Why allow the BNP on Question Time?

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Roddy Newman. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

"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 day witch hysteria." (BNP leader Nick Griffin, who is soon to appear on the BBC's "Question Time", talking during his incitement to racial hatred trial after he denied the Holocaust in a 1998 article for the BNP magazine "The Rune". Source: The Unite Against Fascism newspaper, May 2009 issue, p.4)

"It's well known that the chimneys from the gas chambers at Auschwitz are fake, built after the war ended." (Nick Griffin. Source: The HOPE not hate 2009 European election leaflet, "LEST WE FORGET")

According to page 628 of Stephen Dorril's book "Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosely and British Fascism" (Penguin, London, 2006), "The Director-General [of the BBC from 1960 to 1969], Hugh Greene, had ruled that it ' would not be right to offer a platform to [the British fascist leader] Sir Oswald Mosley.' He later admitted that a report that Mosley would only come on air over my dead body was not an exaggeration", so why is the BBC allowing Nick Griffin, who was allegedly a "close ally" of the late William Pierce, the American fascist party (National Alliance) leader who openly argued that all of the world's billions of non-white people and Jews should be killed, to appear on "Question Time" tonight, when Mosley was not allegedly a "close ally" of anyone who was even remotely as extreme as Pierce?

See my September 13th Lancaster Unity article, "Do the BNP and EFP leadership still believe in the mass slaughter of billions?", to read a quote from a "Searchlight" anti-fascist magazine webpage which alleges that Griffin was a "close ally" of Pierce, and to read about Pierce's kill billions of people views. As my article also pointed out, a Northamptonshire Racial Equality Council website article also alleges that Griffin based his anti-Semitic pamphlet, "Who Are the Minbenders?", which lists the Jews in the British media, on a similar Pierce article and pamphlet, "Who Rules America?"

Moreover, why does the BBC think it is appropriate to give a national television platform to a Holocaust denier who wrote an anti-Semitic pamphlet which suggested that the Jewish BBC radio and television presenter Gaby Roslin was part of a Jewish conspiracy to bend the minds of the British public?

The BBC says that is is obliged to allow the BNP to appear on that programme, because the 2009 European election result revealed that the party has "significant national support", but the BNP received more votes in the 2004 European election, and only got its first 2 MEPs elected this year because the expenses scandal led to a lot of traditional Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat voters staying at home. The BNP were not allowed on "Question Time" after the 2004 European election, so as they have less "significant national support" now than they had then, why allow them a national television platform now?

After all, the BNP are fundamentally different to the 5 parties which are allowed on "Question Time" (the 3 big parties, UKIP, and the Greens), because those 5 parties do not have leaders who were convicted of inciting racial hatred after they denied the Holocaust, and because those 5 parties do not have leaders who were allegedly close allies of the most extreme political party leader in history, William Pierce, whose views made Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot look moderate.

Furthermore, the 5 political parties which I have just mentioned do not have terrorist links, but the BNP does. For example, the anti-fascist magazine "Searchlight" published a March 2007 article called "AWB terrorist finds home in the BNP" which discussed a white South African former terrorist in the BNP, Lambertus Nieuwhof, and the London nail bomber David Copeland was a former BNP member who said that his bombs were designed to create a race war which would make people vote BNP, as the June 30, 2000 BBC News website article, "Profile: Copeland the killer" showed.

So, as the BBC is now allowing a party with terrorist links on to "Question Time", will it now also be allowing representatives of a party which includes an Al Qaeda terrorist, or which did in the past include an Al Qaeda terrorist on to that programme?

If the BNP was a party whose members had criminal convictions for violently assaulting white, non-Jewish people, would the BBC be allowing it a national television platform?

Past BNP members who have convictions for racist/anti-Semitic violence include: Darren Dobson, a former BNP candidate in Oldham who has a conviction for racially aggravated assault; Gary Mitchell, the former Sunderland BNP Secretary, who has racist violence convictions; former BNP National Organiser Richard Edmonds, who has a conviction for attacking a mixed race couple with a bottle; former BNP North East Regional Organiser Kevin Scott, who has a conviction for throwing a glass at a black customer in a bar; former BNP Group Development Officer Tony Lecomber, who has a conviction for stabbing a Jewish teacher (and a conviction for possessing hand grenades and electronic timers); and Stephen Balshaw, a former Amber Valley BNP candidate who has a conviction for attacking a Jewish solicitor.