Anti-fascist campaigners reacted with outrage on Friday of last week as Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party (BNP), and his sidekick Mark Collett were cleared of charges of incitement to racial hatred.
Griffin and Collett had been prosecuted over speeches at a BNP meeting in Keighley, West Yorkshire, that was secretly filmed by the BBC.
Griffin claimed that gangs of Asian men were drugging and raping white girls as part of an Islamic plot to take over Britain. He spoke of “Muslim thugs and perverts”, “young paki street thugs” and Britain being “mongrelised out of existence”. Collett made similar allegations about “gangs of Asian males”.
In court Griffin argued that his comments were intended as criticism of Islam, rather than being directed at Asians in general. “This isn’t a racial thing. It’s not an Asian thing. It’s a cultural and religious thing,” he said.
His defence team argued that Griffin’s views on Islam, expressed in 2004, had since become more acceptable. They cited recent comments by Jack Straw and other senior politicians to argue that such views were now legitimate public debate. These kind of arguments regularly appear in both the right wing press and its “liberal” counterpart. They have directly fuelled the atmosphere of anti-Muslim racism around this case.
Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, east London, was quite right to say that the government’s “tough” stance on race and Muslims had played into the hands of the BNP. He said, “We have to be honest in saying that the debate over the veil, talking tough on immigration and race or the language used in the ‘war on terror’ does not reassure people but actually makes the situation worse.”
Weyman Bennett, joint national secretary of Unite Against Fascism, said it was “tragic that a fascist organisation can hide behind free speech”. But the verdict highlighted the need to build a united grassroots movement against the BNP that could challenge the fascists politically, he added. “We need to be campaigning against the fascists in our workplaces and communities. The vast majority of people are opposed to the BNP – and we need to mobilise that force against them.”
“Yesterday (Tuesday 14th November), the BBC Newsnight and File on 4 programmes aired false and counterfactual allegations against Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain. Amongst the sensationalist allegations was that members of Hizb ut-Tahrir have been involved in ‘street gang criminality’. We believe the allegations are not only baseless but emanate from a politically motivated group, interested in defaming our public image.
“Brown, Reid, Cameron and even the Charlie Caroli of the constabulary, Ian Blair, are talking the talk on terrorism. But as per usual it will be just words again rather than action…. Our self-serving pigs at Westminster need to develop the backbone of their French counterparts. Two weeks ago the French removed the security clearance for 70 workers at Charles de Gaulle airport who they suspected of having terrorist sympathies…. The French aren’t bothered about the pathetic Human Rights Act….