UK: BNP leaders cleared of inciting racial hatred
01 August 2006
In November the leader of the British National Party (BNP), Nick Griffin, and the organisation’s Head of Publicity, Mark Collett, were acquitted at Leeds Crown Court of inciting racial hatred. The charges arose from a television documentary, The Secret Agent, which was broadcast in July 2004. The programme saw journalist, Jason Gwynne, infiltrate the party and covertly film BNP members boasting of racist attacks and other criminal activities. He also filmed speeches by Griffin, in which he abused Islam and the Koran, and Collett, as well as an anti-Semitic diatribe by former party leader and founder, John Tyndall (who died in July 2005 two days before he was to appear in court). All of the speeches were recorded in the build-up to the 2004 local elections. Around a dozen BNP members and supporters were detained by the police on the basis of the programme and several were later expelled from the party, (see
Statewatch vol. 14 no 6).
At their first trial at Leeds Crown Court in January, the defendants played the freedom of speech card and claimed that their words were not intended to stir up racial hatred but were to motivate people to join the BNP. Griffin was cleared of two of the four charges that he faced and Collett was acquitted on four charges of eight. The jury failed to reach a verdict on the remaining charges and the pair was told that they would have to return to court to face a retrial. The prospect of a conviction on the outstanding charges was remote, particularly as the prosecution was to take much the same line as in the initial trial, with predictably similar results.
The BNP exploited the media coverage of November's retrial, Griffin arriving clutching a crucifix and hyperbolically comparing himself to a soldier in the Second World War, (although he didn't specify on which side). He pledged that he was willing to die to keep the country "free, Christian and British" and denounced Islam as a "vicious and wicked faith" in a speech to party supporters outside the court. He continued in much the same vein inside the courtroom. The prosecution tack deviated little from the first trial, focusing on the recordings made during
The Secret Agent rather than introducing Griffin and Collett's broader racist politics.
Collett, for example, was filmed in a 2002 Channel 4 documentary,
Young, Nazi and Proud, expressing his support for the policies of Adolf Hitler and the loyalist terrorist Johnny Adair; he also verbally abused British-born black people and on other television programmes, homosexuals. The decision to prosecute the pair on the basis of
The Secret Agent material alone had been criticised by many anti-racists and anti-fascists as naive.
Outside the court following their acquittal, Griffin and Collett corked bottles of champagne and celebrated. Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, indicated that laws against inciting racial hatred would be tightened as did the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, while Home Secretary John Reid promised to "think carefully" and consult his colleagues.
The BNP's true agenda is also more accurately reflected by the arrest of their candidate for Pendle at the 2006 local elections. Robert Cottage (49), from Colne, Lancashire, appeared in court on explosives charges in October and he has been accused of possessing chemicals and other materials under the Explosives Substances Act 1883. A second man, David Jackson (62) was also arrested after police recovered rocket launchers, a nuclear biological suit, 22 different chemical components and BNP literature. The police described the material as "a record haul".
However, unlike the recent police raid on Mohammed Abdul Kahar and Abdul Koyair in Forest Gate, east London in June, which involved 250 officers including a CO19 assault team, the BNP operation was a sedate affair involving a small number of unarmed officers. Also unlike the Forest Gate raid, in which one of the two innocent man was shot