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Author: Nick Lowles | Date: December 2006
The acquittal of British National Party leader Nick Griffin and Mark Collett last month on charges of inciting racial hatred was both depressing and predictable.
Ever since the first trial saw the pair acquitted on six other charges the prospects for a successful conviction this time were slim. The prosecutors decided to fight the same case as before and perhaps unsurprisingly the jury was equally unimpressed.
The BNP milked the media attention for all it was worth. While there was a clear case of media fatigue, and certainly less coverage than at the end of the first trial, the BNP couple still dominated the airwaves for 24 hours.
More worryingly, the BNP is going to feel emboldened by the decision. Islamophobia is now on the agenda big time. The BNP knows that it can virtually say what it likes about “Islam” with little fear of any future prosecution.
The Attorney-General, meanwhile, has been humbled and is unlikely to take any action against any future BNP outbursts. Given the wider political discourse on race and Islam that is being whipped up by politicians and the media, and encouraged perversely by Islamic extremist groups, the downward spiral of division, suspicion and hatred grows stronger.
Fault lines are opening up in British society. Communal divisions have become centre stage, talk of divisions and differences dominate and the consequent racism is on the increase.
This makes the prosecution all the more frustrating. The case arose out of the BBC’s Secret Agent programme, broadcast in July 2004. The film followed BBC journalist Jason Gywnn through Bradford BNP. He was helped in his undercover role by Andy Sykes, then the BNP local organiser, who was secretly working for Bradford TUC and Searchlight.
During the course of making the programme, Jason recorded BNP leaders making a number of racist speeches in which they railed against blacks, Muslims and asylum seekers.
Perhaps the worst speech was by John Tyndall, the founder of the BNP and its former chairman, in which he said that the only things to have come out of Africa were voodoo, witchcraft and Aids.
Tyndall died in the summer of 2005, which did weaken the overall case, but a case there still was.
However, the police, CPS and the prosecuting barrister decided, in their wisdom, to focus solely on the secretly recorded tapes of the meeting rather than broaden it to bring in Griffin’s and Collett’s wider politics. This allowed both men to claim that they were not racist but merely opposed Islamic fundamentalism. Their past political views and allegiances (see box) were not taken into account.
The defendants were also allowed to make wild and unsubstantiated claims. Collett got away with claiming that an “unnamed” police officer told him that there was a shooting range underneath a mosque in Bradford rather than being forced to admit that he had made up the story. Innuendo, political pro-paganda and outright lies dominated the defence case.
Without putting the speeches from Griffin and Collett in the wider political climate, the prosecution undermined their case. The BNP pair said very little that was different from what is heard on the streets of West Yorkshire every day. The narrow basis of the prosecution case allowed the defendants to contrast their words with the hardline words and terrorist actions of a tiny minority of Islamic fundamentalists in the area. But this was not the point. Racism and Islamophobia might be increasingly common but the two BNP leaders were using this language to whip up their audience. The cheers of delight and cries of abuse from the gathered crowds was testament to the impact of these speeches.
The BNP will obviously hope that the acquittals will boost the party’s image and bring in recruits. Reading the letters’ pages of several regional and national newspapers certainly adds weight to this positive BNP assessment. The Sun typified much of the media with many letters supporting the BNP and its stance on Islam.
However, nothing is as clear cut as it seems. Many people would have been put off by the gaudy champagne celebrations outside the court. Others, including BNP members themselves, were not impressed by Griffin’s continual fascination with his troop of bodyguards, dressed in black, with their little earpieces. Cheap bouncers and town centre thugs more like.
More significantly, can the BNP really reap the political capital? There was no great take-off after the European elections of 2004, when the party polled over 800,000 votes. There was no lasting recruitment bonanza after the first trial collapsed or even after the 33 council victories in May.
The BNP is crippled with internal disputes, political naivety and growing resentment and disillusionment within the party ranks towards the increasingly totalitarian leadership. The acquittal gave the BNP positive free publicity but there is no guarantee that this will have a lasting impact.
What is certain, however, is that the BNP will become more outspoken in its racism. It will be emboldened by the court’s decision, free in the knowledge that any future prosecution has now been made even more unlikely.
Prosecuting the leader of the BNP was always going to be a high-risk strategy and there were plenty of people who were against it on the grounds that it would simply make martyrs of the fascists. However, once the decision to prosecute was taken a successful outcome was needed.
Given the high stakes and the failure to secure a conviction first time, the prosecution really should have made a better job of the retrial.
What the court did not hear: MARK COLLETT in his own words
ON WINSTON CHURCHILL “Churchill was a f****** c*** who led us into a pointless war with other whites standing up for their race.”
ON THE PRINCE OF WALES “He’s a f****** traitor. Did you hear him say we needed more mosques in this country? All Muslims are anti-British terrorists.”
ON WHETHER BRITISH-BORN BLACKS ARE BRITISH “Just because a dog is brought up in a stable doesn’t make him a horse.”
ON AIDS A “friendly disease because blacks, drug users and gays have it.”
ON THE ROYAL FAMILY “The Royals have betrayed their people. When we’re in power they’ll be wiped out and we’ll get some Germans to rule properly.” ON JEWS “There’s not a European country the Jews haven’t been thrown out of. When it happens that many times, it’s not just persecution. There’s no smoke without fire.”
ON ADOLF HITLER “Hitler will live forever; and maybe I will.”
What the court did not hear: NICK GRIFFIN in his own words ON RACE “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.”
ON THE HOLOCAUST “The ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie and latter witch-hysteria.”
ON POWER “When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate. We have to have a body of trained young men capable of defending our organisation. If people come to crack our heads we will break theirs.”
© Searchlight Magazine 2006