Race