By Anna Tomforde Oct 23, 2009, 12:28 GMT
London - The oxygen of publicity given to British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin at peak viewing time on BBC television has sparked fears of growing ethnic tension and violence against minorities, commentators said Friday.
Griffin's participation late Thursday in the flagship Question Time discussion programme had 'legitimized the BNP's racist poison,' said Peter Hain, a government minister and erstwhile prominent opponent of South African apartheid.
'A lot of black and Muslim citizens will sleep much less easily after this,' Hain told the BBC Friday.
On the programme, Griffin, 50, attacked Islam, defended the Ku Klux Klan, described homosexuals as 'creepy' and said Britain's 'indigenous people' had become second-class citizens in their own country.
'We are the aborigines here,' he claimed, amid booing and hissing from a largely hostile audience. Griffin described himself as the 'most loathed man in in Britain,' but insisted that he was 'not a Nazi.'
The question of whether Griffin, the Cambridge-educated party leader, should have been invited on to the programme sparked a furious row ahead of the show, with the BBC defending its 'impartiality' and critics accusing the broadcaster of providing a platform for the BNP's 'dangerous' views.
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said Griffin's participation in a main BBC programme would 'legitimize far- right extremism and further increase Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence' which had shown a marked increase in recent months.
'There is a general fear that allowing the BNP to air its toxic views will give the BNP an aura of respectability needed to spread their message of hate,' said MCB Secretary General Muhammad Abdul Bari.
'There will be a small group of extreme right-wing people who may treat this as reason to be more hostile to Muslims,' said Galib Khan, chairman of the Liverpool Mosque and Islamic Institute.
The controversy over the BNP follows a series of violent clashes in recent months between Muslim demonstrators and members of the far- right English Defence League (EDL) in cities with large Muslim populations - including Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Luton.
In Birmingham, EDL supporters shouted 'Allah, Allah, who the ... is Allah' during clashes outside a mosque with Muslim youths and anti-fascist campaigners.
While Griffin often looked uncomfortable being subjected to intense questioning by members of the public and co-panellists, the publicity and protests that accompanied the screening nonetheless guaranteed that 8.2 million viewers watched the programme, nearly three times the usual number, according to BBC figures.
BNP spokesman John Walker complained that Griffin had been treated 'disgracefully' on the show, but added with some pride that the party's website had received 300,000 hits after the programme.
Griffin has predicted that his appearance would catapult the party into 'the big time,' helping it to emulate the success in France of National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 1980s.
Griffin insisted that his party had modified its stance on race and immigration since he marched for a 'white Britain' in its openly racist predecessor, the National Front (NF), as a young man.
'I cannot explain why I said these things,' a beleaguered Griffin said when asked why he had once described the Holocaust as a myth.
He is also on record of having described Islam as a 'wicked, vicious faith' and saying that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler went 'a little bit too far.'
But while some commentators said that Griffin had been damaged by the show, which had exposed him as a 'wolf in sheep's clothing,' others insisted that his appearance will have boosted the BNP's image.
The party's constitution limits membership to 'indigenous British ethnic groups' and says the BNP is committed to 'stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring the overwhelmingly white make-up of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948.'
The BNP's 'whites-only' membership policy is currently subject to a legal challenge by Britain's Commission for Racial Equality.
The BNP is estimated to have more than 12,000 members, and gained a million votes - or 6.2 per cent of the electorate - in elections to the European parliament in June where it now has two seats.
Election analyses showed that the BNP, which claims to represent 'white working class Britain,' has made considerable inroads into the voter base of mainstream parties, especially Labour, but also the Conservatives and Liberals.
'Britain is not about to go fascist, but the BNP's success is worrying all the same,' said the Economist magazine, linking the BNP's rise with that of right-wing parties in other European countries.
The traditional view in Britain that far-right parties were regarded as 'clownish' had been severely tested,' said the magazine.
The BNP's breakthrough in the European poll was preceded by similar gains in regional and local elections in Britain, where the party hopes to contest at least a dozen seats at the next general election in mid-2010.
According to Matthew Goodwin, a research fellow at Manchester University, the BNP's potential voter base is now 'significant.'
'There is fertile breeding ground for the BNP among voters overwhelmingly concerned with immigration, he said, adding that mainstream parties had chosen to ignore an 'ingrained prejudice among a very small section of the community.'
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