’Britain is full’

'Britain is full'

Nick Griffin wants Britain to be all-white. Leader of Britain's far right party, the BNP, he's just won two seats in the European Parliament last week. Should Indians here and in the UK be worried?

He dreams of an all-white-Britain and wants Britain to withdraw from the European Union. That's Nick Griffin, leader of the most abhorred far right British National Party.

A Cambridge University graduate, Griffin's recent election to the European Parliament sparked such strong reactions that angry protesters threw eggs at him (a behaviour quite rare in Britain) when he tried to hold a press conference in London. But he is already eyeing the next parliamentary elections in Britain for his neo-Nazi BNP. His election as MEP is seen as a "sad moment" in British politics by all political parties.

Given his political views, the Indian concern is whether Indian immigrants to UK will soon come under attack. In an exclusive interview with Nabanita Sircar, Griffin, 50, talks about fascism, his stand against immigration and his desire to come to India.

Your party, the BNP, is seen as fascist. What do you have to say to that?
The political class has sought to impose a series of radical changes on our society immigration is one, our being submerged in the EU is another, the permissive society and destruction of law and order, standards in education. In all sorts of ways it sought to dismantle our society. And because they all agreed, the public did not have a choice. We give them a choice we are trouble for the other parties because we are in the way of the completion of that project. Our party has been branded fascist by the same Margaret Thatcher Conservative Party fascists.

Fascism is about denying your opponents freedom of speech, which we do not, but our opponents do. It's about using violence against your political opponents which we do not even though the other parties encourage the Far Left to use violence against us.

But the fact remains that you want an all-white Britain?
We want Britain to return to, in ethnic terms, what it was in 1948, which would be the ideal. We know there is no possibility of that being achieved and we don't even seek to achieve, because the British people actually don't want that in any case.

Our policy on immigration is to close the door to more because this is the most overcrowded country in Europe and is way beyond its proper carrying capacity in population terms which is dangerous in many ways.

We seek to apply the law to remove all illegal immigrants, all bogus asylum seekers, all the immigrants in recent years primarily who have arrived from Eastern Europe simply because of our membership of the European Union.
When we leave the EU, they will lose the right to be here and we will ask them politely, but firmly, to leave. We have to also decide as a nation how we could reach a deal with any ethnic minority population which doesn't subscribe to British ways and values and which would seek to impose different values on our society.
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For everybody else which is the case of people from the Indian subcontinent, that is, all the Hindus and all the Sikhs and some Muslims, for everybody in that category who is here legally and is contributing to our society and believe we should remain fundamentally British, we've set them here as British citizens and we have no issue with anybody like that at all.

But you surely understand that given your extreme stand on immigration, Indians would be concerned?
I don't think they need be, especially members of all the settled ethnic minorities who are very angry because they or their families have been here since the 1960s or 70s and they see people who have just arrived, literally coming off planes from Afghanistan or Nigeria or Lithuania and immediately going to the front of the queue for jobs, housing, translating to preferential treatments and it is as much a problem for settled ethnic minorities who have been paying into our society as it is for the indigenous British.u00a0

In economic terms, certain communities, like the Hindus and Sikhs may indeed be a benefit, but on the other hand you look at some other communities like the Somalis with a huge unemployment rate, a shocking crime rate and they are an enormous burden on our society and the law-abiding minorities here.

In the past you were trying to garner support of Sikhs from areas like Southall. Have you had much success?
It's going slowly, to be honest. Obviously there are concerns in that community as there are in other ethnic communities about whether we stand for the lies that come in the newspapers.

Are you against any particular faith or community, give your extreme statements against Islam? Are you opposed to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis coming into Britain?
No, we are opposed to anyone coming here. The country is full, it doesn't matter where they are from, black, brown, white or green. The country is full, that's the end of it.

In terms of population here, there is clearly fundamental incompatibility between the traditionalist, hardline version of Islam from somewhere like Saudi Arabia and therefore financing Islamic education, madrasaas and mosques in Britain. That's where most of the money comes from... and it's their version of Islam which I would say is incompatible with western democracy, freedom of speech, with equal rights for women and with rights of other communities.

Critics have alleged that the BNP has a Nazi-style doctrine of racial hatred?
No, we do not have any such thing. But we do believe that humanity is made up of a very large number of different groups with their own ethnic and cultural differences and that diversity of humanity should be retained without being subverted into any globalistic, capitalistic melting pot which is the trait coming from particularly the United States.

We have a lot more time in the vision of running a multicultural society in the way that India operates where you have many different ethnic, ethno-religious linguistic groups, who although they are serving in the same army, supporting the same cricket team, doing business with each other and living side by side, the communities still tend to be separate and there is no pressure for everyone to merge and become the same.

That is a different model of a multicultural society to the American model which is fundamentally negationist, everyone becomes the same.

So when we argue the case for preservation of human diversity it is presented as hatred. But it most definitely is not.

I would actually like to go to India. My father was there during the war in the RAF. He enjoyed being there. He worked there with all different religions and groups and made several friendships there that he still remembers, so I would like to go and see. And in particular it is a very simplistic thing, there is an American model of multiculturalism and there is an Indian model and there is clearly a very different way of doing things. But I am sure it's something I would be interested by, possibly learn from the Indian model. I have seen the American model.

So you are saying that you support the Indian module of multiculturalism?
Where we cannot disengage the multicultural society by mutual consent and voluntary resettlement, where it can't be disengaged there we believe it must be settled down on a model of different communities living together but retaining their own space and identity rather than it is done in Britain to a very basic level of human existence in terms of culture or anti-culture in terms of rap music, Mc Donalds and same street fashion all over the world.

Would that not lead to a kind of ghetto-isation?
That's part of the undoing a multicultural, multi-ethnic society which is being forced on Britain. It's difficult to see how we can deal with it. All I can say is our way is perfect and it has some potential flaws in it which I would accept, but it's better than what other parties offer, which is continued mass immigration, the growing problem of radical Islam, not just in the existing Muslim population but through conversion and continued immigration which could even destroy western civilisation.

How do you feel immigration has adversely affected Britain?
If you import a large number of people from other parts of the world then as well as importing their variety and diversity you also import their quarrels and wars from their places and that's precisely what is happening now.

It's time to ask those people who created these problems as to what is going to happen now, where for instance we have a huge terrorist bid tolerance in the shape of increasingly radicalised Muslims, almost all of them British-born in most towns and cities in Britain. To deal with that is, first, to stop letting anymore in. That would mean stopping any more Polish butlers as well as any more Muslims coming in or anybody else.

For the first thing the government needs to look at is the problem of Islamic radicalisation and stop pretending it's the fault of the indigenous community. That is an issue which must be addressed to the Muslim population of the world.

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