May 26, 2009

Family of Winston Churchill slams BNP over far-right party's attempt to hijack wartime leader's legacy

Relatives of Sir Winston Churchill have denounced as ‘monstrous’ an attempt by BNP leader Nick Griffin to cloak himself in the mantle of Britain's greatest wartime leader.

The far-right British National Party’s election broadcast, which is screened nationwide this evening, features Mr Griffin quoting from one of Churchill’s most famous speeches. The BNP chief uses the broadcast to argue that modern Britain, with its record of welcoming immigrants, has betrayed the ‘the blood, sweat, toil and tears’ of those who fought for freedom in the Second World War.

The advert, which features footage of Sir Winston and British war graves, provoked fury from descendants of Churchill, who have tried to ban the BNP from appropriating his image. Tory MP Nicholas Soames, Sir Winston’s grandson, revealed yesterday that he has tried and failed to get election watchdogs to ban the BNP from using Churchill as a vote winner.

Mr Griffin was also accused of ‘sickening hypocrisy’ after it emerged that he once praised the 'limitless courage and sacrifice', of Hitler’s SS, and described the RAF’s bombing of Dresden as 'mass murder'.

Mr Soames told the Mail he has consulted lawyers and tried to get the Electoral Commission to step in and stop the BNP, but confessed he had been rebuffed. He said he has received ‘hundreds of letters’ from his grandfather’s generation distressed that the far right group is ‘abusing their memory’ and implying that Sir Winston would have backed the BNP’s racist cause.

‘It’s a monstrous thing to do. Most sensible people will be disgusted by the BNP’s use of Churchill’s face and imagery purporting to claim that my grandfather would have supported their policies. ‘It is such a disgusting and outrageous suggestion. They have no right to use Churchill’s face in this way. It causes tremendous offence to people of the wartime generation.

‘They were a generous generation. They weren’t a mean-spirited generation. It is deeply offensive to his family and if the law were different we would take steps to stop it. To suggest that he would have supported something as wicked as the BNP is beyond the pale.’

Newly uncovered copies of ‘The Rune’, a white supremacist magazine edited by Mr Griffin in the late 1990s, show that far from respecting Britain’s war effort in the 1940s he was a fan of the SS units that committed countless war crimes against the allies.

Mr Griffin published one article stating: ‘The tales of Waffen SS courage and sacrifices are almost limitless.’

Another piece claimed: ‘In an unbiased assessment of war-crimes, the Waffen SS were undoubtedly no worse than the troops of other nations – countless Allied war crimes are simply not publicised.’ In 1996 he organised a demonstration on the steps of Coventry Cathedral in which he claimed RAF pilots who bombed Dresden in World War Two were guilty of ‘mass murder’.

According to Griffin, the leaflets were written by 'veteran German patriot', Manfred Roeder, who fought for Hitler in the defence of Berlin in 1945 then founded a neo-Nazi organisation in the 1980s that was classified as a terrorist group by German authorities after it launched attacks against buildings housing asylum seekers.

A spokesman for the anti-fascist campaign group Searchlight said: ‘Griffin’s hypocrisy is sickening. This man is on record as praising the SS and accusing RAF pilots of committing mass murder. For him to evoke the memory of fallen British serviceman to further his campaign of division and hate is beyond belief.’

Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, where the BNP hope to make gains, said: ‘This exposes the fact that Nick Griffin is on record praising the SS and attacking the RAF. It’s only because there is an election on that he’s pretending to be a supporter of the Armed Forces. People will see through the sham.’

Daily Mail

14 comments:

tommy gun said...

Well done Daily Mail for telling it like it is. No doubt the huge army of trolls using multiple logins will be posting thousands of criticisms acting under the official orders of Simon Darby and Lee Barnes, attacking Winston Churchill's relatives, and even the man himself (they know no shame!), but BNP sockpuppets have no life, and their big failure in life was not to take up trainspotting or football sticker collecting instead of far right "politics".

It takes hard-hitting journalists from the centre right to pull the rug from under the feet of the exalted criminal and Holocaust denier Nick Griffin. Sir Winston's descendants have the courage to speak out in public, exposing Griffin and friends of being on the side of Hitler rather than Churchill.

The wishy-washy BBC, however, wouldn't dare expose the truth about Nick Griffin wishing Germany had won the war. This is the same BBC that kept Britain fired-up to beat the Nazis in the darkest of days, but since then, the BBC have become a pale shadow of their original selves.

tommy gun (continued) said...

MPs of all the main parties have been punnelled into submission by damaging facts broadcast on television and radio about expenses paid through the public purse, the most promiment of politicians, the harshest of treatment, quite rightly so.

Whenever the BBC are accused of playing up the BNP, and providing more "platform" to them than St Pancras Station, the nationalised information service operating itself on public money paid for by license fees, replies that the BNP are a "legal political party" who must be treated with broadcast parity.

For a small party with no absolutely members of parliament, and scoring less than 3% in average national opinion polls, however, they recieve a disproportionate level of press and media attention, that can hardly be explained away through bending over backwards to be fair to the BNP. Critics of the BBC can relatively easily accuse the Beeb of broadcast bias to the party.

While virtually all tabloid and broadsheet newspapers have let the people know the truth that the UKIP and the Greens have been picking up the protest vote, the headline story on the BBC about MPs expenses featured one voter in the streets speaking to a journalist, telling everybody that he would be protesting by voting for the BNP. One in several hundred voters, some would argue, but certainly not a majority viewpoint by a long-chalk, but the BNP managed to search and scour the streets for a self-fullfilling phrophesy that is both misleading and dishonest.

I won't go as far as calling the BNP "closet neo-fascists" or far-right sympathisers. Maybe they are scared of being featured for many years on hate hitman site "Redwatch", or many BBC journalists and editors are suffering from a contageous brain disease spread by fake-lawyer Looney Lee Barnes, however many questions have to be asked about why the BNP are frequently talked up by the corporation.

tommy gun (continued!) said...

I won't venture into conspiracy theories nor mention Edgar Griffin, but I will state the facts as I, and many others, see them.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York together released a joint statement condemning the BNP, the BBC spent as much time featuring a comeback from Nick Griffin as voicing the worries of the churchmen.

The BBC obviously don't regard the BNP as a criminal racist organisation who would operate South-African style aparthied in the UK if they got to power, which would be illegal under international law, incredibly racist and vile and dangerous, but somehow now treat them as a safe, mainstream political organisation who deserve equal treatment on air (even though they punch many times greater than their weight).

The BNP can't have it both ways. Either they should be ignored by the press as irrelevent in terms of both pro- and anti- stories, or are given a promiment soapbox and are held to public scrutiny on shows such as the Six O Clock News.

If evidence that David Cameron, Gordon Brown or Nick Clegg had gone on record praising the genocidal SS who had played a major role in the Holocaust, and had spoken out admiring Nazi Germany or Adolf Hitler, the story would take up the whole of the broadcast, and the BBC quite rightly wouldn't shut-up until they were sacked, ridiculed and hung out to dry in the political wilderness.

While Nick Griffin is featured on the BBC as much as Cameron and Brown on the radio and the telly, the spineless Beeb seem fit to give endess oxygen of publicity to the BNP, while cowering away from going in for the kill, and letting every single person living in this country and eligible to vote know that the BNP had wished that Adolf Hitler had won the last war, and that their patriotism is a complete and total lie.

Thus the BBC are most clearly being one-sided, in treating Nick Griffin with the political reverence of Cameron, Clegg and Brown, without the public scrutiny.

I know for certain BBC journalists and editors read this blog. Your corporation is publically funded, and owes a debt of responsibility to the public to offer an honest critique of all politicians (and pretend politicians). If newspapers can feature the condemnation of Winston Churchill's relatives, so can you.

An election approaching is no excuse for refusing to broadcast proven facts which would kill off the BNP vote for good, not when journalists and editors have carte-blanche permission to lay into Westminster politicians with impunity, with the very same election approaching.

Hype up the BNP if you must, treat nobody Nick Griffin like he's somehow the man of the moment (even though Nigel Farage's party is far stronger in the national opinion polls), and give them the oxygen of publicity that as purveyors of hate and racial attacks they don't deserve, but in return, ensure Mr Griffin and the rest of his Hitler-loving friends are subject to the same critical examination as every other politician.

The once great BBC needs to regrow its balls, and quick, before the BBC wittingly or unwittingly help this bunch of criminals, terrorists and South African apatheid war criminals to a terrifying election success!

mr t said...

The BBC are cowards, as are the electoral commission.

Excellent points - the BNP cannot have it both ways.

If the BNP get elected to europe without any of the people who voted for them knowing the full facts, and the BNP get millions of euros of european funding to plough into creating intolerance, and more people die or are injured as a result of racial attacks because of this, plenty of blood will be on the hands of the BBC.

tommy gun correcting typos said...

I wrote "I won't go as far as calling the BNP "closet neo-fascists" or far-right sympathisers".

Sorry for my typo...

It Should read BBC not BNP, but you have got the message.

The BBC are not subjecting the neo-nazi BNP to public scrutiny!

Raymond said...

From the end of the election broadcast he claimed the people who died for the country in WW2 were only "our people" i.e. code for White people. With the recent publicity over the Gurkhas hopefully people will realise this is a lie. People from all over the Empire and the Gurkhas too fought for the UK. Griffin writes these people off as "mercenaries" while happily accepting people like Kemp who have not fought for the country at all and have publically praised its enemies like Hitler

Anonymous said...

Andrew Marr has even gone so far as to offer Griffin an exclusive interview should he win a seat.

Time to switch off the BBNP

Anonymous said...

Churchill was pro United States of Europe.
"Churchill argued forcefully that a united Europe was the best means to heal residual hatreds from the Second World War, prevent future wars, and ensure economic prosperity. At home, he rallied his own Conservative ..."

Churchill was also given the choice about stopping mass immigration but believed that it would be wide to wait rather than make an absolute ban.

Anonymous said...

The BBC are subjecting the BNP and specifically Mr Kemp to scrutiny, so much so that they and his ex-wife and children have received death threats .... someone is obviously not so keen on the truth.

Bigger Picture said...

Apparently the BNP have a campaign poster which states that Jesus would vote BNP. If the BNP are Christians this is absurd, and if the BNP are non Christians then this campaigning is pointlessly insulting to Christians. It might be supposed that this is a silly and rather unfair point to make about something that the BNP have simply got wrong. Not so. This sort of thing is standard BNP campaigning.

At the weekend the BNP leader said on BBC radio that he wants the BNP to have discussions with the Church of England. And on BBC radio, on the same day, the BNP deputy leader said, “Unfortunately we have people who have wormed their way into the Church of England, people who are liberal and multicultural. Some of these people don’t even believe in God.” So what are we to suppose from all this, is the BNP’s attitude to the Church of England? If you stop insulting us, then we will stop insulting you? It is clear that the BNP’s leaders are almost mindlessly stupid.

TO CHRISTIANS AND NON CHRISTIANS ALIKE, IT IS CLEAR THAT THE BNP’S ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANS IS ABSURD, MALICIOUS AND MORONIC.

gee said...

The BNP are Christian, my fucking arse! They worship supposed norse gods which will destroy non-white people with Hitlerite vengeance.

The BNP worship Odin not Christ. They have an Odinist inner circle, an Odin Youth Study Group, and Looney Lee Barnes published a regular document to indoctrinate young minds with, called the strider.

darbysagriffinarselicka said...

Funny that Kemp has supposedly received death threats, when the programme has yet to be aired, Mister Simon Darby.

What's Simon Darby doing anyway, trolling this blog?

Shouldn't you be on Stormfront?

les said...

Simon Darby (trolling) said: - "The BBC are subjecting the BNP and specifically Mr Kemp to scrutiny, so much so that they and his ex-wife and children have received death threats .... someone is obviously not so keen on the truth".

YEAH, YEAH, YEAH DARBY! TALK ABOUT BLATANT HYPOCRISY, YOU SLIMY TOAD! YOU WOULDN'T KNOW THE MEANING OF TRUTH IF IT SLAPPED YOU ACROSS THE FACE WITH A WET FISH!

droid said...

Of course, the bombing of Dresden was mass murder and a war crime, as was the Nazi bombing of civilians in Britain and the American firebombing of Tokyo/nuclear attacks on Japan.

Of course, occasionally speaking truth doesn't make Griffin and his ilk any less repulsive...