The BBC controversially gave a far-right party leader a first appearance on its flagship political panel show as angry protesters besieged its headquarters.
Nick Griffin, chairman of the British National Party (BNP), appeared on the weekly Question Time debate show on Thursday as about 500 demonstrators joined in angry protests outside Television Centre in west London.
About 30 demonstrators broke into BBC headquarters, while others clashed with police outside. Six people were arrested and three police officers were injured, one being taken to hospital with a head injury.
The BBC defended its decision to invite Griffin on the show, saying it was duty bound to be impartial.
The BNP had never appeared on the show before, but was invited on after Griffin and a colleague were elected to the European Parliament in June, with the party taking nearly 944,000 votes — a 6.2 percent share.
The BBC’s invitation sparked passionate debate in the UK — and saw mainstream parties change tack and agree to share a platform with the BNP.
“We remain firmly of the view that it was appropriate to invite Nick Griffin onto the Question Time panel in the context of the BBC meeting its obligation of due impartiality,” BBC deputy director-general Mark Byford said.
Griffin faced hostile questions and jeers in a show dominated by debates about BNP policy, with panelists from the UK’s biggest three parties challenging the 50-year-old on quotes attributed to him.
His appearance has dominated the UK news agenda this week, raising issues of free speech and censorship, and was on the front page of most national newspapers yesterday.
The Guardian said in its editorial it was “questionable television.”
“The hope remains, it is true, that the more the public sees of his party, the uglier they will judge it to be. Even so, he was last night handed a golden opportunity to persuade them otherwise, a chance he should never have had,” the editorial said.
The Daily Mirror called it a “propaganda coup for right-wing fanatics.”
“The chaos has at least raised the wider question of when extremists should be awarded a platform,” it said.
The Daily Express said on its front page that Griffin was “a disgrace to humanity.”
“This is a dangerous and shameful moment for British democracy. The BBC was profoundly misguided and wrong,” it said. “Only the fundamental decency and belief in fair play of the British public now stands between the BNP and further advance.”
While on the program, Griffin said: “I’ve been relentlessly attacked and demonized over the last few days.”
“I am not a Nazi. I never have been,” he said, adding: “I do not have a conviction for Holocaust denial.”
He went on: “Our country must remain fundamentally a British and Christian country ... based on Western democratic values,” adding that he stood for people who felt “shut out in our own country.”
Griffin said beforehand that the furore about his appearance “clearly gives us a whole new level of public recognition.”
The BNP Web site said it had been forced to take its normal pages offline because of a surge in hits.
The BNP wants to “stop immigration and put British people first.”
Its membership is restricted to “indigenous Caucasian” people, though that is set to change after a recent court battle.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the BNP leader going on the show was “a good opportunity to expose what they are about.”
Griffin told the UK domestic Press Association news agency afterward that he thought the show was a “hard-fought match” that would “polarize normal opinion.”
He said: “A huge swath of British people will remember some of the things I said and say to themselves they’ve never heard anyone on Question Time say that before and millions of people will think ‘that man speaks what I feel.’”
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