Last updated at 11:53, Friday, 23 October 2009

The BBC defended the appearance of Nick Griffin on a Question Time in which the BNP leader gave a twitchy performance and described homosexuals as “creepy”.

Nick Griffin

Hundreds of angry protesters massed outside Television Centre last night as Mr Griffin also denied he was a Nazi and said the Ku Klux Klan were “almost totally non-violent”.

The BBC came under fire from critics who accused it of having legitimised the BNP’s “racist” policies by inviting Mr Griffin on to the show.

Afterwards Welsh Secretary Peter Hain – who campaigned for many years against Apartheid and who had made a last-ditch appeal to the BBC to drop the BNP leader – bitterly denounced the broadcast.

“The BBC should be ashamed of single-handedly doing a racist, fascist party the biggest favour in its grubby history,” he said.

“Our black, Muslim and Jewish citizens will sleep much less easily now the BBC has legitimised the BNP by treating its racist poison as the views of just another mainstream political party when it is so uniquely evil and dangerous.”

However, Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who was also on the Question Time panel, insisted that it had been a “catastrophic” week for the BNP, which had seen Mr Griffin exposed as a “fantasising conspiracy theorist”.

Following the programme, Mr Griffin acknowledged his appearance would “polarise normal opinion” but expressed confidence that it would have an impact.

“A huge swathe of British people will remember some of the things I said and say to themselves they’ve never heard anyone on Question Time say that before and millions of people will think that man speaks what I feel,” he said. “People will see the extraordinary hostility shown to me from the people representing the three old parties. It’s still a matter of the main political parties being against the outsider.”

Before the recording, around 25 protesters breached security and were able to get through the reception area at Television Centre before being removed from the premises. Mr Griffin sought to defend his record, insisting that his views had been widely misrepresented and that the BNP had changed under his leadership.

“I am not a Nazi and never have been,” he said. “I am the most loathed man in Britain in the eyes of Britain’s Nazis. They loathe me because I have brought the British National Party from being, frankly, an anti-Semitic and racist organisation into being the only political party which, in the clashes between Israel and Gaza, stood full square behind Israel’s right to deal with Hamas terrorists.”

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First published at 11:33, Friday, 23 October 2009
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk