Background
Nick Griffin was born in Barnet and grew up in Halesworth in rural Suffolk, England. Initially educated at two Suffolk public schools, St Felix School (in Southwold) and Woodbridge School, 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 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 British National Party, of which he is chairman. Since 1990, Nick Griffin has a glass left eye following a serious accident when a shotgun cartridge buried among burning rubbish exploded [1].
Griffin's mother, Jean (nee Thomas), was the BNP 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. At the time, he had been vice-president of Iain Duncan Smith's party leadership election campaign in Wales.
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, 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 for 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 said 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 broadcast in July 2004, in which he was recorded at Morley Town Hall (in a constituency which later went on to elect a BNP councillor in 2006) as saying that Islam was a "...wicked and vicious faith". He was the 12th person to be arrested following the documentary and the second most prominent after BNP founder John Tyndall, who had been arrested two days earlier. Griffin was released on police bail the same day but, the following April, was charged with four offences of using words or behaviour intended or likely to stir up racial hatred.
On 6 February 2006, a jury at Leeds Crown Court returned not guilty verdicts on two of the charges and was unable to reach a verdict on the other two. The Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would seek a re-trial.[7][8]
Nick Griffin and Mark Collett leave Leeds Crown Court on November 10, 2006 after being found not guilty of charges of incitement to racial hatred at their retrial.In early November 2006, the retrial of Griffin and co-defendant Mark Collett took place and once again both men were found not guilty on all counts, which means that of all the people arrested in connection with the BBC documentary none had been convicted of any offence relating to it. Somewhat controversially, Government ministers have since called for a review of existing laws.
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.[9][10]
Sunday Times journalist Rod Liddle wrote an article 'Alas, I must defend the BNP' supporting Griffin's right to free speech.[11]
Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial
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."[12][13][14] 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."[15]
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."[16]
Current stance
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".[17] Nick Griffin has also revised his holocaust-denial, now accepting that there was a programme of extermination during WW2. Griffin went on record in 2005 stating "This party has finally cast off the leg iron of anti-Semitism and not a moment too soon." The BNP currently has a Jewish councillor, Patricia Richardson, and has stated that it has Jewish members.[18]
References
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4019864,00.html
- ^ Barberis, P "National Front" in Encyclopaedia of British and Irish political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the Twentieth Century 2000, p639 Continuum International
- ^ "Violence In Our Minds", http://www.skinheadnation.co.uk/tilburyskinheads.htm
- ^ Patrick Harrington , "The Politics of Failure", Third Way magazine 17, nd (mid-1993)
- ^ Patrick Harrington , "The Politics of Failure", Third Way magazine 17, nd (mid-1993)
- ^ The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, "United Kingdom" at http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw97-8/united-kingdom.html
- ^ http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=764
- ^ http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=765
- ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/6135060.stm
- ^ http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,30000-bnp_p24012,00.html
- ^ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2025181,00.html
- ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/programmes/2001/bnp_special/the_leader/beliefs.stm
- ^ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,11255,604018,00.html
- ^ http://www.northamptonshirerec.org.uk/news/BNP.pdf
- ^ Nick Ryan, "England's green and unpleasant land", The Times, 10 April 1999
- ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/programmes/2001/bnp_special/roots/1998.stm
- ^ http://www.bnp.org.uk/columnists/chairman2.php?ngId=25
- ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4285684.stm
